A few years ago, during the 2005/6 session of the California legislature, an ammunition serialization bill, AB 352, was passed by both houses, but died in Conference on Nov. 30, 2006. A close call!

Nonetheless, beginning in 2007 an ammunition serialization campaign organized by Ammunition Accountability, a lobbying arm of Ammunition Coding System (listen to the interview on NRANews.com posted below for the direct evidence), has been working with state legislatures to get bills passed to mandate ammunition serialization on a state by state basis. It just so happens that Ammunition Coding System would profit handsomely from such mandatory serialization. Although Russ Ford of Ammunition Coding System claimed vigorously during an interview on NRANews.com (posted on January 25, 2008), that they were striving for complete transparency in their activities, as of January 8, 2009, there is still no link from the Ammunition Accountability website to the Ammunition Coding System website, and no link back the other way either.

By clicking on the "Legislation" tab at http://www.ammunitionaccountability.com, you'll see that five state legislatures introduced ammunition serialization resolutions in 2007 and 18 states did so in 2008.

The good news is that ammunition serialization resolutions were introduced in five states in 2007 and 18 states in 2008, but that not a single state passed their resolution. The bad news is that ammunition serialization resolutions were introduced in five states in 2007 and 18 states in 2008. The point is that many state legislatures became more gun-control-friendly with the 2008 elections. So we can't be assured that ammunition serialization bills will continue to be defeated or ignored during this 2009/10 legislative cycle.

Here's an excellent resource to get up to speed on what ammunition serialization is all about and to learn something about Russ Ford and Ammunition Coding System. It's a video of a 43-minute radio interview with Russ Ford on NRANews.com (scroll to bottom of the linked page to see the video). 

For a little flavor of just how bad this ammunition serialization would be consider this excerpt from an online NRA webpage, "Encoded Ammunition"/Bullet Serialization, that was posted on January 25, 2008:

Reasons to Strenuously Oppose This Legislation

People would be required to forfeit all personally-owned non-encoded ammunition. After a certain date, it would be illegal to possess non-encoded ammunition. Gun owners possess hundreds of millions of rounds of ammunition for target shooting, hunting and personal protection. Consider that American manufacturers produce 8 billion rounds each year.

Reloading (re-using cartridge cases multiple times) would be abolished. There would be no way to correspond serial numbers on cartridge cases, and different sets and quantities of bullets.

People would be required to separately register every box of "encoded ammunition." This information would be supplied to the police. Most states do not even require registration of guns. Each box of ammunition would have a unique serial number, thus a separate registration.

Private citizens would have to maintain records, if they sold ammunition to anyone, including family members or friends.

The cost of ammunition would soar, for police and private citizens alike. The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturing Institute estimates it would take three weeks to produce ammunition currently produced in a single day. For reason of cost, manufacturers would produce only ultra-expensive encoded ammunition, which police would have to buy, just like everyone else.

We'll be following and opposing the ongoing Ammunition Accountability campaign in 2009. As such resolutions are introduced in state legislatures, we'll be putting our new state legislative contact service to work to provide an easy way for citizens to contact their state legislators regarding this anti-Second-Amendment campaign. You'll be able to find updates on this ammunition accountability issue at our "Right to Bear Arms Blog" and at our JBS.org Freedom Campaign webpage.