I hate seatbelts, should I boycott Chevrolet because the DOT required them to put seatbelts in cars?
We're talking about 1 state, not the federal government (and we're trying to prevent the entire nation from going the way of CA).
To complete your seatbelt analog; they forced manufacturers to put the seatbelts in the cars LONG before they started forcing us to wear them.
Maybe there is a way not even thought of yet where a maker can meet this portion of the law easier than retooling their entire manufacturing plant and keeping this for CA destined handguns only. Car makers do it with emissions stuff.
Emissions stuff bolts on to the motor after assembly. Your analogy would be fine if you were talking about things like magazines and muzzle brakes.
The big logistical problem with microstamping guns is that you have to keep the frame, firing pin and extractor together throughout the manufacturing proccess ... as it is now, the frames are assembled in one stage and the firing pins and extractors are in big bins and they grab them as they assemble the slide without worrying about firing pin #xxxx getting mixed up with extractor #yyyy for frame #zzzz.
The parts themselves aren't all that expensive (and honestly its the little hand-built gun manufacturers that could more easily comply with this loony law). Its the massive slowdown and significant increase in labor and part tracking that are prohibitively expensive. I would honestly expect semi auto handguns to double in price if we all had to buy microstamping guns.
Of course this doesn't address the massive problem of replacement parts. You're going to have to custom order your firing pins and extractors. No more breaking a part, running to the gun shop, buying a replacement, popping it in and getting back to the range that afternoon ... now you have a part break you'll have to send the gun back to the factory where they will replace the part with a properly numbered one. So a $5 firing pin replacement just went up to $50 to ship the gun and another $100 for parts and labor.
And all this for a system that will probably not solve one single crime that wouldn't otherwise be solved.