The Ammunition Encoding Issue

U

Uncle Ben

New member
From Savetheguns.com
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There are many states where there are current bills in the legislatures to mandate encoding on the base of bullets and cartridge cases. Here is a list of these states:

Alabama
Arizona
California
Connecticut
Hawaii
Illinois
Indiana
Kentucky
Maryland
Mississippi
Missouri
New Jersey
New York
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
Tennessee
Washington
Please see the following link. This is a full interview on NRANews.com between Cam Edwards and Russ Ford of Ammunition Coding Systems. Cam makes a fool of this guy, who clearly has not done his homework. I cannot believe this guy is pushing this legislation without proper testing. It seems as if they wish to profit from another bite out of the Bill of Rights.

http://blip.tv/file/744188

The interview is also available in five parts on YouTube here:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=gppekgor-jE

Here are the Web sites of the group pushing ammunition encoding:
http://www.ammunitionaccountability.org/
http://www.ammocoding.com/

We are in the legislative process in eighteen (18) different states, yet there have been no high capacity testing for this technology. There are about twenty-two million ammunition cartridges made in the U.S. alone each and every day, yet this laser etching has only been done by hand on ammunition so far.

Ammunition makers unequivocally state that they would have to retool, reinvent and reorganize the entire ammunition manufacturing process to comply with these proposed laws. If these laws are passed, it would essentially be a defacto ban upon ammunition in the states above in which these laws are passed and signed.

Ammunition manufacturers would not be able to supply the demand for ammunition, therefore due to the basic principles of supply and demand, ammo prices would skyrocket and our gun hobbies would be put on ice for the foreseeable future.

The Ammunition Accountability Web site above has a subtitle that says:

"Saving lives one bullet at a time." That claim is flatly preposterous.

They do not explain how they propose to keep violent criminal thugs from killing each other because of a simple alpha-numeric string of characters on a bullet, when the threat of life in prison or the death penalty is not enough of a deterrent.

I encourage you to directly contact them for more information after listening to the interview linked above. If your state is listed above, please go to the following Web page to see the legislation for yourself and contact your own legislators:

http://www.ammunitionaccountability.org/Legislation.htm

In some of these bills, you can be fined and/or jailed for possessing unencoded ammunition after a certain date. At this time I would request that you do a few specific things:

<<Action Plan>>

Watch the video interview linked above if possible. (dial-up customers might not get good performance.)
Contact them at www.ammunitionaccountability.org and www.ammocoding.com and give them heck after you listen to the interview and visit their Web sites.
Ask them how a laser etched alpha-numeric number will affect the decision making process of a violent criminal thug and how murders will be prevented when these thugs steal their guns and ammunition in the first place.
Ask them why we're in the legislative process, mandating ammunition makers to do this, when there has been no high capacity or large scale production testing that could produce 22 million error-free cartridges per day.
Ask them how handloaders will be fined, regulated or even imprisoned for making innocent ammunition reloading mistakes. This new wave of legislation, which will probably go federal after we get a new President in January 2009, is the most dangerous anti-Second Amendment legislation I've seen in quite a while.

It will double, triple, quintuple or even more, the cost of ammunition if this legislation becomes law. Ammo makers could not keep up production of twenty-two million rounds per day. There's no doubt that ammunition supplies will very quickly dry up, making firearms virtually useless.

With only 4% to 5% of gun owners being members of the National Rifle Association, I would not be surprised if this ill-conceived proposed legislation becomes law very soon in your home state. How would you feel if your local gun shop, Wal-mart or sporting goods store had no ammo to sell you? Please take action and pass this around.
 
They do not explain how they propose to keep violent criminal thugs from killing each other because of a simple alpha-numeric string of characters on a bullet, when the threat of life in prison or the death penalty is not enough of a deterrent.
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It won't keep them from shooting each other, but in theory it would make it easier to track down the perpetrator and thus act as a deterrent (greater chance of conviction). It increases their chance of winding up with life in prison or a death sentence...which has either a deterrent effect or removes them from the street (preventing future crimes).

Acknowledging flawed logic is not the same as accepting it, so there's no need to deny or ignore this argument.

Flawed, of course, because just as serial numbers on guns doesn't work in this regard serial numbers on bullets (or cartridges) won't, either. You'll either see a black market for non-marked ammunition (there will still be plenty around, both older rounds and those manufactured abroad), or a rise in theft of ammunition.

