According to Firearm Chronicles
Californians could see the number of handguns available for sale in the state dwindle even further, thanks to an anti-gun overhaul of the state’s microstamping law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday. AB 2847 makes some major changes to the existing microstamping law, which has been on the books since 2012 and has already blocked sales of new models of handguns for years.
The original version of the microstamping law required handgun manufacturers to design their handguns to imprint a unique identifying code on each ammunition cartridge as it was fired. In fact, gun companies had to ensure that there were actually two microstamps on each round of ammunition, which was virtually impossible for manufacturers to comply with.
As a result, not only have new handgun models not been approved for sale in the state since 2012, but about half of the handguns that were on the state’s roster of approved handguns have been removed in the years since. Every time a manufacturer made a small design tweak to an existing model, California’s Department of Justice claimed it was an entirely new model subject to the microstamping provisions, and removed the handgun from the state’s roster.
The slow-motion handgun ban will continue, and likely speed up a bit with the new microstamping language. Now manufacturers only need to imprint the microstamp on each fired round in one location, which the state says is feasible. For every new microstamped model that becomes available for sale in California, however, several older models of handguns will disappear from the roster of approved guns.
Rather than a valuable crime fighting tool, microstamping is simply another way to reduce the numbers and types of handguns available to California gun owners. The only silver lining with the new law is that it will likely lead to a new legal challenge. A lawsuit filed against the state over the original microstamping law was one of nearly a dozen Second Amendment-related cases rejected by the Supreme Court earlier this year, but the makeup of the Court will have changed by the time a challenge to the new law reaches SCOTUS, which should give gun owners some hope that justices will be more amenable to grant cert to a microstamping challenge the next time around.