PA House gets ballistic fingerprinting bill and gun lock bill

[NoHackrLtd]

With all the anti-gunners in the House and Senate this election, I started subscribing to the daily report out of Harrisburg of the bills that are introduced, movement of bills, etc.

Mods: if this is in the wrong forum, please let me know.

(1) PA already requires sales of handguns to have a lock sold with it. Either that, or I've been taken for a ride twice now by dealers. Mine are locked up when not in my possession anyways, as a responsible gun owner.

(2) Here's the Maryland-failed ballistic fingerprinting plan come north to PA. House Bill 277, referred to the Judiciary Committee. Get on the phone to your representatives and tell them you, as a taxpayer and responsible gun owner, do not wish to spend money on a program that a liberal state (the likes of Maryland) wasted over 15 MILLION DOLLARS ON and NEVER CAUGHT ONE CRIMINAL OR TRACED ONE WEAPON IN THE YEARS THE PROGRAM WAS RUNNING.

Get on the phone to your reps tomorrow. I'm not having my tax dollars wasted on this nonsense.

Text of the bill:

PRINTER'S NO. 309


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THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF PENNSYLVANIA

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HOUSE BILL
No. 277 Session of 2007


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INTRODUCED BY BISHOP, BLACKWELL, CURRY, DONATUCCI, FRANKEL,
JAMES, JOSEPHS, MELIO, PARKER, SOLOBAY, WILLIAMS, YOUNGBLOOD
AND MYERS, FEBRUARY 6, 2007


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REFERRED TO COMMITTEE ON JUDICIARY, FEBRUARY 6, 2007


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AN ACT

1 Amending Title 18 (Crimes and Offenses) of the Pennsylvania
2 Consolidated Statutes, providing for trigger locks and for
3 handgun identification requirements.

4 The General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
5 hereby enacts as follows:
6 Section 1. Title 18 of the Pennsylvania Consolidated
7 Statutes is amended by adding sections to read:
8 § 6127. Trigger locks required.
9 (a) General rule.--Every handgun except an antique handgun
10 shall be equipped with a trigger lock.
11 (b) Definition.--As used in this section, the term "trigger
12 lock" means a metallic device operated with a key or combination
13 lock which prevents a firearm from being discharged while the
14 device is attached to the firearm. The term includes a device
15 which obstructs the barrel or cylinder of the firearm and a
16 device which immobilizes the trigger.
17 § 6128. Ballistics identifier required.
18 (a) General rule.--No person registered or licensed as a


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1 manufacturer, wholesale dealer of firearms or retail dealer of
2 firearms may transport into this Commonwealth, sell, expose for
3 sale, possess with the intent of selling, assign or otherwise
4 transfer a handgun other than an antique handgun unless a
5 ballistics identifier for that handgun has been obtained and
6 made part of a qualified database.
7 (b) Penalties.--A person that violates the provisions of
8 subsection (a) shall be subject to a civil penalty of not less
9 than $7,500 nor more than $15,000 and a fine of not less than
10 $500 nor more than $1,000 for each handgun.
11 (c) Regulations.--The Attorney General shall promulgate
12 regulations to effectuate the purposes of this section.
13 (d) Definitions.--As used in this section, the following
14 words and phrases shall have the meanings given to them in this
15 subsection:
16 "Ballistics identifier." A digitized or electronic image of
17 a bullet and shell casing fired by a handgun which:
18 (1) clearly shows the distinctive firing pin, ejection,
19 extraction and land marks for that particular handgun; and
20 (2) can be utilized, through comparative computer
21 analysis, for investigative and prosecutorial purposes by law
22 enforcement agencies.
23 "Qualified database." A database established and maintained
24 by a Federal or State law enforcement agency which:
25 (1) contains individual handgun information, such as the
26 handgun's make, model, caliber, manufacturer's serial number
27 and ballistics identifier; and
28 (2) is made available to, and may be utilized by, law
29 enforcement agencies in this Commonwealth for investigative
30 and prosecutorial purposes.
20070H0277B0309 - 2 -


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1 Section 2. This act shall take effect in 60 days.

************************************************** **********

[Lougotzz]

I hate to say it again. I sound like a broken record. NY has this as law. It doesnt work and a waste of money. liberals are the same where ever you go.

[bloomautomatic]

I agree that this is a complete waste of money.

For those of you who wish to contact your Representative about this, go here -
http://www.legis.state.pa.us
and use the search box at the top right. Search by zip or county.

The original text of the bill is here if you want to email it to people.
http://www.legis.state.pa.us/CFDOCS/...r=0277&pn=0309

If you want to really get grass-roots about it, when you forward this to your shooting friends, include their local Reps contact info so they don't have to look it up. If it's right in front of them, they're that much more likely to pick up the phone or send an email.

Vince

[LorDiego01]

I thought this ballistic fingerprinting non-sense had been debunked, and shot down every time it was brougth up for a vote.

