Microstamping shot

[Robert Hairless]

When state laws require microstamping of bullets, how does the manufacturer stamp all the shot in birdshot and buckshot?

Does the size of the number get smaller as the shot decreases in size?

And must all the shot in a shell have the same microstamped number or must the manufacturer append a letter or number to each shot to distinguish it from all others in the shell?

Considering the amount of shot that goes into the smaller sizes of shot shells, can the numbers get so long that there's a possibility of running out of space on each shot? Or is the manufacturer required to fasten an extension on each shot so as to accomodate the lengthy numbers?

[foghornl]

Robert:

Point well made on the uselessness of 'Micro-Stamping' I wanna see how well that works on say the #12 "dust" shot used in .22/.38/.45 shotshells.

Maybe we need to pick up our shot for reloading at the trap/skeet range...

[Robert Hairless]

Darnit, Foghorn1. Just as soon as I think I've done the ultimate burlesque of microstamping you had to come along and top it with that one line: "Maybe we need to pick up our shot for reloading at the trap/skeet range..."

Still laughing. :)

[Moonclip]

I think most microstamping is suppose to involve the shell casings or the laws proposed involve handgun cartridges. Yeah, makes sense don't it to make criminals want to use shotguns more often! I think if I was a criminal it would make sense to throw some randon shell casings found at a range at a crime scene.

[41magsnub]

Maybe they could rig up a plastic streamer the follows behind each piece of shot with the S/N on it?:neener:

Hey.. that brings up a good idea! Maybe that streamer stabilize the shot! I think I just invented a new hyper accurate shotgun round! Yay for Microstamping, it is revolutionizing shotgunning!:neener:

[Ed Ames]

Do you really want to go there?

Serialize wads and sabots. Wads often impact the target at close ranges and they stay near the shooter in any case but they are hard for the shooter to track down and recover. At a crime scene the LEOs just look for spent wads (which they are looking for anyway).

In fact, use RFID tags in the wads. It'll add a few pennies to each wad but that's no big deal. That way LEOs can use RFID scanners that will detect any wads within 25 feet or so. Easy to find them. Or, better yet, have two RFID tags in the wad. One tag is set to "break" when the wad crumples on firing. The other always sends a serial number. That way they can mount RFID sensors on lamp posts and the like and track loaded shells.

You go to the store and buy a box of shells. The computer at the POS reads all the RFID tags and uploads them to a central database. This is tied to your driver's license number and any other RFID tags you may have on you at the time (e.g., passport).

You drive away and, each time you pass an RFID-reader equipped lamp post, the system gets little "pings" saying "Shell 82472392382jfhdks83hnkx93kj37xsm unfired" and "Shell 82472392382jfhdks83hnkx93kj37xsm present." There would be 200 such pings if you had 100 shells.

Stop part way along and fire one of the shells.

If you are near a reader-equipped lamp post when you fire the shell suddenly the system stops receiving the first (unfired) message. All it has is the "present" message. Dispatch. After a few pings like that it goes into the dispatch queue and an LEO is sent to check things out.

All very doable with current technology.

[Jim Keenan]

The now-defunct MD bill would have included at least 12 gauge shotgun shells, but used only the term "base of the bullet". I have no idea where the "base" is on a round ball, and neither did the people who wrote and introduced the bill.

Jim

[ZeSpectre]

All very doable with current technology.
at $4.50 a round :banghead:

[Robert Hairless]

Do you really want to go there?

Me? I don't think that anyone but you and a few other caring people will consult me for my preferences. Since you asked, though, I really don't mind. I'm an easygoing kind of fellow who enjoys providing a smile, some joy, and a nifty little two step wherever I go.

I'm no luddite and I enjoy technology. The more the better is what I think. If it makes people happy to track everything, then I'm all for it. Anything that makes people happy and keeps them occupied is fine with me. :)

Jim Keenan is onto the right kind of thinking. I would find it interesting to listen to debates on whether a shot is a bullet and, if so, whether all 8 or 9 balls of shot in 12 gauge #00 are bullets, and if not all of them which of them is the "bullet" and what the rest of them are, and where the "base" is when we're talking about a sphere. Technology is good. It provides something to do for people who would otherwise be idle.

[foghornl]

Robert, you had a pretty darn good original post...

This whole micro-stamping ahhhhhhhh nonsense really galls my gizzard. Just about as useful as most other stuff that has come up since the 1968 GCA...smart guns that only work for the 'registered owner', the Illinois FOID card, 1-gun-a-month.....

Hmmm how many pellets of that #12 "dust" shot would be in say one of those super-duper say 1-1/2 OZ loads???

[Ed Ames]

I doubt it would be $4.50 a round.

