There’s a firelock musket that once hung in the Massachusetts Senate Chambers. It once belonged to Capt. William Parker, the commanding officer of the Lexington Training Band. He carried the storied firearm at the Battle of Lexington, where Massachusetts Minutemen – a militia formed by the people – when the “shot heard ‘round the world’ sparked the American Revolution.
That was, of course, the Minutemen responding to the British army marching on Lexington and Concord to seize gunpowder. Capt. Parker used his firelock to defend against tyranny at Lexington Green and again at “Parker’s Revenge.”
The firelock was moved to a display in the Massachusetts State House in 2018. It might be time for the Massachusetts legislature to donate it to a more fitting place of honor. Beacon Hill doesn’t stand for defending American freedoms. It’s a den of thieves who stack committees with conflicts of interest and ethics violations to extinguish Second Amendment rights.
Notwithstanding last year’s legislative gymnastics to immediately enact the most stringent gun control laws and seal them with a provision protecting them against suspension while being challenged, there’s a new committee to explore firearm technology that could usher in unworkable requirements. Massachusetts lawmakers, led by Speaker Ron Mariano, are stacking the deck with the who’s who of gun control.
The names would be shocking, if it weren’t for what has become a pattern of Beacon Hill legislative chicanery. Witness Monday’s meeting of the Massachusetts Technology Commission, charged with exploring the viability of requiring microstamping on every firearm sold in the Bay State.
The commission includes Josh Horwitz, the Co-Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions. He was also the previous Executive Director of the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, which is funded by antigun billionaire Michael Bloomberg who also bankrolls Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action gun control groups. There’s also Monte Frank, Chair of the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Gun Violence. He is a legal advisor to Newtown Action Alliance, another gun control group. New Jesey’s Lyndsay Ruotolo, New Jersey’s First Assistant Attorney General, and Ravi Ramanathan, the Director of New Jesey’s Statewide Affirmative Firearms Enforcement Office, also presented at the commission’s meeting.
But the most ridiculous commission member is Todd Lizotte, the President and CEO of Bold Laser Automation. He’s also the patent holder of microstamping technology and stands to reap a financial windfall if Massachusetts requires this unproven, technologically unfeasible requirement on firearms sold in the Commonwealth. Lizotte himself has co-authored two peer-reviewed papers in a forensic firearms journal on microstamping. One concluded: “Legitimate questions exist related to both the technical aspects, production costs, and database management associated with microstamping that should be addressed before wide-scale implementation is legislatively mandated.”
Microstamping simply doesn’t work. Alphanumeric codes are microscopically laser-engraved on the end of a firing pin. That’s the mechanism that strikes a chambered cartridge, setting off the chain of events to expel a bullet. Theoretically, the code is microstamped onto the primer on the back of the cartridge, which, on most firearms, is ejected. But that doesn’t always happen, as Lizotte previously testified in California. It’s also easily defeated by swapping out the firing pin for one without a code or, more sinisterly, with a simple piece of sandpaper or your wife’s nail file. Criminals are known to obliterate serial numbers on illicitly obtained firearms. Scraping off the code from a firing pin isn’t a stretch for criminals.
Lizotte testified that microstamping didn’t work when California created a requirement that every new handgun model sold in the state must have it. New Jersey’s Attorney General “determined” last year that microstamping works based on testing conducted by Lizotte on his own technology. Leaving aside the obvious conflict of interest, New Jersey’s so-called test proved microstamping doesn’t work. That might be why the report was a year passed the deadline. New Jersey’s report, predictably, pronounced the technology as “viable.”
No firearm manufacturer has incorporated this technology because it doesn’t work. In March 2023, a federal court in California issued a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the state’s “not unsafe handgun” law, including the microstamping mandate. California’s attorney general appealed certain sections of the decision, but not the microstamping requirement. As a result, the state’s approved handgun roster has grown from 493 to 952 handguns without a single gun including microstamping technology. Even the state that birthed microstamping mandates know it is a lost cause.
With committees like these, it might be time to find a new home for Capt. Parker’s firelock. That symbol of freedom doesn’t have a home in the Massachusetts State House any longer.
— Lawrence G. Keane
Lawrence G. Keane is the Senior Vice President and General Counsel for NSSF, The Firearm Industry Trade Association.
