Newsom signs bill that compels gunmakers to adopt bullet-tracing technology
SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation Tuesday that aims to compel gun manufacturers to adopt a bullet-tracing technology they have resisted for more than a decade.
AB2847 by Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, scales back a standard the state previously adopted for the technology known as microstamping — requiring that semiautomatic pistols sold in the state leave a single unique imprint on bullets that are fired, rather than two, as currently required.
The marking, which reveals a gun’s make, model and serial number, is meant to help law enforcement investigations by enabling police to trace bullets to their source and connect crimes where the same weapon was used.
“The gun industry has gone to great lengths to avoid implementing microstamping and other life saving tools in California,” Chiu said in a statement. “We finally have a mechanism to hold the industry accountable and reduce gun fatalities.”
Gunmakers argue that microstamping is unreliable because the etching on a firing pin does not provide a legible imprint on every bullet casing and can easily be removed. They also say its investigative usefulness can be undermined by dropping bullet casings from another weapon at a crime scene to confuse officers.
California originally passed its microstamping requirement in 2007, calling for gun manufacturers to incorporate the technology within three years. It has never been implemented.
The law was delayed for years while the state waited for a patent on the technology to expire. Then gun industry groups sued to overturn the standard they argued could never be met.
Even though the California Supreme Court ultimately upheld the law two years ago, manufacturers have simply stopped introducing new models to the California market and continue to sell pistols without microstamping technology that remain on a state list of certified handguns.
But during their legal challenge, gunmakers acknowledged microstamping was possible, though they said it could not be done in two separate places. In response, Chiu introduced his measure lowering California’s requirement from two imprints to one.
The law also gives the state a bigger stick to wield against gun manufacturers: For each new pistol model introduced in California with the microstamping technology, the attorney general must remove three old models from the certified handguns list. So if any company begins to sell a pistol with the microstamping feature, that could force other reluctant gunmakers to comply with the requirement to maintain their market share in the state.
Mark Oliva, a spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearms industry trade group that previously sued over California’s microstamping law, said the organization had not yet decided whether it would challenge the new standard. But he called it “unworkable technology that will not deliver the results.”
“It’s just speeding up the slow-going handgun ban that California has enacted and choking off the ability for Californians to exercise their Second Amendment rights,” Oliva said.
Alexei Koseff is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: alexei.koseff@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @akoseff
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