96 bit RFID chips cost about $0.07 today in relatively low volumes. Embedding two RFID tags in a wad would probably add less than $0.12 to the price of a wad once economies of scale are factored in. A shell that today costs $0.20 would go up to $0.32 or so.

Of course then you'd need a tax to pay for the monitoring system... $0.05 per round would do. Project the income over 20 years and that $0.05 allows you to "balance" a $10,000,000,000 start-up cost in your budget.

Plus that infrastructure can be used for other types of monitoring. There are safety uses (people with special medical or mental health issues could have RFID tags), security (passports already have RFID tags, green cards, visas, and the like could too), and simple administrative issues (government vehicles, shipments, and employees can be tagged for efficient tracking) so by arguing against this system you are aiding terrorists, encouraging crazy people to go on rampages, allowing sloth in government, and in general trying to make the world a worse place. Shame on you.

[Robert Hairless]

I knew you'd come around, Ed. Just think of it as the ideal solution to jaywalking. Get those little suckers implanted in everyone, coordinate them with sensors in each traffic light, and hook them to a ray gun to vaporize the jaywalkers on the spot.

Same thing with smokers and sloppy eaters. Poof! No more social problems.

Of course the ultimate use is to have them read by electronic voting maches and devices in television sets. Anyone who votes wrong or who doesn't watch Oprah or Rosie gets identified for instant vaporization as soon as they near a vaporizer.

[Packman]

I'd love to see this work on those spanish "Rio" shells that cheaperthandirt sells...they claim 2300 pellets per rounds. What size shot might that be?

[sm]

Single shot shotgun, used wads off the field, reload popcorn for shot.

Popcorn Loads really do work for getting pests out of a barn, or a garden.
I see no reason why they would not work to rid pests in DC once J.Q.Public gets a demonstration.

Heck maybe we can find a Rotunda like structure and dress a Pigeon up like a Political Critter and I can do a demonstration.


Excuse me, I need to finish putting numbers on rocks with a sharpie marker for use with my homemade slingshot now ...



Government does not cause affluence. Citizens of totalitarian countries have plenty of government and nothing of anything else - P. J. O'Rourke

[Jorg]

The now-defunct MD bill would have included at least 12 gauge shotgun shells, but used only the term "base of the bullet".

I just read over the MD bill (http://mlis.state.md.us/2008rs/bills/hb/hb0517f.pdf) and it looks like it specifically exempted 12 gauge ammunition. It seems to say that only ammo for "regulated firearms" needs to be coded and it mentioned that "regulated firearms" in this case doesn't include the shotguns. See page 5 (D) (2) where it says "“REGULATED FIREARM” DOES NOT INCLUDE A SHOTGUN,
INCLUDING:" then goes on to list scary shotguns.

I've read several of these bills and none of them have said anything about shotgun shells. They almost all say handgun and assault weapon ammo or some variation thereof.

[Robert Hairless]

Ed, I suspect that I'm teasing a bit too much someone whose posts I usually enjoy so I'll pause for a moment and see if I can square things with you.

It's obvious that my original intention was to have some fun with the concept of microstamping, which obviously is a profit oriented scheme that has great appeal to essentially dimwitted people who are so mistrustful of their fellow Americans that they can't believe any of us aren't as homicidal, irresponsible, corrupt, dangerous, and mentally challenged as they.

This particular scheme reminds me of Lozier's practical joke in the 1820s. As lower Manhattan Island went through a building boom soon after the Nineteenth Century began, there came to be a fear that the island was sinking at the Battery end--the narrow tip on which the new buildings were being packed together. The story goes that Lozier, a retired ship's carpenter, proposed to saw off that tip of Manhattan, rotate it 180 degrees, and reattach it so that the heavily built end would be in the middle so the Island would be balanced and could bear the weight. Lozier set a date in 1824 when volunteers would begin cutting Manhattan apart and he broadcast a call for as many public spirited volunteers with saws to gather on that date. The date came, the volunteers assembled, and Lozier took off for Brooklyn so he could hide out and enjoy his well earned laugh.

There's no end to popular delusions and extraordinary madness in this country. Gun control is among those popular delusions and the extraordinary madness it generates has come to be part of our daily life. At least some elements of it are accepted even by many gun owners, especially those who are relatively new and scrupulously conscientious. From time to time I've tried to suggest that there's a mad quality to it all and more than a little delusion in its manifestations, such as in attempts to childproof the entire world rather than raise children to have good sense and the resources to thrive in a dangerous world. And from time to time, as now, I try to have some fun with it all.

What many people forget in all this craziness is that the essential issue today as always is personal freedom of the kind that encourages everyone to be at least a little eccentric. To behave that way we have to trust the people around us and trust ourselves too. When I go to a shooting range I'm surrounded by people with guns. Any of them can murder me but I trust that none of them will. I live prudent but I don't live scared.

