New Haven Independent

Posted by: John | March 3, 2008 7:24 PM

The "fingerprinting" as proposed is a pretty pointless idea. It can be easily defeated in only a few minutes with inexpensive parts replacement and a little work with a file or hone. In spite of what was said by the "experts" on the news, who happen to have a vested interest in this technology. Anyone, with even a minimal knowledge of guns, could perform the necessary work in under one hour per gun.

It would, at best, only apply to semi-auto weapons that eject their empty cartridges and not to weapons that do not. This would do nothing to identify existing guns that are already in the hands of criminals that do not have the "fingerprinting" scheme.

The people proposing this willingly admit that this is only for semi-automatics that eject the empty cartridges. Their argument when asked what would happen if the criminals started to picking up their empty cartridges was to simply state, "Criminals do not pick up their spent cartridges."

It is unreasonable to think that they will not change their habits once the new scheme is put into effect and the fear of being caught increases. It is unreasonable to think that they will not change to revolvers that do not eject the spent cartridges. It is not unreasonable to think that this will create a more lucrative for stolen older weapons that were manufactured prior to the inception of the fingerprinting.

All in all, I think however well intentioned this legislation and the legislators are that have proposed this, it will, in the end, prove to be a waste of time and energy.

IMHO