Science for Sale

Johns Hopkins, which used to do good work, but is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Bloomberg, has come out in favor of microstamping.

• No manufacturer has ever manufactured a firearm with microstamping. Why? A reliable way of doing it hasn’t been invented yet.
• All you need to thwart it is a nailfile applied to the end of the firing pin.
• As a bonus, a murderer could just scatter brass casings that he picked up from the firing range around the crime scene
• What if the gun used was stolen?
• What if that gun has a replacement firing pin?

That doesn’t stop the medical people at Johns Hopkins from attempting to push for things in a field where they have no experience whatsoever. They just whore out their credentials to whomever is willing to pay.

The paper touts California’s law, passed in 2007, that requires new models of handgun sold to be equipped with this unicorn technology. They don’t mention that the law was found to be unconstitutional.

Then they attempt to make it into a racial issue by claiming this:

One analysis of major U.S. cities found that law enforcement makes an arrest in only
35% of firearm homicides and 21% of firearm assaults when the victim was Black or Hispanic/Latino compared to 53% and 37% respectively when the victim was white.

You know why that is? Because in white neighborhoods, “firearm homicides” are usually solved when the cops arrive to find the shooter still standing over the decedent’s body with the gun still in his hand. Many of them are also legal self defense shootings. Contrast that with black neighborhoods, where the majority of homicides where a firearm was the means employed involve disputes over gang territory, drug deals, or simple drive by shootings. When police arrive, no one claims to have seen a thing.

A large portion of these unsolved shootings are perpetrated by guns that were recently trafficked and diverted into the illegal market.

Criminals steal guns and then use them to commit crimes? I’m shocked. Hey, explain to me how microstamping will in any way help in solving a crime involving a stolen firearm.

For example, an analysis of five years of data from the ATF found that more than 40% (528,855) of crime guns recovered by police and traced were used in a crime within three years of their initial retail sale at a licensed dealer.

Again, misleading. Used in crime? What crime? Theft? What about the guns recovered by police and not traced? This is a carefully worded statement, intended to mislead the reader.

No, this is where the conclusion leads them:

Microstamping should deter gun dealers and owners from selling or transferring their gun to someone who might commit a crime because microstamping evidence should lead law enforcement to the person who initially purchased the gun from a retail seller.

Of course, no criminal will be smart enough to replace the firing pin.

Doctors at Johns Hopkins: What does Michael Bloomberg’s dick taste like?