I don't think it's possible to stamp out that drive for personal freedom in a people who are committed to it, which was characteristic of this country as I grew up and spent most of my life. But, alas, I also don't think it's possible to instill that drive for freedom in people who don't want or even understand it.

Did you ever try to cage a wild animal? It fights for its very life. Have you ever tried to free an animal that has been raised in a cage? It doesn't want to leave.

Microstamping and all the other crazed manifestations of this madness will happen because people want to be caged. If they don't it won't.

In the meantime I'll have some fun.

[Ed Ames]

Nothing was out of square. Well, that's not true... quite a few things are leaning and the world has more than it's share of bendy lines but those are just details.

Microtomes are amazingly handy devices in the right hands. Give the right person a microtome, a room full of caged animals, and a premise and they can reveal all sorts of obvious but otherwise unverified truths about existence.

One such revelation is that caged animals are, in a very real sense, simpler than their unrestrained brethren. Their brains don't develop as much complexity of structure. The theory, at the moment at least, is that the complexity is a sign of more advanced development and greater intelligence or at least capability.

Capability is of concern to quite a few groups. Zookeepers, for example, want their specimens to be good. Clean fur, strong bones, healthy muscles, and fancy baroque brains with all sorts of complexity. That's aesthetics for you...

On the flip side... if you cage a wild animal that has already developed an interestingly complex brain and put it in a simple cage... an unenriching environment... the complexity fades. It's actually part of the technique for domesticating wild animals. You simplify the life of the beast. It doesn't have to worry about food, predators, social interaction, where to sleep, or anything else... it doesn't have anywhere to go or anything to see. It has a safety net. Its world shrinks to the size of the cage... and the trainer. In that simple world the trainer can easily take control.

That is the essential challenge... balancing two obvious but opposed goods, ease of control vs. the aesthetic beauty of complexity.

Choosing and maintaining that balance is a serious boggle for modern zookeepers. Aesthetic appreciation of complexity is the justification used to request budgets for more complicated ("enriching") cages and various toys for their beasties to play with. That same complexity, however, undermines the zookeeper's ability to control the natural tendencies of the animals. Next thing you know you have dead tigers, dead hecklers, and bad PR for everyone.

Many a zookeeper has spent a sleepless night or three pondering the innate tragedy of it all.

The same concepts apply to humans. Caging reduces us in fundamental and perhaps irreversible ways. It makes us boring. That reduction doesn't instantly go away when we are uncaged. The struggle of a complex life makes our brains more interesting to people who enjoy slicing them up and inspecting them under microscopes but it also makes us unruly. The difference is that we, as more abstract thinkers, can recognize cages most animals don't. We understand cages and if we know about the cage it becomes our complexity, our challenge.

That's a bit of a cautionary warning for the people who would reduce personal freedoms. It's also a problem they have been working on for a very long time. It's a problem they attempt, over and over, to address. The current attempt is a good one. Push for safety nets, provide comfortable blankets, reduce complexity... and provide safe forms of enrichment. Don't tease us with hecklers on the wall... tease us with TV. We are safer, more comfortable, and still entertained. Who can be against these obvious goods?

Having fun is a problem though... fun is enriching. Fun encourages complexity. Complexity equals instability. Some instability can be afforded but the amount of enrichment must be balanced and controlled. When you start having your own fun you are, in essence, attacking the foundation of our society, our stability. It's no different than counterfeiting... printing your own money... but worse because it doesn't just warp our economy. You are distorting your brain in unpredictable ways and, by having your fun in public, causing similar distortions in others.

I know that you understand why, in the end, this cannot be allowed.

[Robert Hairless]

Nice analogy, Ed. Food for thought there. Which is not to say that animals are food, because who wants to stimulate PETA. It's probably not a good idea to stimulate the thought police either, so don't take that expression to mean that we actually eat thoughts either. Perhaps it's best to forget I said anything at all.

We need to get a good thought safe in case there are any kids around who might fool around with thinking when there's no adult present to supervise them.

The current U.S. News and World Report has an interview with someone who reports her determination that Americans are getting steadily dumber, which may not be news.

[Ed Ames]

I'm not sure we're on the same page with this idea of thought safes... safes are where you put items you do not want distributed (either to protect ownership-based value or because the items are dangerous) but which are necessary (or desirable) enough to keep, well, safe. Firearms are kept in a safe because they are dangerous but considered necessary or desirable. Infectious biological waste is also dangerous but is not typically kept in safes because it is not considered necessary (or desirable) enough to keep. Likewise, while it's manifestly evident that thoughts are dangerous and so, for the protection of all, should not be distributed, it isn't clear that they are necessary (or desirable) in a truly civilized society.

The U.S. News and World Report story is not news, it's corroboration.