Why Does the Gun Industry Oppose Microstamping?

Table of Contents

Introduction

If police recover a firearm from a crime scene, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) may be able to trace the gun to identify its owner. With the gun’s serial number in hand, the ATF starts at the top of the firearm supply chain — by checking the gun manufacturer’s records — to trace the gun down to the dealer who last sold it.¹ Firearm examiners can also inspect the unique microscopic markings that guns imprint on bullets and spent cartridge cases when they are fired to determine if they were made by a recovered crime gun.²

If no firearm is recovered, investigators may be able to scan the spent casings found at a crime scene and see if they match those recovered from previous investigations and entered into the ATF’s National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN) to determine if one crime gun was used in multiple shootings.³ In other words, NIBIN can only help investigators if the gun was used in a prior incident and its spent casings were scanned into the database after that incident.

But there is another solution that can provide stronger investigative leads much more quickly. Microstamping is an innovative technology that can help link crime guns to perpetrators and fast-track police investigations — at a time when over 18,000 people die by gun homicide in an average year, and nearly half of all homicides go unsolved.⁴ Yet the gun industry has fought against any efforts to implement microstamping — effectively keeping a critical crime-solving tool out of the hands of law enforcement — for decades.

Pulling the trigger on a firearm causes the gun’s firing pin to strike a loaded cartridge, as shown in the animation below. This ignites the gunpowder inside the cartridge, which combusts to propel the bullet through the barrel of the gun. In a semi-automatic firearm, the gun will then eject the spent cartridge casing before loading another cartridge into the chamber.

Microstamping involves engraving a gun’s firing pin with a unique identifying code — made up of numbers, letters, and even geometric shapes — specific to that firearm. Each time the gun fires, the microstamped firing pin imprints this microscopic code onto the back of a cartridge case. Thus, if police recover spent casings at a crime scene, they can examine the codes found on them to determine the owner of the firearm used to commit the crime — even if the gun itself is never recovered.

An animation showing the firing cycle of a semi-automatic pistol. — This animation shows how a semi-automatic pistol loads and fires ammunition. A microstamped firing pin would imprint a unique ID code on the back of each casing that is ejected from the gun.

In other words, microstamping allows police to directly match spent casings with the gun that fired them — much like using a license plate to identify a vehicle’s owner. Microstamping is even more invaluable given that spent shell casings are “much more likely to be found at the scene of a violent crime than the gun itself.”⁵

Finally, in addition to aiding law enforcement investigations, microstamping provides a level of accountability that could help prevent crime in the first place. For example, people might think twice about using firearms with microstamped firing pins in the commission of a crime because of how quickly police could trace the spent casings back to them. Similarly, gun traffickers and straw purchasers would presumably be less likely to sell microstamped firearms to those prohibited from owning firearms for fear of being implicated in a later crime.

A microstamped AR-15 firing pin (left) and the unique code it imprinted onto a 5.56mm NATO casing (right). (TACLABS Photos)

Two mechanical engineers — Todd Lizotte and Orest Ohar — developed microstamping in the 1990s while working to laser-engrave logos and designs onto firing pins so gun manufacturers could brand spent casings. But they realized that this laser engraving could instead help police solve gun crimes and patented the technology as “Intentional Firearm Microstamping,” or IFM.⁶

They also authored peer-reviewed research demonstrating the effectiveness of microstamping, including studies showing that Colt and Smith & Wesson pistols with microstamped firing pins imprinted legible codes on spent casings 97 percent of the time, even after firing 1,500 and 2,500 rounds of ammunition, respectively.⁷

In another peer-reviewed study from 2012 funded by the Department of Justice, Lizotte, Ohar, and other researchers fired 3,000 rounds of ammunition from 10 different manufacturers through three separate microstamped pistols and found that two of the pistols produced legible codes on over 90 percent of their spent cases, while a “lower priced” Hi-Point pistol’s cases were legible 68 to 74 percent of the time, which could still provide valuable investigative leads — especially if police pieced the code together from multiple spent cases. The study concluded that microstamping has “the potential to place valuable information into the hands of the officer or detective at the scene of a crime in a timely fashion” and “could enable tracking of fired cartridges in an efficient and timely manner.”⁸

