ammunitionaccountability.org

[sacp81170a]

Of course this would also mean that foreign made mil-surp ammo would be illegal, so all you guys who have Mosins, Yugos, Mausers and whatnot have a stake in this one too. :banghead:

(Maybe the hot market in combloc surplus weapons is partly what they're after.)

 

[14427H]

Caseless ammo?

...I forgot about that.... the micro stampers in CA and this ammunition tagging may have just restarted an industry.

"Yes officer, this pistol does micro stamp my tagged case right before it explodes". Use it on a tracer round and you would have it all covered lol.

 

[silverlance]

I'm really getting tired of having to stockpile stuff "before the ban". Tired, tired, tired, TIRED of it.

Days like this make me think of moving - to another country. Maybe Finland. Anyone been to Finland?

 

[rdhood]

Ouch, good luck imprinting those number of zeros on a small bullet. Not too mention it is just plain stupid because the rifling in a barrel deforms the bullet.

For the second time in this thread, I will point out that a serial number can also consist of upper and lower case letters, as well as various other marks. It is not necessary to imprint a huge number, only something that can be expanded to a unique identifier

For example, I might use a first letter "A" for the year 2008, "B" for 2009, etc.
Second letter "A" for Jan, "B" for Feb, etc.

Another example. Suppose I had the following sequence

001010011001010011

I could represent this number as "123123", where 1=001, 2=010, 3=011
I could represent this NEW number with "AA" where "A"="123"
Finally, I could represent this NEW number with "&", where "&" = "AA"

Thus, "&" could be decoded to "001010011001010011"


Many of you are thinking in base 10. There are, in fact, an infinite number of number bases, and many ways to represent groups of symbols as a single symbol... this is what many compression algorithms do. So PLEASE do not say "you cant put that many numbers on a bullet" because they don't need to in order to represent huge numbers. They CAN serialize bullets if they want to.

 

[Thernlund]

Thus, "&" could be decoded to "001010011001010011"

No it couldn't. If that were true, you could compress the library of congress down to a single character. There is a limit.

However...

Base 36 (26 letters and 10 numbers) can have 2.1 billion combinations in just 6 characters. Precede that code with something like 0208 (for a Feb '08 date of manufacture) and you have all the codes you need in 10 digits. That could easily be put on a .22LR bullet. Two rows of 5. Or, to take the guesswork out of decoding, one row of 4 (the date code), then two rows of three.

Then assign ammo makers a block based on projected production. And of course tax them based on the size of the block they request.

This is pretty much how MAC addressing works, minus a "formal" gov't-mandated tax of course. (For those who don't know, a MAC address is a "sort of-unique" code given to all network adapters). I guess you could say that public IP addressing sorta works like this too, although it isn't tired to a particular machine or piece of hardware necessarily.


-T.

 

[Larry E]

Found out from a friend in WA State that serial numbering of bullets/cases/ammunition was tabled there due to "lack of interest" in the legislature.

 

[bigdee]

This sounds like a small startup company with a junk tech. that they are trying to find a market for. And guess who gets to pay for their wonderfull product,us the tax payer. Whoever is trying to push this junk on the public should be tared and feathered or even better lynched.I will give $50 to buy the rope,lol.

 

[bigdee]

What if you cast your own bullets??????? I see a new midway product. LOL. The new personal lazer micro etcher, only $999.99

 

[tasco 74]

ANDYC i was a member of the N R A for many years and just kept watching my gun rights disappear....

 

[JWarren]

Kinda suprised to see MS on that list. Well, maybe not. We have one or two wackos that try to push crap like this all the time. They get ignored and they know it will never get any legs. But they keep trying.


-- John

 

[gyp_c2]

hmmm...

...back in one of the dark ages, I seem to remember being forced to sign for pistol caliber ammo...didn't last long, but it sure pissed me off...

...the storm is comin'...

 

[rdhood]

No it couldn't. If that were true, you could compress the library of congress down to a single character. There is a limit.

Yes it could, and yes, the library of congress COULD be compressed to a single character... with enough "first/second/1000th level rules" to make it so.

In fact,for this example, you could do it EXACTLY like I did it, but you would have to know the rules for decoding at each level. Go ahead and create any base 10 , 1000 digit number and I'll create a set of compression rules that will reduce it to a few characters.

Now, it might take the FBI a code book and a computer to derive the bullet serial number, but the steps are trivial.

My point wasn't to show that any series of characters can be reduced to ONE character given enough rules. It was to dispell the myth that a bullet would have to hold a huge number of digits to be serialized.

 

[Thernlund]

Yes it could, and yes, the library of congress COULD be compressed to a single character... with enough "first/second/1000th level rules" to make it so.

