Civilian Taser units have very small, round markers called “anti-felon serialized ID tags” contained in each cartridge — so that when a civilian Taser is utilized and the tags are discharged as well (extremely difficult to pick them all up due to size), it can be tracked directly to its registered owner or, if misued, to a “suspect.”
Get ready.
There is a push to place serial numbers on individual live rounds of ammunition.
BZ
01 23 09
My Lord. Hope the federal government doesn’t authorize a similar bill. Now let me play devil’s advocate for a moment. What harm would there be if manufactors put serial numbers on the ammo? Aside from the privacy violations…I am against it simply for that reason. But what other compelling reasons exist to NOT support this legislation?
Next? Chips for people. Hope you don’t think I’m kidding.
Privacy, Mahndisa? Yes, it’s completely about privacy or, on the other hand COMPLETELY about being able to track each and every individual, what they do, where they go.
And ultimately, about more government intrusion into your lives and power over everyone.
With one continuing exception: Congress continually EXEMPTS themselves from laws they don’t care for. THAT tradition will continue.
Folks, you starting to read between the lines here?
BZ
That’s creepy as hell.
S&W and Colt are already working on chips for guns… wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
And just what will they do for the home casting and reloading market?
Hey, maybe they will try that out with the diabetic population and syringes to go after *drug abusers*. Have to love the mentality where you are already guilty upon buying something mass produced.
Of course, on the practical side for ammo… just how many hundreds of millions of rounds are produced every year? Can you imagine the trying to track a single serial number out of, say, a run of ten thousand that was in the million or so range for that year and have some older bullets mixed in? Maybe they should do this with tire treads so they can track hit and run killers?
How about special serrations with *knives* so you can track those nasty slashers made famous in so many films? And gang members wear sneakers, so lets put a special serial number on their tread!
Special threads in blue jeans just in case they get left at a crime scene you can track them back to… well… someplace!
Serial numbers on hammers, just in case.
And your bathroom is the most dangerous room in the house, and I’m sure killers use kleenex and toilet paper, so lets put serial numbers on that, just because.
You might get bad ideas from the internet, especially if you are Bill O’Reilly googling ‘loofah’ so probably need to keep track of that just in case some loofah killer gets loose after viewing one too many loose loofah on sale. Yes serialize the loofah, too. And the soap, while you are at it, with special taggants so as to find out who washed their hands after the great loofah gun and stab crime spree in their special Nikes and track them by their car and finally get them by their jeans in the Holiday Inn parking lot.
Works for me!
For the numbers to be “worthwhile”, any purchases would have to be registered.
two words: shotgun shells.
Cargosquid: easy; numbers on the brass bases, high base OR low base. And also, CS, thanks for visiting and, moreover, thanks for taking the time to comment!
AJ: you know the drill. If YOU can think of it, someone ELSE is already planning to DO it.
BZ
Old story BZ, we’ve been covering this on the gun blogs and in the forum for a while now, but, it appears that some folks haven’t seen it, so, OLD news is still NEWS… 🙂
First I’ve heard of it. I don’t get around any more like I used to, damned joint pain.
BZ
They have been investigating all sorts of product id. From fertilizer to gunpowder to cars.
Putting micro identifiers into the mix with the actual product. What happens when a bullet with an id tag is used in a crime does that automatically mean that the person who initially bought it is guilty of athe crime? But it will make you start thinking about picking up your brass so it doesnt end up at a crime scene you werent at.
I’ll ask the same question I asked about the wiretapping…..
Will this help catch the bad guy?
01 24 09
BZ: Thanks for answering the question I posed above. Aside from privacy concerns this does take us towards a surveillance society. I believe that Obama should do everything he can to reverse the Patriot Act for this very reason. If we are concerned with our civil liberties, we oughta get rid of any law that might threaten them and intrude upon our right to exist as sovreign individuals.
Rando
The wiretapping will and has helped catch the criminal. Putting a serial number on a bullet wont. It doesnt tell you WHO shot the bullet at best it tells you WHERE the bullet was sold. Due to the shear number of bullets made I doubt each bullet will be serialized, probably a number for the batch of a few thousand which would have been sent to several retailers not necessarily in the same area. In a court it may add a tenuous link to the shooter but by itself would mean virtually nothing other than added cost to the consumer.
I followed the ammo link to the end of the line and found that Arizona, SO FAR, has not passed a law requiring identification on ammo—SO FAR. Here’s the link of all ammo related legislation as of 1/1/2009. http://www.azleg.gov/SearchResults.asp?SearchedFrom=%2FArizonaRevisedStatutes.asp&SearchPhrase=ammunition+&Scope=%2Fars&x=18&y=3
Can you even imagine how much this stupidity would cost?? And just like guns, only the good guys would have legal ammo.
Can you say self reloading? There will be a black market on “clean” brass. I love it. My family has bought molds in the past to make and load our old brass.
Let’s see how they get around that.
Greywolfe
“Let’s see how they get around that.”
Same way they went after drugs. Make the accutements (parafinailia)
illegal to posess whether or not you bought it while it was legal.
its the usual ploy
When its made illegal only the criminals will have iy.
The basic problem with serial numbers, beyond uselessness for actual stated end purposes, is the idea that all must be subjected to the suspicion of utilizing them for an illegal activity. Does the government do this for any other class of object beyond, say, nuclear fuel rods (and we’ve lost track of a few of those…)? The suspicion is that if you buy these *you will commit a crime*. You are prejudged based on your legal activity exercising your guaranteed right in the Constitution.
It is that prejudice against those exercising their rights, that is appalling. The fired gun case law is absolutely ridiculous in this regard and old man Ruger should never have gotten involved with this insanity. And then there is the question of dealing with imported ammo…C&R ammo… self-loaded ammo…
Do we do this for any other right, not to speak of mere privileges? This is in no way close to ‘yelling fire in a crowded theater’ and is the equivalent of wanting you to register every time you use the word ‘fire’. Now put in a color for ‘fire’: black, yellow, white. Now put in an ethnicity for ‘fire’. Every use must be registered… it doesn’t matter if you are street hood or scholar.
Expediency is the road of tyrants, dictators and despots. Diminish a right for a supposed ‘good end’ and make the ends justify the means. Buy into that, and you soon learn that those things that you gave up lead you to giving up other, more meaningful things. I already know the political Elite is prejudiced against the common man. The laws enacted confirm this. They are already bad enough… and if they put serial numbers on, I will buy overseas, C&R and make my own, from pure straight chemicals if needs be. Of course then I will have the capability to do much worse things, and those will soon be serialized and pre-judged too.
Because you are free, you will be prejudged as a potential criminal and made to feel despised in the police state mandating such ‘tracking’.
Thanks, but no.
My life is my own and I put none other at risk willingly.
You can slip on that bar of soap in the tub… perhaps we should serialize that, too, because that is such an unsafe room of the house, lets register it and your use of it, just to be safe. So you can be monitored and tracked ‘for the good of the children’.
I am more than willing to put my skills to use for my own peaceful and lawful concerns.
That, soon, will be criminalized and I will be discriminated against and not trusted to do so.
And that then makes me a very, very dangerous man, indeed, having skills and a will to use them.
The Fed’s main intention, or shall I say, the democrats’ intention is soley to drive up the costs of firearms and ammunition to the point that civiliains can no longer afford to own them thus creating “gun control”. We all know that this only effects law abiding citizens and will not limit guns and ammo ownership of criminals as they steal theirs and or reload etc….can’t trace them, that’s the point of the criminals, they do not follow the rules. Hello! It’s just the dems trying to turn this country into a Socialist Aristocracy.