Another study involving “several machine guns, a submachine gun, and a Glock pistol” demonstrated that the “various characters” on their microstamped firing pins “were easily readable in all types of primers tested and after hundreds of shots.”⁹ At least seven police departments in California also tested the technology and found that it worked.¹⁰

Lizotte estimated that microstamping would only cost $3 to $10 per gun to implement.¹¹ Laser Light Technologies, a laser micro-engraving firm, estimated an even lower cost at $0.50 to $3.¹² This is one reason why the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) passed a resolution endorsing microstamping in 2008, saying that the technology “has proven to be an inexpensive, yet effective way to mark and identify firearm shell casings.” The IACP recommended “that all firearms produced or sold be fitted with microstamping technology so that law enforcement can further criminal investigations and enhance public safety” and “call[ed] on all governments to enact legislation that will allow for the implementation of microstamping technology.”¹³

The American Bar Association (ABA) passed a similar resolution in 2010, noting that microstamping “would not materially increase the cost of guns” and “has no Second Amendment implications whatsoever.” The ABA “urge[d] federal, state and territorial governments to enact laws requiring that all newly-manufactured semi-automatic pistols be fitted with microstamping technology” to “enable law enforcement to identify the serial number of the pistol and hence the first known purchaser of a weapon used in a crime.”¹⁴

The focus on semi-automatic pistols makes sense given that they are the most common types of firearms recovered from crime scenes. Of the 1.9 million crime guns recovered and traced by law enforcement between 2017 and 2021, over 1.3 million of those guns — or 68 percent — were semi-automatic pistols.¹⁵

For their part, Lizotte and Ohar announced that they would offer a “royalty-free license” for microstamping technology in 2007 to make it easier for gun manufacturers to adopt it.¹⁶ Years later, in 2013, they allowed their IFM patent rights to expire in the hopes that gun makers would use it. They also founded a company called TACLABS to produce machines that can microstamp firing pins quickly and efficiently as well as software to create and store the microstamped codes.¹⁷ Yet gun makers have so far resisted microstamping — despite legislative efforts to advance the technology.

TACLABS produces automated CNC machines that can microstamp firing pins. (TACLABS Photo)

In October 2007, California’s then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the Crime Gun Identification Act into law, which amended the state’s Unsafe Handgun Act to require that all new semi-automatic pistols sold by licensed gun dealers in the state feature microstamping technology. Endorsed by 65 police chiefs and sheriffs across California as well as the California Police Chiefs Association and the Peace Officers Research Association of California,¹⁸ the law was written to go into effect on January 1, 2010, but it also contained a provision delaying its implementation until the California Department of Justice certified that microstamping technology was “available to more than one manufacturer unencumbered by patent restrictions.”¹⁹

To delay the law from taking effect, a gun rights group, the Calguns Foundation, paid a $555 fee to extend the lapsing IFM patent in 2012. At the time, the chairman of the group, Gene Hoffman, said, “It was a lot cheaper to keep the patent in force than to litigate over the issues.”²⁰

But Hoffman’s group and the Second Amendment Foundation — another gun rights group backed by gun companies²¹ — were already involved in litigation against California’s Unsafe Handgun Act, which requires that all new semi-automatic pistols pass drop tests and feature loaded-chamber indicators and magazine-disconnect safeties — measures designed to prevent unintentional shootings — and simply amended their complaint to include a challenge to the new microstamping requirement. In that legal challenge, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that the Unsafe Handgun Act’s “provisions pass constitutional muster” and “do[] not impose a substantial burden on Purchasers.”²²

After the patent finally expired, California’s then-Attorney General Kamala Harris announced that microstamping was indeed viable in May 2013 and required on any new pistols.²³ The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the gun industry’s trade association — which has opposed microstamping for over a decade, as discussed below — immediately sued to prevent the law from being enforced, arguing that the technology was “impossible to implement.” That challenge was eventually dismissed,²⁴ but another filed by the National Rifle Association’s California state affiliate in 2022 is ongoing.²⁵