I mean, come on. I believe that statistically most crimes are committed with stolen guns, right? So why do we think they won't simply steal ammunition as well to avoid being traced in this manner? It's not rocket surgery. Plus, ammunition is a limiting factor in the training (both marksmanship and general safety) of law-abiding gunowners, not for criminals. If a criminal isn't a psychopath just looking to kill people, he could easily commit a string of robberies without firing a shot. I'd bet there are more than a few thugs running around with the same ammunition that was in the gun when it was stolen.

Deja vu moment there...I'm pretty sure I've typed the bulk of that paragraph before. I guess I'm always ready to help ensure the choir is on key. ;)
 
All this is being brought on by a single company with a pending patent. That means if these bills are passed, only this company can stamp the bullets, or sell a license to another company, thus creating a 20yr monopoly on the technology. This is being done strictly for profit, but very few politicians see that.
 
I don't see it as being proposed for profit by the company that has supposedly developed the technology, I see it more as a concentrated effort by the anti gunners to control ammo since they haven't had the success they want on outright gun control.

Won't have much sport shooting if you can control ammo availability.
 
Another intersting thing ...

There are something like 2 billion bullets a year sold to civilians (someone else may have the exact numbers).

There are about a 100 million gun owners in America, so about 100 million people who will buy bullets.

Bullets don't wear out, and there is no way to know when they have been used.

So ... the government would have to track 2 billion bullets per year sold to 100 million or so different individuals. And that's per year, and the information never gets stale, so the database just grows every year and never shrinks.

In 20 years they will be tracking about 40 billion bullets purchased by about 300 million different buyers (gun owners come and go, new gun owners, special purchases, etc.)

And it just keeps getting worse after that.

And will bullets and cases be registered separately? If so, double the numbers up there.

When you're talking about tracking billions, 100's of billions in a matter of decades, of objects ... the tracking becomes useless. And within years the smallest number printed on a bullet will be:

100,000,000,000

Yeah ... not a practical solution for anything ... just another attempt at making gun ownership more difficult, and therefore keeping a few more people out of the market. Every person they chase away from the shooting sports is a huge, huge victory.
 
So ... the government would have to track 2 billion bullets per year sold to 100 million or so different individuals. And that's per year, and the information never gets stale, so the database just grows every year and never shrinks.
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More likely I'd assume they'd be tracked in (small) lots. Still, the number would get pretty big pretty quickly.

When you're talking about tracking billions, 100's of billions in a matter of decades, of objects ... the tracking becomes useless. And within years the smallest number printed on a bullet will be:

100,000,000,000
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Which, in base 36 (26 letters plus 10 numbers), would only be about 7 or 8 digits.
 
Which, in base 36 (26 letters plus 10 numbers), would only be about 7 or 8 digits.
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Well ... you convinced me ... now I'm a supporter of this reasonable gun law. :rolleyes:

You're right about that, of course. And in terms of tracking chances are they'll have a manufacturer code built in, maybe a caliber code, etc.

But with bullets sold in lots of 20 - 50 (box size) that's still a honkin' big database.

And everything I've seen implies (haven't seen the details) that the bullet will have a unique serial number, not a "lot" serial number.

Hopefully this will never get past the idea stage, but no matter how efficiently they set up the database/serializing system it's still an anti-gun bill, not a safety law.

If it's a criminal shooting with a stolen gun and stolen ammo, there's no advantage.

If it is me going nuts and killing someone with my serialized, registered ammo ... it will almost certainly be someone I know, so once again there will be little value as I'll already be a suspect. And it should be pretty easy to catch me, since obviously I won't be committing a pre-meditated murder with ammunition that I know is serialized and registered to my name.
 
Hopefully this will never get past the idea stage, but no matter how efficiently they set up the database/serializing system it's still an anti-gun bill, not a safety law.

If it's a criminal shooting with a stolen gun and stolen ammo, there's no advantage.

If it is me going nuts and killing someone ... it will almost certainly be someone I know, so once again there will be little value as I'll already be a suspect.
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Exactly. Just to be clear (if I wasn't before) I think this is a horrible idea. I just figure it's worthwhile to play devil's advocate and shoot down any weak/fallacious arguments so we can stick to the good ones.

It really comes down to the stolen ammo issue. That and the fact that a criminal doesn't need to go through many rounds (meaning they don't even have to steal much ammo).

That's before you get into the fact that this would make every box of ammunition at Wal-Mart a serial-numbered item they'd likely have to account for by law.
 
It won't keep them from shooting each other, but in theory it would make it easier to track down the perpetrator and thus act as a deterrent (greater chance of conviction).
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Unless they use a revolver, and unless the perpetrator stole, rather than bought, his ammunition, and unless the buyer of the ammunition used a fake ID, etc, etc.

