May 27, 2005

"...Vote No!- (Sung to the melody of "Auld Lang Syne")

 

Vote No on AB Three Five Two,

  Vote No on Three Five Two,

 

Vote No on Three Five Two, my dear

  Vote No on Three Five Two.

 

Vote No on AB Three Five Two,

  Vote No on Three Five Two,

 

Vote No on Three Five Two, my dear

  Vote No on Three Five Two.

 

Vote No on AB Three Five Two,

  Vote No on Three Five Two,

 

Vote No on Three Five Two, my dear

  Vote No on Three Five Two.

 

Vote No on AB Three Five Two,

  Vote No on Three Five Two,

 

Vote No on Three Five Two, my dear

  Vote No on Three Five Two.

 

Vote No on AB Three Five Two,

  Vote No on Three Five Two,

 

Vote No on Three Five Two, my dear

  Vote No on Three Five Two....

   (Complete 95 more verses, then repeat again until

    the other side surrenders)...."

 

        -Partial lyrics of the Number 1 Song on the

         NRA Hit Parade of Songs, May of 2005

 

 

To All,
     Even as we speak, elite members of the 506th Composite EW Battalion (The Hacking Gnomes) of the 1st California Division, NRA, are using all of their skills to implant this song in the Musak System that plays in the halls and elevators of the State Capitol building. Are we on message or what?

 

In other "No on AB 352" news:

 

Top Ten Ways That a Darwin Award Nominee Can Hurriedly Defeat AB 352's Requirements While Sitting In A Getaway Car Outside of a Liquor Store At Midnight, Using Common Everyday Materials Found Under the Car Seat or in the Door Pockets:

 

    Number 10- White-out on the breech face.

 

    Number 9- Revlon Extra Thick Mascara on the breech face

    (in recognition of all those lady felons out there).

 

    Number 8- Masticated Trident gum smeared onto the breech

    face (Please note that "sugar-free" variants have been known to

    etch stainless steel).

 

    Number 7- Sally Hansen "Hard as Nails" fingernail polish with

    nylon, Super Frost Pink (Again, in recognition of all those lady

    felons out there), smeared on the breech face and firing pin.

 

    Number 6- Dried on barbecue sauce from the little tubs sold

    with McDonald's Chicken McNuggets (In recognition of all those

    fast food junkies out there, or folks forced by circumstance and

    biology to buy "Happy Meals"), smeared on the breech face

    and firing pin.

 

    Number 5- Emory boards usually sold with Sally Hansen "Hard

    as Nails" manicure kits (Once again, in deference to all those

    lady felons out there- There are more every day, if prison stats

    are correct.), utilized in combination with elbow grease on the

    breech face and firing pin.

 

    Number 4- Call their 12 year old sibling on the cell phone and

    have them send a "trojan" to the DOJ computers containing

    the AB 352 serial number data base, corrupting the files in

    such a manner that a Firearms Division strike team would 

    eventually be "on the lookout" for Sheriff Lee Baca's pet

    Pekingese.

 

    Number 3- Use a "Solder-It Pro Torch 200" butane mini-torch

    to "fuzz over" the serial numbers laser engraved on the breech

    face and firing pin (Who would have thought that such a small

    lighter would get a flame temperature all the way up to 2500  

    Degrees F?).

 

    Number 2- Make sure that the source for the "crime gun" was

    the same "well-connected" arms dealer that was running real

    Chinese AK-47's through the Port of Oakland a few years ago.

    The People's Republic reserves it's sovereign rights where

    foreign sales are at stake, so AB 352 would be about as

    effective as copyright laws are for software.

 

    And the Number 1 Way for A Criminal To Defeat AB 352

    Is (Ta-dah!!!....) -

    Pop the trunk on the stolen police unit and use the Watch

    Commander's back-up pistol instead without fear of being

    traced. (Such "freebies" have been done before.).