The 2007 law only applied to new models of pistols, and in the intervening years, gun makers simply refused to produce new guns that would meet the requirements of California’s Unsafe Handgun Act, and instead continued to sell older models that were approved for sale before the law went into effect.²⁶ In January 2014, Smith & Wesson announced that it would sell fewer guns into California because it “does not and will not include microstamping in its firearms.” Smith & Wesson further claimed that microstamping “serves no safety purpose,” and in the announcement, the company’s then-CEO James Debney stated that “we will continue to work with the NRA and the NSSF to oppose this poorly conceived law which mandates the unproven and unreliable concept of microstamping and makes it impossible for Californians to have access to the best products with the latest innovations.”²⁷

On September 26, 2023, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed several gun safety bills into law, including SB 452, which expanded the state’s microstamping requirements. The law simply requires that all semi-automatic pistols — both old and new models alike — sold or transferred by licensed gun dealers after January 1, 2028, feature microstamping technology once the California Department of Justice deems that it is available.²⁸ The law also established criminal penalties for those who attempt to modify pistols to prevent them from microstamping spent cases. The law is notable given that police only solved 40 percent of gun crimes in California in 2021.²⁹

New York passed a microstamping bill in June 2022 that requires the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) to investigate microstamping technology and certify if it is viable for semi-automatic pistols. Once the DCJS has certified the technology’s viability, the bill would establish programs and processes to implement the technology, and four years after certification, it will be illegal for a licensed gun dealer in New York to sell or transfer any pistol that does not feature microstamping technology.³⁰

In addition to applying to all pistols — not just new models — the California and New York laws are innovative because they can bypass the gun industry’s stonewalling. If gun makers continue to refuse to implement microstamping technology, the states can simply require that microstamped firing pins be installed in pistols by private vendors or state officials, for example, before they are sold.

New Jersey passed its own law to promote microstamping in 2022 and is farther along in the certification process.³¹ On February 28, 2024, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin officially certified microstamping as a “viable means of matching an expended cartridge case to the weapon from which it was discharged” after the Statewide Affirmative Firearms Enforcement (SAFE) Office reviewed the existing studies and conducted its own live-fire testing.³²

For the testing, TACLABS provided a prototype .45-caliber Colt pistol with a microstamped firing pin that the company had already tested by firing 1,800 rounds. SAFE personnel and state police then fired an additional 50 rounds from the gun and inspected 10 spent cases to see if the codes were legible “across a lengthy and varying firing sequence.” The examiners found that the firing pin code “transferred to every single cartridge case sample.”³³

The report included photos taken with a microscope of the spent cartridge casings, like the kind shown below,³⁴ and noted the success rate of the 2012 peer-reviewed study funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, mentioned above, as further evidence of microstamping’s viability.³⁵

A photo from the SAFE Office report shows the unique microstamping code imprinted into the rear of a spent cartridge case.

The report ultimately concluded that “microstamping-enabled firearms are technologically viable,” a major step toward New Jersey implementing a roster of approved microstamping-enabled firearms. As the attorney general’s office noted, “Once a firearm is approved for inclusion in the microstamping roster, New Jersey gun retailers will be required to make available for sale at least one gun from the roster.”³⁶

Gun groups like the NRA and NSSF consistently remind their members and the public that they support law enforcement. The NRA says that it “backs the blue,” “proudly stands with these heroes,” and that the “bond between the NRA and our men and women in blue is strong, and so is our sincere gratitude for all they do.”³⁷ Similarly, the NSSF has publicly “thanked law enforcement for keeping our communities safe” and said, “We — the firearm industry — partner with law enforcement especially [the ATF] to help keep guns out of the hands of criminals.”³⁸ Yet both groups have consistently opposed microstamping, a tool that would bolster police investigations.

