The battle over the microstamping of hand guns has pitted politically powerful gun manufacturers and the NRA against the Democratic majority in the state Assembly led by state Assemblywoman Michelle Schimel of Great Neck.
Schimel is joined in her fight by Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice, U.S. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and law enforcement officials from across the state.
With microstamping when a gun is fired, information identifying the make, model and serial number of the gun is stamped onto the cartridge as numbers and letters. This technology enables law enforcement officials to trace firearms through cartridge casings found at crime scenes, even if the crime gun is never found.
Although microstamping has passed in the Assembly, it faces an uphill battle in the Republican-led state Senate.
“No shooter has the right to hide behind a blank shell casing. When a person is murdered or victimized with a firearm we want to know who fired that gun,” said Schimel who has been a board member of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence since 1994.
Gun violence has reached an epidemic level in some parts of New York State and remains a serious problem in parts of Nassau County. The advocates of microstamping are not impressed by arguments from the gun lobby who say the microstamping will not work and neither are we.
In New York State people convicted of carrying an unlicensed weapon face mandatory prison time, but if the gun they are caught with can be traced to a shooting it’s a whole new ball game. The potential benefits, including saving lives, far outweigh the cost per weapon which has been estimated at less than $2.
The Remington Arms Company, which employees about 1,000 people in its upstate factory in Ilion, has sent a letter to Gov. Cuomo threatening to relocate to another state if the bill is passed and signed into law.
Their letter reads in part, “Mandating Firearms microstamping will restrict the ability of Remington to expand business in the Empire State. Worse yet, Remington could be forced to reconsider its commitment to the New York market altogether rather than spend the astronomical sums of money needed to completely reconfigure our manufacturing and assembly processes.”
This is the same gun maker that last year received the lion’s share of more than $6 million in state economic development funds, even though it long ago moved its headquarters to North Carolina.
If the bill gets to his desk, Cuomo should call their bluff. Meanwhile Remington Arms should explain why it isn’t willing to help law enforcement out of the hands of criminals.
No person who responsibly uses his or her weapon has anything to fear from microstamping. But it is possible that this legislation can save lives and assist law enforcement in putting dangerous criminals behind bars.
