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This is Glock's explanation
of what their, now out of work, Vice President meant to say.
I am going to wait and see
what happens.
-- Tom Eaker / 21-Feb-03
Eric,
the Administrator for www.GlockTalk.com posted the
following.
Discussion
of Glock Inc 60 Minutes Interview
This thread
is for the discussion of the interview on 60 Minutes. Keep
your comments civil or they will be removed. Thanks. Eric
Editted to Add The Following Statement:
A Statement From Paul Jannuzzo,
Concerning Ballistic Fingerprinting
I talked with Paul Jannuzzo a few minutes ago and faxed me a
statement concerning this matter and he gave me permission
to post it here.
quote:
GLOCK is not for gun registration,
plain and simple.
A database of firearms characteristics that are captured
at the manufacturing site would actually be an argument
against registration. GLOCK is not for retrieving and
capturing characteristics of firearms that have already
been sold, but rather, believes consideration should be
given to capturing the characteristics on new firearms
for sale. This way the characteristics are recorded to a
serial number, not a citizen and his or her gun.
It seems the last point is the most important: The
characteristics are tied to a serial number, not a
person. This means that since the characteristics are
not tied to a person, the ATF would have to do the exact
same trace it is entitled by law to do now. Once they
receive the cartridge casing from a crime scene, they
then would (If the technology works) have a serial
number. That way they can go to the manufacturer and ask
for the first sale, which, in this case, would probably
be to a distributor. Then they go to the distributor and
ask for the name of the dealer and then from the dealer
they go to look at the 4473 to see to whom it was sold.
If the technology is any good, this would seem to be a
good crime-solving tool, not gun registration. They have
the absolute right to do such a trace under the law
right now and they do it every single day, with every
gun manufacturer in existence. To argue against the
above scenario would seem to be an argument for criminal
anonymity.
Too many people are jumping to conclusions. One has to
ask oneself, how could some liberal anti-gunner say
people-registration is necessary if this concept of a
serial number being tied to a firearm's characteristics
is viable? Can it be defeated? Sure it can, but the
jails are not full and overcrowded because criminals are
geniuses.
There are obviously limits that need to be set when one
speaks of Government intrusion into the life of a
citizen, but that is not what we are talking about here.
We are talking about recording the mechanical
characteristics to a firearm and a firearm alone.
Will it work? We do not know. Will it be prohibitively
expensive? Perhaps it will, but we cannot always just
take the knee-jerk reaction and say no because we are
used to saying no. It needs time and study to either
prove or disprove itself. Because criminals are as a big
a threat to civilian ownership of firearms as they
anti-gunners are. If it were not for the criminals, the
anti-gunners would not have an argument against firearms
ownership, except that they do not trust the people.
Would you not love to be around the day that mask
finally comes off?
As noted above, it is a matter of drawing the line in an
intelligent place. That place may be saying 'no' in this
instance, but I do not believe we are at the place and
have the necessary information to make that decision.
Could ballistic fingerprinting be used as an excuse to
go further? Certainly, we are not naive enough to
believe the camel has its nose stuck as far under the
tent as it cares to go. The trick is to draw the line on
the slippery slope in an intelligent place. Obviously, a
national database or DNA registry could be a great
crime-solving tool, but will we as Americans allow that
level of intrusion into our personal privacy? Of course
we will not. Likewise, here there has to be a balancing
of costs(intrusion into personal freedoms) to
benefits(potential crime-solving tool), and since there
is no intrusion into our personal freedom and there is a
potential for it to be a crime-solving tool, the
equation clearly comes down on the side of waiting to
see if the technology has any viability.
Please note that all
pictures are assumed to be in the public domain.
If you have any issues regarding copyright, please email
me and I will remove all offending images.
Copyright © 2003 Tom
Eaker. All rights reserved.
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