With all due respect, you don't know what you're talking about. You could not compress an entire library (or anything really) down to a single character and then decode it correctly. If you were to compress a 1000 digit number down to "&" (easy to do), how you you propose to decompress that ampersand? The problem starts immediately. It could mean "AA", or "AB", "AC", "A1", "A2", "A3", ect. No set of rules in the world are going to allow a single character to mean more than one thing. And if a single character can only mean one thing, the entire decompression scheme will always decompress to the same thing regardless of what was compressed.


-T.

EDIT: Read up on data compression. http://www.vectorsite.net/ttdcmp_1.html

 

[keeleon]

No set of rules in the world are going to allow a single character to mean more than one thing.

But it doesn't mean more than one thing. It only means ONE thing: The library of congress. The reason you would never do this is because the algorythms to translate it back would be X times the size of the original data, where x is the number of layers. It would take an entire city's worth of space to store the texts of TLOC in one symbol and translate it correctly. It's possible, it's just not feasible. The real logistical problems of doing that would be first finding a 2 or 3 character combination to represent every word ever written. Once you had that though, the rest would be a lot simpler.

 

[Thernlund]

Heh. I knew someone was going to go the "Chinese character" route. Sure. You could have a character/symbol that means the LOC. Another that means all of human history. Another that was all the works of Shakespeare.

But that's not compression. That's representation.

For compression you must reduce the number of characters in a group to a smaller group of characters from the same set. In this case, the "set" is ASCII.

You cannot reduce 1000 ASCII characters is a single ASCII character and still be able to decompress the data to its original form. At most you could get it down to maybe 50 characters, and that's a generous estimate.


-T.

 

[keeleon]

No, I don't mean a chinese character. I mean that the symbol & in this form does not represent "multiple things", once it is expanded properly, it means the entirety of the LOC.

Say it consists of 5 books each book has been condensed down to

ABC-ABJ-ABE-ABF-ABI-ABH

The next level would have instructions to condense everything that is represented:

ABC = A
ABD = B
ABE = C
ABF = D
ABG = E
ABH = F
ABI = G
ABJ = H

So now you have A-I-C-D-G-F

The next level can compress that down so that

A-I = A
A-C = B
E-F = C
G-H = D
G-F = E
C-D = F

Now you have A-F-E

So all the next level has to do is say that

A-D-F = A
B-I-E = B
A-F-E = C
B-C-G = D

To conclude that

ABC-ABJ-ABE-ABF-ABI-ABH = A

I'm not going to disagree that it's not ridiculously complicated, but it really is just basic algebra. And as I stated, while it would be possible, it is not feasible. It would probably take a building the size of the LOC just to store the instructions to translate the Bible back from one character.

 

[Thernlund]

Your scheme is flawed from the start.

Say it consists of 5 books each book has been condensed down to

ABC-ABJ-ABE-ABF-ABI-ABH

You won't be able to condense 5 books down to that.

Do this... take a string of 1000 random keyboard characters. Try compressing that down to a single character. Then decompress it back to the original string. It is not possible under any circumstances. At all. EVER.


-T.

EDIT: For the record, I do see what you mean. Your scheme is based on a library of character strings. LZW compression works like this. But it becomes counter productive after about a 10:1 ratio. That is, the dictionary becomes larger and larger. At one character, you're back to a 1:1 ratio. Zero net effect. You've pretty much encrypted the data with no compression.

 

[Henry Bowman]

The company that is promoting this legislation http://www.ammocoding.com owns a patent on the "technology" they are also promoting http://www.google.com/patents?id=hxB9AAAAEBAJ&dq=7143697. The company appears to be a spin-off of Ravensforge, who owns patents on the microstamping technology that was recently legally adopted by California. See record of patent assignment here: http://assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=pat&pat=7143697

From their website faqs:

What are the costs to manufacturers?
There are several well known manufacturers currently producing a significant portion of the current commercially available ammunition in the United States. Each ammunition producer would be required to purchase at least one, if not more, laser engraving machines and ammunition material handlers to produce ACS coded ammunition. There are several manufacturers who can design and build this equipment. Reliable estimates for a complete set of engraving/material handling equipment range from $300,000 to $500,000 each. A licensing fee for each bullet sold would also be required. However, since approximately 10 billion bullets are sold in the United States alone each year, equipment costs, once amortized over the number of bullets produced and sold are not significant.

What is the impact on retailers and consumers?
Ammunition retailers will also have some minor administrative costs. These costs, like other costs associated with doing business will most likely be passed onto the retailer purchaser. We estimate that the entire ACS process can be implemented without dramatically increasing the purchase price to the end user while maintaining an effective crime fighting system paid for almost exclusively by user fees.

