Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund Releases New Report Highlighting Gun Industry Opposition to Microstamping, an Effective Crime-Solving Tool

Today, The Smoking Gun — an Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund resource dedicated to exposing the gun industry’s role in our gun violence epidemic — released a new report on microstamping, an innovative technology that allows police to solve gun crimes using only spent cartridge casings recovered at crime scenes. Over 18,000 people die by gun homicide each year, yet only half of those crimes are ever solved. Microstamping would provide a huge leap forward for law enforcement investigations, helping police identify the owners of crime guns, but the gun industry has consistently opposed this technology.

“Microstamping is a lifesaving technology that can help link crime guns to criminals — but the gun industry refuses to equip its firearms with this critical tool because it might nibble away at its profit margins,” said Nick Suplina, Senior Vice President for Law and Policy at Everytown for Gun Safety. “We urge lawmakers to enact and implement microstamping requirements, which will give law enforcement a powerful new crime-fighting tool and help keep our families safe.”

Here’s what you need to know about microstamping:

• Pulling the trigger on a firearm causes the gun’s firing pin to strike a loaded cartridge. 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 microstamped 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.

• Two mechanical engineers — Todd Lizotte and Orest Ohar — developed microstamping in the 1990s. They authored peer-reviewed research demonstrating the effectiveness of microstamping, including studies showing that a variety of pistols with microstamped firing pins imprinted legible codes on spent casings over 90 percent of the time, even after firing thousands of rounds of ammunition.
  • Lizotte also estimates that microstamping would only cost $3 to $10 per gun to implement, and Laser Light Technologies, a laser micro-engraving firm, estimated an even lower cost at $0.50 to $3.

Highlights from the report:

• In addition to aiding law enforcement investigations, microstamping provides a level of accountability that could help prevent crime in the first place: 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.

• Gun rights groups like the NRA and NSSF consistently remind their members and the public that they support law enforcement — but both groups have consistently opposed microstamping, a tool that would bolster police investigations.

• California led the way with microstamping in 2007, requiring that all new semi-automatic pistol models sold by licensed gun dealers in the state feature microstamping technology.
  • But the gun industry and gun rights groups fought to prevent the technology from being implemented — and even refused to sell new models into California, rather than make the changes required by law.

• New York passed a first-of-its-kind microstamping bill in June 2022 that requires all handguns sold in the state to be equipped with microstamping technology.
  • The law first directs state authorities to certify that the technology is viable for semi-automatic pistols and to establish programs and processes to implement the technology. Not more than four years after certification, the sales mandate will kick in.

• On September 26, 2023, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 452, a major upgrade to the microstamping law that requires the technology in all handguns, not just new models.
  • The law simply requires that all semi-automatic pistols sold or transferred by licensed gun dealers after January 1, 2028, feature microstamping technology. 
  • The law, which also established criminal penalties for those who attempt to modify pistols to prevent them from microstamping spent cases, is notable given that police only solved 40 percent of gun crimes in California in 2021.

• 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 during the manufacturing process, the state laws require that microstamped firing pins be installed in pistols by private vendors or state officials before they are sold.

• After conducting its own live-fire testing, New Jersey officially certified that microstamping is viable in February 2024, a major step toward New Jersey implementing a roster of approved microstamping-enabled firearms. Once that roster is in place, all New Jersey gun stores must make at least one microstamped model available to consumers.