On February 26, U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller ruled that California’s microstamping requirement does not violate the Second Amendment.
Breitbart News previously reported that microstamping is a theoretical technology through which gun control proponents mandate equipping every handgun with a firing pin that makes a mark on a shell casing similar to a fingerprint–a mark which identifies which particular gun ejected a particular shell casing. However, the technology is unproven, easy for criminals to defeat, and therefore, opposed by the California Police Chiefs Association (CPCA).
CPCA said, “The technology does not function reliably and … criminals can remove the marking easily in mere seconds.” Removing the marking is as easy as filing the end of the firing pin or switching out the marked firing pin for a generic one.
Moreover, microstamping will only apply to law-abiding citizens who register their guns with the state. Criminals who buy their guns via back door or black markets will never register a single weapon on a microstamping database, although theirs are the very weapons that will be used in crime.
Nonetheless, Bloomberg.com reported that Mueller seized on plaintiffs’ insistence “that they have a right to determine the precise way in which they would exercise their Second Amendment rights.” Her decision ran counter to this, asserting that “microstamping technology doesn’t violate the … Second Amendment because gun owners don’t have a right to buy specific types of firearms.”
This ruling appears to be out of harmony with the fact that Californians have the right to determine how they will exercise the freedoms protected by other amendments. For example, they can choose whether to write, speak, or use other mediums to express the free speech protected by the First Amendment, and they can choose what kind of property to pursue in exercising their Third and Fourth Amendment rights.
Is the Second Amendment the only one that carries with it no degree of choice?
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
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