[Frenchy]

Originally Posted by LorDiego01

I thought this ballistic fingerprinting non-sense had been debunked, and shot down every time it was brougth up for a vote.

Actually the lock is alreay a law a Pennsylvania and if you notice, there is always a spent casing when you buy a new gun in the gun case in an envelope.
The stupidity of the act is that if you where to pre meditate a crime, you would probably buy a spare barel, use it to commit the crime, then dispose of it. therefor killing the print to the bullet. Finger printing is nothing new when it comes to guns, I once but so missused it isnt funny, I mean how often have you heard they need to "keep" the gun after a shooting for printing... They even do this with shotguns! now how in hell will you print 275 little beads to a barrel?

[bloomautomatic]

It has been debunked by the California DOJ. If a state as liberal as California admits it's useless as a crime fighting tool, then it's really gotta be bad.

But, debunked or not, our legislators may not know that.

Here's a copy of the email I sent to my reps. Feel free to use it.

Vince


Representative ________,

I recently read about HB277 which was introduced on February 6th. This bill would require all handguns to be equipped with a trigger lock, and all new handguns must be submitted for “ballistic fingerprinting.” I am strongly opposed to this bill as I feel it would be a tremendous waste of taxpayer money. There is substantial evidence that ballistic fingerprinting is not an effective crime fighting tool. In 2001, the California Department of Justice conducted a technical evaluation of the feasibility of a ballistics imaging database for all new handgun sales. The following is the executive summary of that report.

Automated computer matching systems do not provide conclusive results. Rather, a list of potential candidates are presented that must be manually reviewed. When applying this technology to the concept of mass sampling of manufactured firearms, a huge inventory of potential candidates will be generated for manual review. This study indicates that this number of candidate cases will be so large as to be impractical and will likely create complications so great that they cannot be effectively addressed.

The full text of the report can be viewed here -
http://www.nraila.org/media/PDFs/CADOJ_report.pdf

Maryland has spent millions of dollars instituting a ballistic fingerprinting program, and it has yet to be used to solve any crimes. In my opinion, there are many other programs in Pennsylvania that can make better use of millions of dollars.

I hope that you will see the facts the same as I do and oppose this bill when it comes up for discussion or vote.

Thank you for your time,

[ChamberedRound]

Not trying to nitpick here, just re-iterating what billamj has said in other threads.

This bill has not yet been sent to the House; according to the bill history, this bill has only been referred to the Judiciary committee. This means that at this point, blindly emailing every House and Senate rep is counter-productive because only those on the Judiciary can currently make a decision on it.

The best thing to do is to contact Judiciary members and make your voice heard to make sure the bill doesn't get out of committee. If the bill gets out of committee (and I hope it doesn't), that's when it's time to email the House and Senate members en masse.

[phillyd2]

Originally Posted by ChamberedRound

Not trying to nitpick here, just re-iterating what billamj has said in other threads.

This bill has not yet been sent to the House; according to the bill history, this bill has only been referred to the Judiciary committee. This means that at this point, blindly emailing every House and Senate rep is counter-productive because only those on the Judiciary can currently make a decision on it.

The best thing to do is to contact Judiciary members and make your voice heard to make sure the bill doesn't get out of committee. If the bill gets out of committee (and I hope it doesn't), that's when it's time to email the House and Senate members en masse.

Nitpick right back at you

Disagree. We have seen how fast bills can become law at 3 am after its out of committee. These laws much be treated as cancer - cut out and burned at the very first sign. Also, it lets your rep know not even to consider such foolishness if and when it ever comes up for a vote.

Side note - when is PAFOA getting into this fight so that we can lobby and scream with one loud voice?

[billamj]

Originally Posted by phillyd2

Nitpick right back at you

Disagree. We have seen how fast bills can become law at 3 am after its out of committee. These laws much be treated as cancer - cut out and burned at the very first sign. Also, it lets your rep know not even to consider such foolishness if and when it ever comes up for a vote.

Side note - when is PAFOA getting into this fight so that we can lobby and scream with one loud voice?

IMHO, the only thing that contacting your legislators about a bill that they may not even see does is to mark you as a loud noise. Most legislators have gotten to the point where they've learned to ignore loud noises.

As far as your side note goes I obviously can't speak for Dan and Doug but I would think that they are waiting until the group is officially incorporated in the commonwealth before stepping too far forward.

[Farbmeister]

Use lead bullets (the go splat better) or simply shoot your weapon. Each bullet will change rifling a bit and also the markings on the bullet.

We really, really need to get shows like CSI off the t.v. ppl see that crap and think that all you do is find a bullet and MAGICALLY there is a computer progam that finds the bad guy.

Ever notice that 99% of the people that the t.v. databases 'match' ARE KNOWN CRIMINALS? Rarely do ppl connect those dots.