 

 

The Weakest Link:

     In between group chants of "Hey Hey, Ho Ho, AB 352 Has Got To... (well, you get the idea), firearms activists need to mosey over to Calgunlaws.com. There you will find copies of the reports filed by the Maryland State Police Forensic Sciences Division on the "efficacy" of Maryland's Integrated Ballistics Identification System since it's inception in October of 2000.

 

    In a nutshell, the consensus of the law enforcement "commanders in the field" is that MD-IBIS doesn't work as advertised, given the money being spent. They recommend that the system be disbanded except as a "legacy" reference, and the money should be redirected to a DNA database that is having significantly more success in solving cases.

 

   In contrast, gun confiscation advocates are actively promoting IBIS, NIBIN, and any other like scheme to register every gun from Maine to Californeye-aye (It appears that functionality is not a word in their lexicon).

 

    So what is IBIS, in a practical sense? As described by both the Maryland reports from 2003 and 2004, as well as the Coalition To Stop Gun Violence's own "study", MD-IBIS is a system that is supposed to digitally record class and individual characteristics found on cases submitted by firearms manufacturers at every new gun sale in Maryland. The hypothesis of the gun confiscation movement is that should that handgun become a "crime gun", the screening system will cut short the time needed by forensics experts to link the case to any gun in the database (Many handguns sold before 2000 are not in the database, and therefore could not be referenced in MD-IBIS). Of course, it is clear that even under the best of circumstances IBIS type systems have a limited utility even if there were a nationally-subsidized firearms database in existence (Buena Suerte).

 

     Unfortunately for IBIS acolytes, the success rate of the Maryland system is around 3%, having only come up with 6 "hits" or identifications since inception. (By way of comparison, the Federal NIBIN system, which has been in operation since 1997 and includes bullet as well as crime gun individual characteristics, has only come up with "hits" some 4% of the time). This is not even on par with the Canadian gun control registry, which has put the government of Canada some $ 2 billion and counting "into the red".

 

    A key issue here, though, is that forensics experts are still needed to make the definitive pronouncement linking the case to any particular crime gun throughout all phases of the investigative process, no matter the relatively small success rate of the system. This is due to the way that the database records the data digitally versus the evidentiary requirements in a court of law. And the accuracy of the system goes down more, depending upon the degree of effectiveness of any attempts by criminals to obscure the individual characteristics of any particular handgun. ( It is reasonable to assume that even modest efforts by criminals to obscure any characteristics will have an inordinate bearing on the IBIS or NIBIN's already low success rate).

 

    By way of comparison, AB 352 is proposing that semiautomatic pistols (not revolvers or long guns, which means that AB 352 is not going to effect all potential crime guns) receive "unique" individual tool marks so as to be identifiable digitally in some system yet to be determined. But being tool marks, the same kinds of database problems, limited population of data entries, and need for forensics experts to sort the findings currently plaguing IBIS and NIBIN are still applicable.

 

     For example, if a casing from an AB 352 semiautomatic pistol were to be recovered from a crime scene, and "linked" to any particular gun, it would still only "lead" investigators to the last known "legal" owner of that handgun. If the crime gun had been stolen, or smuggled into the country in one of the previous year's cocaine shipments, AB 352 would still lead to a dead end investigatively, despite it's added cost. If the imprinted microstamp identifier were less than pristine, then a forensics expert would still be needed to help investigators at all phases just to make sure they were following the correct lead. In other words, there would be no cost or efficiency savings to law enforcement unless the standards for evidence were substantially loosened so that low level technicians or even laymen could be accepted as expert testimony in future legal proceedings. Of course, the probable reaction to this change from the defense bar would be negative, in the least.

 

     In an era when government is searching high and low just to maintain law enforcement benefits, low teacher-to-student ratios, and emergency nurse staffing levels, a proven loser such as an AB 352-type system should be tossed into the circular file of governmental budgeting. There are higher priorities on the government's plate than to be repeating the mistakes of the past.

 

Stories may be found at:

http://www.calgunlaws.com/modules.php?name=NukeNews
&file=article&sid=409

 

http://www.csgv.org/docUploads/FINAL%20report%2Epdf