After New Jersey Attorney General Platkin certified microstamping and published the SAFE Office’s findings, the NRA called microstamping a “futile attempt at solving crimes” and a “delusional concept of fighting crime,” claiming that the technology is still unproven and that criminals would simply file or scratch away a firing pin’s unique code.³⁹

But microstamping developers have created redundancies — like geometric “gear codes” surrounding the alphanumeric codes⁴⁰ — to ensure investigators can still derive some information from recovered casings. It’s also unclear how many people would attempt to illegally deface a microstamped firing pin. A 2015 study found that only 5.4 percent of the guns taken from alleged gang members had obliterated serial numbers, for example.⁴¹

The NRA has made similar claims in a so-called “fact sheet” on microstamping, arguing that the technology “does not survive real world application”⁴² — despite the very real-world results found in multiple studies. The NRA even alleged that criminals would simply “acquire spent cartridge cases at shooting ranges in order to plant them at crime scenes in an attempt to throw the police off their tracks and confound prosecutors.”⁴³ To carry this out, a person would have to find spent casings to swap out for their own that match the exact make, model, and caliber of the crime gun and, because of how casings oxidize, that were fired around the same time. They would also have to remove only the microstamped cases from the scene.⁴⁴ In short, this kind of premeditation is extremely unlikely, and the NRA’s story is divorced from the real world.

The NRA even went so far as producing a video called “Microstamping: A De Facto Gun Ban” that featured members of the gun industry deriding the technology. In the video, Mike Fifer, the former CEO of Ruger, said that microstamping was “unethical,” “has nothing to do with safety,” and is “purely a political gun grab.”⁴⁵

A screenshot from the NRA’s “Microstamping: A De Facto Gun Ban” video.

The NSSF similarly blasted the New Jersey attorney general’s findings, claiming in a blog post that the report “only proved that the idea of microstamping is still severely flawed and not ready for implementation.” The NSSF called the 50 rounds fired by SAFE personnel “a very small testing sample” — while dismissing the earlier 1,800 rounds fired in testing — and said a “firing pin can easily be filed or even replaced for a cost as little as $10.”⁴⁶

What’s more, the NSSF quoted from the 2012 study funded by the Department of Justice to say that Todd Lizotte “admitted his technology had considerable problems,” which is simply not true. To justify its claim, the NSSF uses this language from the study: “legitimate questions exist related to both the technical aspects, production costs, and database management associated with microstamping that should be addressed before wide scale implementation is legislatively mandated.”⁴⁷

But the NSSF omitted the very next sentence in that study: “However, it should be noted that none of the above objections are inherently insurmountable.”⁴⁸ The study also found “readable microstamping was achieved on most of the cartridge cases” across three different test pistols, and concluded that while microstamping was “not a perfect technology” a decade ago, it “does have the potential to place valuable information into the hands of the officer or detective at the scene of a crime in a timely fashion.”⁴⁹

The NSSF’s comments about the New Jersey certification are unsurprising given that the organization — led by executives from the country’s largest gun companies⁵⁰ — has spent years opposing microstamping instead of fostering its development, and repeating the same talking points. The NSSF’s yearslong — and ultimately unsuccessful — lawsuit against California’s microstamping law was just one part of a coordinated attack.

In its own “fact sheet” titled “Microstamping Technology: Proven Flawed and Imprecise,” the NSSF once again mischaracterized the findings of the 2012 Department of Justice study, citing flawed studies that have not been replicated or peer reviewed,⁵¹ and claimed that microstamping can be “easily defeated in seconds” and will “raise the cost of legal firearms by well over $200 per gun for both law-abiding citizens and our law enforcement personnel”⁵² — in stark contrast to the $3 to $10 estimates provided by the developers of microstamping.

