New Jersey officials on Wednesday released a long-awaited report on gun “microstamping” technology that would make it easier for police to solve gun crimes, an “important step” toward making every commercially sold weapon traceable, according to the state’s attorney general.
Just one problem: Nobody sells them.
New Jersey is now one of just a handful of states with laws concerning microstamping, a method using lasers to inscribe a unique code onto a gun’s firing pin, which then imprints the mark onto a bullet’s casing. Think of it like the VIN number etched all over your car.
Gun control advocates call it a game-changing technology, one that allows police to trace weapons even in cases where no gun is recovered.
The gun industry maintains the technology isn’t up to snuff, and a federal court last year ruled against a California law mandating microstamping and other features in new guns.
New Jersey’s law, enacted in 2022, doesn’t mandate microstamping like similar laws in New York or California, instead offering rebates and incentives to pressure gun manufacturers to incorporate the technology.
It also ordered the state attorney general to investigate the “technological viability of microstamping-enabled firearms.” That report was released Wednesday — more than a year after its statutory deadline.
The report details a live fire test conducted last summer at a State Police lab by New Jersey’s new microstamping examiner, retired ATF agent Reinaldo Roldan, concluding that the markings left on spent shell casings could be reliably matched to the gun.
It was published by the attorney general’s Statewide Affirmative Firearms Enforcement (SAFE) office, which was created by legislation signed by Gov. Phil Murphy with the purpose of suing the gun industry over instances of gun violence under the state’s public nuisance laws.
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