DAVE KOPEL AND PAUL BLACKMAN WRITE that “ballistic fingerprinting” won’t stop criminals, and is just a stalking-horse for gun prohibition. Excerpt:

From the viewpoint of the prohibition lobbies, however, the misnamed “ballistic-fingerprinting” scheme does have advantages. The scheme amounts to partial gun registration today (in any form that could be politically viable in the legislature), setting the stage for more comprehensive gun registration in the future (without which the scheme would be useless). Since “gun registration” is a political loser almost everywhere, the gun-prohibition lobbies have the opportunity to push for registration under a new, high-tech name. And what is the purpose of gun registration? The former president of the group currently known as the Brady Campaign, the late Nelson Shields, explained registration’s purpose in a 1976 New Yorker interview:

The first problem is to slow down the number of handguns being produced and sold in this country. The second problem is to get handguns registered. The final problem is to make possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition — except for the military, police, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors — totally illegal.

Gun registration has been a very useful tool for gun confiscation in England, Australia, New York City, California, and many other places. Criminals don’t register their guns, but many law-abiding citizens do, and when the government makes ownership of the registered gun illegal, the gun-owner, knowing that his gun is already on a government list, has little choice but to surrender his gun to the government furnace. This is a pleasing result for the gun prohibition groups, but if this is the public policy direction for America, we at least ought to acknowledge what is being done, rather than pretending that gun registration — cloaked in a high-tech euphemism — is going to solve crimes.

This is true of course.