There's a poll asking whether ammo should have bar codes.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/20110926_Activists_want_bullets_to_carry_bar_codes.html?cmpid=124488469&130561098=Y&submit=Vote&mr=1&oid=2&pid=130561098&cid=8500281
Let your thoughts be known, whatever they are.
-RPD
Put an indelible bar code on the face of every gang member. Do not punish me for what they do.
Serial #'s on guns have done nothing to stop or even slow down violence. Why would this be any diffrent?
Is the question, "Who fired the shot that took her daughter?" or is it who bought the ammunition. I can only see the later being accomplished.
Burglary being rampant in areas in and around this very urban crime ridden community could only serve to further complicate the issue. (hopefully we all keep our ammunition secure as appropriate to our area of residence).
Are we going begin sending victims of burglary to jail because a criminal stole their ammunition? If a negative can't be pr oven, how are the innocent victims going to prove that they did not fire the fatal shot?
Like many other things here in the Northeastern part of the US, people are constantly occupied with how the government can protect them from themselves.
Tragic is the death of any young person at the hands of lawless thugs. But bar coding bullets is yet another example of a "feel good" measure.
It does get tiring seeing the price of a few "feeling good" while the rest of us pick up the tab!
As most here probably are of the same opinion, I'll simply try to articulate the technology as I understand it and the real goal of using it.
Tracking bullets is near impossible and incredibly expensive to do correctly. Serializing each bullet would cause prices to skyrocket as it would require tiny stamping or laser engraving per bullet. As the reality would require a 3D bar code (similar to UPS or FedEx use on packages) to be able to fit on a 17 Mach 2 rounds at 17 grains, the detail needed makes it very expensive as billions of rounds of ammo are produced each year. (Not sure on number but pretty sure over a billion just in 22lr. ) Now, not only will this super small barcode need to have an individual number per bullet, or group of 10, it will need to stay readable after it is used in the field...like lodged in a wall.
Imagine .17 Mach 2 hollow point hunting round Lodged in a brick, find a area that the barcode stays legible, it would have to be microscopic and all over the bullet. Now the only items I know of that have some of that level of tracking (and not as small as needed for this) is surgical implants.
The other idea is for every gun to have a unique stamp it placed on the bullet itself, this would also have to survive impact with said brick wall, and somehow your gun would have to make it perfect with everything else happening in the chamber at the moment of firing.
I am going on a limb here and thinking it would affect accuracy, or it would not work past a few hundred rounds.
Now I will speculate on the reasons people are trying to go this route.
It is a way to regulate guns to death, and people who do not shoot often would not see how this could be an issue, and it seems easy as pie.
This has nothing to do with catching bad people, it has everything to do with seeming like a logical idea that extremist would be against.
In reality it is the equivalent of requiring everyone with a car to have an onboard AI unit that overrides the driver when they make a mistake.
Mercedes is the only one with that tech at the moment and it does not work as well as advertised, to do that we would all have to pay around $200K for a car in 3 or 4 years, since the technology does not exist today to do it reliably all the time every time. And that is what would be needed for Law enforcement to track bullets. Frangible, powder bullets, Snake Shot... would all disappear from the landscape. .22LR would cost at least 5 times as much and only solid steal or some hard metal would be allowed so that it does not deform and loose legibility.
Shooting would become only a sport for the rich. Shotgun shooting only for the extremely rich.
That is my personal opinion; I am waiting to be proven wrong, or even a decent alternative outcome presented.
This push it trying to get popular sentiment off guns and on to ammo, as the PR against the guns has been lost for now. The PR against bullets (since they are what really do the damage) is a new front. However, as posted above, the PR against Violent Felons, has not been tried.
Those are my thoughts on the subject.