Yet Another Fast and Furious Conspiracy

To understand the Fast & Furious controversy, you must also understand that in the minds of some, any attempt to prevent gun violence—even any discussion of how violence might be prevented—represents not the first, but the final step on the road to serfdom. From the Daily Caller:

Like a storm that returns stronger each time, efforts to push micro-stamping regulations onto gun-owning Americas are here again.

…

Micro-stamping is a way of imbedding a specific mark on the end of a firing pin so that when it strikes the primer of a bullet casing, it leaves a micro-stamp that allows police to trace spent shells back to the guns that fired them. In theory, it’s literally like putting a fingerprint on each shell casing fired.

Number one, the passage of micro-stamping legislation would require us not only to have a government-issued firing pin for each gun we own, but would also force us to list every gun we own with the government so bureaucrats can keep a list of which firing pin is in which weapon. Enter gun registration.

Number two, upon sending our weapons in or even taking them to a special, government-certified gunsmith for the micro-stamped firing pin to be added, we’d have to pay a per-gun fee. With a straight face, Time magazine contributor Adam Cohen predicts the cost for this would be between 50¢ and $6 a gun, while The New York Times pegs the cost at $12 a gun. But what both of these outlets fail to recognize is that a new “fee” to the government, regardless of how small, is nothing more than a new tax placed upon the people. Thus micro-stamping will lead to yet one more tax that gun owners must pay in order to exercise the right that “shall not be infringed.”

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David Frum

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