Many of our elected officials are using widespread ignorance and fear of guns and the fallout of immorality in the form of crime to help accomplish a disenfranchisement of the Second Amendment piecemeal. They tout their proposals as measures to prevent crime or capture criminals, while completely ignoring the rights of victims and the average citizen.
A prime current example is the widespread spate of ammunition identification bills, proposed at the state level, all of which are very similar to the 2005/6 California legislature ammunition serialization bill, AB 352.
AB 352 was passed by both houses of the California legislature, but died in conference on November 30, 2006. Similar bills are now spreading across the nation for review under the new more liberal 2009 array of state legislators.
California was a close call. The good news is that even though ammunition serialization resolutions were introduced in five states in 2007 and 18 states in 2008, not a single resolution passed in any state. The bad news is that many state legislatures have become much more gun-control-friendly in the aftermath of the 2008 elections. These same ammunition serialization bills may not be defeated or allowed to die during this 2009/10 legislative cycle, as was the case in the past.
The ammunition serialization campaign is being organized by Ammunition Accountability, a lobbying arm of Ammunition Coding System, which has been working with state legislatures to get bills passed to mandate ammunition serialization on a state-by-state basis. There is a neon fox in the henhouse.
It happens that Ammunition Coding System would profit handsomely from such mandatory serialization. Although Russ Ford of Ammunition Coding System claimed vigorously during an interview on NRANews.com (posted on January 25, 2008) that his company was striving for complete transparency in its activities, as of January 19, 2009, there is still no link from the Ammunition Accountability website to the Ammunition Coding System website, and no link back the other way either.
Ammunition serialization amounts to individual markings stamped on the ammunition, both on the projectile and on the shell in which the projectile and propellant is encased. Viewing the 43-minute Russ Ford Ammunition Coding System video on this page at the NRANews.com site is very revealing. (Scroll to bottom of the linked page to see the video.)
To provide just a little taste of just how bad this ammunition serialization would be for gun owners, consider this excerpt from the online NRA webpage, "Encoded Ammunition"/Bullet Serialization," which was posted on January 15, 2008:
Reasons to Strenuously Oppose This Legislation
People would be required to forfeit all personally-owned non-encoded ammunition. After a certain date, it would be illegal to possess non-encoded ammunition. Gun owners possess hundreds of millions of rounds of ammunition for target shooting, hunting and personal protection. Consider that American manufacturers produce 8 billion rounds each year.
Reloading (re-using cartridge cases multiple times) would be abolished. There would be no way to correspond serial numbers on cartridge cases, and different sets and quantities of bullets.
People would be required to separately register every box of "encoded ammunition." This information would be supplied to the police. Most states do not even require registration of guns. Each box of ammunition would have a unique serial number, thus a separate registration.
Private citizens would have to maintain records, if they sold ammunition to anyone, including family members or friends.
The cost of ammunition would soar, for police and private citizens alike. The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturing Institute estimates it would take three weeks to produce ammunition currently produced in a single day. For reason of cost, manufacturers would produce only ultra-expensive encoded ammunition, which police would have to buy, just like everyone else.