In 2010, the NSSF hosted a “Congressional Fly-In” in Washington, D.C., to “educate[] key congressmen and women about the flawed concept of firearms microstamping”⁵³ and lobby against any federal microstamping requirements. The NSSF also fought earlier attempts by lawmakers to pass a microstamping law in New York. When then-Mayor Mike Bloomberg penned an op-ed in the New York Daily News in 2011 about the lifesaving benefits of microstamping, the NSSF claimed that a microstamping mandate would “lead to a gun ban for all New Yorkers as these companies abandon the market altogether rather than pay the cost-prohibitive sums of money necessary to reconfigure their manufacturing and assembly processes.”⁵⁴

The NSSF’s suggestion — that gun makers would rather “abandon the market altogether” than help bolster public safety — was not unfounded. Remington, a gun maker based in Ilion, New York, at the time, did in fact threaten to leave the state when lawmakers proposed a microstamping law in 2012. A company spokesperson said, “Such a mandate could force Remington to reconsider its commitment to the New York market altogether.”⁵⁵ The company also threatened to leave New York after state lawmakers passed the 2013 SAFE Act, which required background checks on all gun sales and prohibited assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, among other initiatives.⁵⁶

In response to a 2012 New York Times article on the benefits of microstamping, the NSSF repeated its claim that “many who have tested the concept, including the patent holder, Todd Lizotte, have proven that microstamping is unreliable.” The NSSF also alleged that “[i]t would cost manufacturers millions to implement microstamping and raise the price of firearms by at least $200 per gun.”⁵⁷

More recently, in 2021, the NSSF’s senior vice president and general counsel, Larry Keane, penned a blog post titled “The Moronic Myths of Microstamping,” in which he ignored studies showing the viability of microstamping and said, “Proponents of the unworkable, unreliable and ineffective concept keep their heads in the sand regarding the feasibility of microstamping mandates because they can’t face the truth. It doesn’t work.”⁵⁸ And after New Jersey passed its microstamping law in 2022, Keane again called the technology “unworkable” and said that the “cost of producing firearms that bear microstamping technology would increase by roughly $200. That’s a lot of money for a microscopic change.”⁵⁹

The NSSF has never “shown its math” in arriving at its $200 estimate — as has been the case with the organization’s “industry estimates” for the number of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in circulation. The NSSF’s figure also hasn’t changed over the years, despite advances in technology. But the organization’s insistence on that number begs the question: What price would gun makers be willing to pay to help solve gun crimes and protect the public?

The gun industry’s record suggests that profits are more important for gun makers and sellers than public safety. As discussed here, the NSSF supports the proliferation of deadly innovations like assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and silencers. In the past, the organization even hosted ghost gun manufacturers and retailers at its trade show.

The NSSF has also repeatedly said that microstamping is not “ready for prime time”⁶⁰ — a phrase the group has also used to describe smart guns, or firearms equipped with technology to ensure that they can only be fired by authorized users. Like microstamping, smart guns can help prevent crime, including thefts and unintentional shootings. Yet the gun industry spent decades preventing smart guns from reaching consumers, much like microstamping-enabled firearms. Only recently did a startup, Biofire Technologies, manage to introduce a smart gun for consumers.

As more states consider enacting their own microstamping requirements, it’s important for lawmakers to follow the evidence, much like a crime scene investigator: Consider the multiple studies showing that microstamping works and the number of organizations and law enforcement agencies that have tested and endorsed the technology. In the end, it is impossible to overstate the impact microstamping — what Keane called a “microscopic change” — would have on policing and public safety. As a former Baltimore police commissioner once said, “I think it is one of these things in law enforcement that would just take us from the Stone Age to the jet age in an instant. I just can’t comprehend the opposition to it.”⁶¹

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Why Does the Gun Industry Oppose Microstamping?

Introduction

What is Microstamping?

Microstamping’s Development History

California Led the Way with Microstamping — and Faced Stiff Opposition

States Moving Microstamping Technology Forward

The Gun Lobby’s Opposition to Microstamping

The NSSF Has Spent Years Attacking Microstamping Technology

Prioritizing Public Safety over Gun Industry Profits

Explore more:

Introduction

What is Microstamping?

Microstamping’s Development History

California Led the Way with Microstamping — and Faced Stiff Opposition

States Moving Microstamping Technology Forward

The Gun Lobby’s Opposition to Microstamping

The NSSF Has Spent Years Attacking Microstamping Technology

Prioritizing Public Safety over Gun Industry Profits

Explore more:

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