The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) and the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute (SAAMI) are seeking an appeal in their legal fight against California’s 2007 law requiring that new handguns incorporate “microstamping” technology to qualify for sale in the state.
The original suit, filed last year, was dismissed in July by a California judge who cited sovereign immunity—the idea that “the King can do no wrong”—to wave away the inconvenient fact that microstamping is not only easily defeated by criminals and unworkable on a practical level, but also economically impossible to implement as mandated by the law.
To qualify for legal sale under California’s “Unsafe Handgun Act,” handguns must have a variety of arbitrary characteristics including, beginning in 2007, “microstamping” technology on new firearms. In part as a result, the number of models that may be legally sold has dropped by 30 percent in less than two years.