Ridiculous feel-good idiocy, is what this amounts to. Full-employment for database programmers and disk-drive manufacturers.

And it's usually not base 36 - the letters I and O, and sometimes Q, are typically dropped to avoid confusion with 1 and 0. But still, base 33 is essentially just as well-suited for large numbers.
 
I definitely wasn't accusing you of being pro-Brady.

That's before you get into the fact that this would make every box of ammunition at Wal-Mart a serial-numbered item they'd likely have to account for by law
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And if this is done, there has to be some serious accountability, since the laws I've seen have a rather hefty fine for breaking the rules.

Like all ammunition boxes will have to be carefully sealed in some manner to keep a store worker (like a late night stocker at Walmart) from moving bullets between boxes so his buddy can buy unregistered bullets the next day. This might not be the most likely scenario, but there are many scenarios that would work equally as well.

So criminals will have no problem getting unregistered ammunition (as others have pointed out) and this will only affect those of us who buy ammo legally (come to think of it, that's pretty much how all gun control works).
 
Unless they use a revolver, and unless the perpetrator stole, rather than bought, his ammunition, and unless the buyer of the ammunition used a fake ID, etc, etc.
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Exactly. I think some people are confused...that wasn't an argument I was making personally so that others can counter it. I was pointing out their argument because the OP was acting as though they didn't have one (and were claiming a string of numbers would magically stop people from shooting each other). This isn't the case. They have a very real, concise, and flawed argument as to how it would reduce crime. Identifying that argument (and the flaw) is an important step in arguing against these laws.

Acting as though it (the argument) doesn't exist is counterproductive, and makes you look ignorant.

And it's usually not base 36 - the letters I and O, and sometimes Q, are typically dropped to avoid confusion with 1 and 0. But still, base 33 is essentially just as well-suited for large numbers.
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True. I was simplifying. Though you could also add lowercase letters (excluding a few for the same reason) and bump that up to like base 45 or 50 pretty easily.

So criminals will have no problem getting unregistered ammunition (as others have pointed out) and this will only affect those of us who buy ammo legally (come to think of it, that's pretty much how all gun control works).
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Well, most gun control that makes guns (or in this case ammo) harder to get for us means that there will be less guns/ammo in homes in general. Thus harder to steal, thus marginally more expensive and harder to come by on the street. It's like "trickle-down" gun control! Yay!
 
Will this make casting your own lead bullets illegal?

And as far as "This will save lives because we'll recover the bullets from the crime scene and read the barcodes on them" I'm not certain that'll work. Sure, it works in the lab, but out in the really real world bullets do the darnedest things. And some of the darnedest things involve getting mangled to heck and gone every time they hit a solid object, such as a support column, brick wall, or cranium. They're kind of designed to do that. Who wants a JHP that retains its shape upon impact?
 
Will this make casting your own lead bullets illegal?
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freakshow10mm seems to think so. Personally, I'm holding out hope that they'll issue serialization licenses to individuals, and allow for the purchase of the microstamping hardware to licensed individuals. That way, for no more than $50,000 or so you should be able to cast and reload your own rounds. So it's not like you won't have the right to do it anymore.


Yes, in case anybody was wondering, that was sarcasm.
 
So we all know the hundreds of reasons this won't work. The real question is, how do you make politicians accountable for silly laws that infringe on constutional rights and amount to no reduction in crime. That's what ticks me off the most. They don't have to prove it will work, and they don't have to admit it when it doesn't work and put an end to it. The laws just sit there on the books and we get to pay 10x the ammo cost while the crooks get around it.
What about lawsuits by ammo manufactures to drag these **ckwits into court and expose this plan as an attack on gun ownership by exposing how absurd the whole idea is? Where does it stop? Soon car makers will be required to put the serial numbers on bumpers arranged in little points so owners can be identified by the bloody dot matrix numbers on hit and run victims. Then baseball bats and frying pans and anything you could possibly hit someone with.
 
Withdrawn in Kentucky

HB 715 (endcoded ammunition) was introduced in the Kentucky Senate on March 3rd and was withdrawn two days later on March 5th.

Yet another reason why Kentucky is a gun friendly state and the worst state according to the Brady Campaign!
 
I am amazed to see some of those southern states on the list. I can imagine it for the E-W coastal states. Next any knife with a blade over 3 inches will be serialised too? Guy robbed a fast food place around here with a knife recently. Guess we will have to bury all our non numbered ammo. Well it will keep you a decent income on the black market for awhile!
 
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