Microstamping Coming to a Crime Lab Near You?
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1: Scanning electron microscope image showing alphanumeric characters on the tip of the firing pin
surrounded by a dot code and radial bar code.
2: Another approach was based on the same design as the first, but the dot code was replaced by a gear code.
All pictures courtesy Forensic Science Graduate Group at the University of California at Davis, in the publication “What Micro Serialized Firing Pins Can Add to Firearm Identification in Forensic Science: How Viable
are Micro-Marked Firing Pin Impressions as Evidence?”
By Oliver Shapiro
Associate Editor
October 13, 2007: California Gov- ernor Arnold Schwarzenegger signs into law the Crime Gun
Identification Act, making the Golden State the
first state in America to mandate the technology
widely known as “microstamping.”
February 7, 2008: U.S. Representative Xavier
Becerra of California and other legislators in-
troduce HR5266, the National
Crime Gun Identification Act to
February 10, 2010: Illinois State Senator Dan
Kotowski files SB3425 with the Illinois State As-
sembly, where (as of this writing) it continues to
meander its way through preliminary legislative
processes. The bill is intended to amend the state’s
Congress, based on the law passed in California. It
is referred to committee, and dies there.
The surface of a firearm’s firing pin is etched so that it attains a unique alphanumeric series (or
other identifier), in reverse and relief, such that when the firearm fires a cartridge, the pin will impart
to the cartridge’s primer cap a mirror image of the characters on the pin, presumably now appear-
ing as an unreversed and legible (under magnification) series of digits and letters.