How many unique codes are available?
There are 91 unique characters on a standard computer keyboard. The ACS technology uses these characters in five, six, or seven columns. Typically, ammunition comes in boxes of either 50 or 20, and all bullets in a box will be coded alike. There are 12 common handgun and assault weapon calibers. This means that ACS can accommodate over 21 quadrillion unique bullet codes. Since it is estimated that there are approximately 10 billion bullets sold annually in the United States, and 20-30 billion bullets sold worldwide annually, the ACS has the capacity to keep pace with the current rate of sales for decades to come.

Personal opinion: What a disgusting bunch!

 

[rdhood]

Heh. I knew someone was going to go the "Chinese character" route. Sure. You could have a character/symbol that means the LOC. Another that means all of human history. Another that was all the works of Shakespeare.

But that's not compression. That's representation.

Fair enough. My point wasn't to teach people all there is to know about ways of reducing a large set of numbers into something that could be printed on a bullet. My point was only to show that one CAN serialize bullets. I throw out a simple example so that people could see for themselves that it can be done. And you ... what?... criticize me for putting it in terms that an ordinary person can understand?

Nobody, except you, cares about the difference between compression and representation. In my original example holds for what it is. The thing is, you took a formal definition of "compression" and applied it to what I wrote, and declared as invalid. Had we been in a computer science or mathematics classroom, you would be right. But we aren't. We are in a gun forum, and I define compression to mean "make smaller", and I showed what I mean by "make smaller". Now, this could mean an iterative process whereby I apply the same rules over and over again to reduce the size of a set of characters, or this could mean I take one character to represent many. So, don't assume that everyone is operating on your definition of "compression" , and that everyone else doesn't know what they are talking about. If you want to define compression and representation in this context, do so BEFORE you claim that someone doesn't know what they are talking about. You might find that you are operating on two different definitions.

 

[Thernlund]

Alright. So stamp each bullet with a unique symbol. Like a bullet fingerprint. There ya go.

Hey man, you said you could compress the LOC to one character. I said you couldn't and moved on to why that likely wouldn't matter. And then... and then. Bleh.

But he said, she said, eh? Screw it. It was a debate. Lighten up.


-T.

 

[keeleon]

But it becomes counter productive after about a 10:1 ratio. That is, the dictionary becomes larger and larger. At one character, you're back to a 1:1 ratio. Zero net effect. You've pretty much encrypted the data with no compression.

Which is exactly why you wouldn't do it for the LOC. But if "the contents of the LOC" were a changing serial number, then it is a lot easier to print "$" on a box of bullets, then it is to print the whole of the library of congress. I can look up a definition for "compression" if you would like. As I stated before, the instructions to "uncompress" it, would be 1000 times larger then the original data if you used 1000 steps to compress it.

Do this... take a string of 1000 random keyboard characters. Try compressing that down to a single character. Then decompress it back to the original string. It is not possible under any circumstances. At all. EVER.

Feasible is the word you are looking for since we are playing semantics, not "possible". It is very possible to do that, it is just a waste of time unless you had a need for that type of "compression" as in putting a 1000 digit code onto something the size of a .22.

Oh for the record:

Step 1:
It = A
is = B
not = C
possible = D
under = E
any =F
circumstances = G

Step 2:
AB = A
CD = B
EF = C
G = G

Step 3:
AB = 1
DC = 2
G = 3

Step 4:

123 =

Feel free to "uncompress" that using the proper steps.

 

[Thernlund]

...putting a 1000 digit code onto something the size of a .22.

Interesting you mention that. I'd bet that with today's technology you could do it. Without much cost even. The number doesn't have to be readable with the naked eye. Under an electron microscope you could probably put a whole bunch of stuff on it. You could put the whole LOC in there.

In fact, I wonder if you could encode the bullet at the molecular level somehow. I wonder what the cost associated with that would be. Hmmm.


-T.

EDIT: HA! You compressed 36 characters down to 80. heeheehee.

 

[keeleon]

Ya, there probably is a much better less "archaic" way to do this then any of us even know about. I still lam really curious how the ballistics would work there. Don't most bullets deform or even shatter when fired? and OMG, I just thought, what about Glassers, rounds specifically meant to disintegrate when shooting people? And what happens if your microstamping gun stamps it right over the serial number? Do you go to jail because your bullet fed upside down and you were tampering with evidence.

Man this is such a stupid topic. I can't believe that we actually have lawmakers that get PAID to think up this bullcrap.

Oh and I mistyped:

then it is a lot easier to print "$" on a box of bullets

But it's a lot more ironic that way.

 

[Thernlund]

I can't believe that we actually have lawmakers that get PAID to think up this bullcrap.

Heh heh. We're doing it for free.


-T.

 

[rdhood]

Don't most bullets deform or even shatter when fired?

And THAT is the real crux of the issue. This is just a means to make ammunition harder to get and more expensive. Even though technologically feasible, it is not practically useful (but that never really mattered).