After years of contentious debate and stonewalling on behalf of gun rights advocacy groups, microstamping is now a reality in the Golden State.

California Attorney General Kamala Harris announced on Friday that a 2007 microstamping bill signed into law by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger could finally be enforced because the private patents that precluded the law from taking effect had expired.

“The patents have been cleared, which means that this very important technology will help us as law enforcement in identifying and locating people who have illegally used firearms,” Harris said at a Los Angeles news conference.

For clarification, gun microstamping is a technical process that uses laser technology to engrave microscopic gun information such as make, model and serial number on the tip of the gun’s firing pin. Desired information can also be engraved on the breech face or other parts of a firearm.

When a microstamped gun is fired, the stamped etchings are transferred onto both the cartridge casing and the round. In theory, law enforcement can then trace spent casings and fired cartridges to the “smoking gun.”

Yet, in reality, as pointed out in previous Guns.com articles, microstamping is a seriously flawed technology that is easily circumvented. This is not conjecture or biased pro-gun rhetoric; several independent, peer-reviewed studies have confirmed this fact.

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Citing concerns about First Amendment erosion based on revelations about covert Justice Department probes of journalists, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today called the government snooping “deplorable, if not despicable.”

“It is disturbing that James Rosen, who covers the State Department for Fox News was targeted,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “but now published reports suggest that the DOJ, in a separate effort, apparently also targeted Fox News reporter William La Jeunesse, who broke several stories about Operation Fast and Furious.

“We find this deplorable and despicable,” he added, “and a clear sign that the Obama administration is not simply out of touch, it is out of control. It is time for Congress to put a check on the Executive branch and rein these people in, and it is also time for Attorney General Eric Holder to go.”

Gottlieb noted that, “It is the role of the press to be a watchdog on government, not the other way around.” He said Rosen and La Jeunesse “not only did nothing wrong, they did their jobs. In La Jeunesse’s case, he has been instrumental in exposing the outrage known as Fast and Furious to the American people.”

Fast and Furious is the scandalous Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives gun trafficking operation that authorized at least 2,000 AK-type rifles to be purchased by known criminal suspects. It was terminated immediately after a gun associated with the operation was recovered at the scene of a gunfight in 2010 that resulted in the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

“It should not surprise anyone that the First Amendment is every bit as important to us as the Second Amendment,” Gottlieb observed. “The Citizens Committee is not an organization that cherry picks from the Bill of Rights. Unlike the Obama administration, we revere all the individual rights protected by the Constitution, while they seem intent on ignoring its very existence.

“In light of these scandals,” he concluded, “it is clear why gun owners are being joined by growing legions of other citizens in their distrust of government.”

On February 19, 2012, a group of sixteen of the nation’s top snowboarders and skiers slipped through the Stevens Pass ski area boundary gate and its “continue at your own risk” warning sign. Located in Washington’s Cascade Mountains, their ultimate destination was a backcountry run called Tunnel Creek, which is renowned for its open meadows, smooth powder, and exhilarating 3,000-foot vertical drop, but also for its regular avalanches. The conditions that day were worrisome for an already vulnerable area: the forecast rated the avalanche danger as “considerable to high” with “human-triggered avalanches likely.” But a storm had just dropped a ton of new, deep powder on the mountain, and members of the group did not want to miss out on the thrills of both making the run and doing it with a bunch of experts who rarely found themselves all together.

Still, as the skiers and snowboarders assembled at the top of Tunnel Creek, many were apprehensive. As John Branch wrote in a special feature for The New York Times:

“Unspoken anxiety spread among those unfamiliar with the descent. The mere size of the group spooked some. Backcountry users of all types — skiers, snowboarders, snowmobilers and climbers — worry about how much of a load a slope can absorb before it gives way. They worry about people above them causing an avalanche. When it comes to the backcountry, there is usually not safety in large numbers.”

No one gave voice to their worry, however. “If it was up to me, I would never have gone backcountry skiing with 12 people [a few in the group had split off],” Megan Michelson, ESPN journalist and member of the Tunnel Creek group remembered. “That’s just way too many. But there were sort of the social dynamics of that — where I didn’t want to be the one to say, you know, ‘Hey, this is too big a group and we shouldn’t be doing this.’ I was invited by someone else, so I didn’t want to stand up and cause a fuss.” Other members of the group were uneasy too, but told themselves that the experts of the group (which included the director of marketing at Stevens Pass) wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t safe. Many in the group had been down the backcountry run dozens of times, and the new guys figured they’d just follow their lead. “There’s no way this entire group can make a decision that isn’t smart,” ski photographer Keith Carlsen said to himself. “Of course it’s fine, if we’re all going. It’s got to be fine.”

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The Cuomo administration has released a confidential e-mail from a reporter seeking information for a story.

The reporter, Fred Dicker of the New York Post, called it “highly unprofessional” and shocking.

The Cuomo administration gave Dicker’s e-mail to 10 competitors on Monday. It also released a spokesman’s response about a high-level executive leaving the administration, the subject of Dicker’s query.

Dicker had noted in his initial e-mail inquiry on Friday that he was working on a competitive story and said his request was confidential.

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Ladies of New York, you are free to walk bare-breasted through the city! New York City’s 34,000 police officers have been instructed that, should they encounter a woman in public who is shirtless but obeying the law, they should not arrest her. This is a good step towards gender parity in public spaces.

This decision means that breast exposure is not considered public lewdness, indecent exposure, or disorderly conduct. It also notes that, should a crowd form around a topless woman, the officer should instruct the crowd to disperse and then respond appropriately if it does not. Relative coverage is no longer a factor.

This policy shift comes after several years of litigation and protest. In the 1992 case People v. Ramona Santorelli and Mary Lou Schloss, the New York Court of Appeals ruled in favor of two women who were arrested with five others for exposing their breasts in a Rochester park, holding the law void as discriminatory. The ruling was put to the test in 2005, when Jill Coccaro bared her breasts on Delancey Street in New York, citing the 1992 decision, and was detained for twelve hours. She subsequently successfully sued the city for $29,000.

In 2007, Go Topless, a national organization supporting gender equality in shirtlessness laws, established Go Topless Day. Dozens of women protest – often topless – in thirty cities around the United States, promoting equal rights to be shirtless. Protests usually include chants of “Free your breasts. Free your minds” and a song “Let ‘em Breathe” to the tune of the Beatles’ “Let it Be.”

While some who have witnessed these events have suggested that “[t]his is extreme liberalism and why America’s in decline” or “[i]t’s degrading to women,” others have been supportive. One man even said he would encourage his wife to join them.

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The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with… oh, the heck with it. We now take you to the Lone Star State.

The victim of an armed home invasion in Houston has turned the tables on the brazen intruders after they stuffed him into a closet that turned out to be the place where he stores his gun.

Police say it all started at around 2pm Tuesday when three men broke into a home in the 8200 block of Braeburn Valley Drive and assaulted the resident.

After a brief scuffle, the hapless perpetrators shoved the man into a closet, not knowing that there was a gun in there.

For the benefit of the usual list of detractors, yes… there’s a definite advantage when the criminals turn out to be complete idiots. Or at least really poor planners. But in defense of the system here, it was still three against one and they were armed also. We now return you to our story, already in progress.

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CES is about technology of all kinds; while we’re busy covering cameras, TVs, and CPUs, there’s a huge number of products that fall outside our normal coverage. Austin-based startup TrackingPoint isn’t typical Ars fare, but its use of technology to enable getting just the perfect shot was intriguing enough to get me to stop by and take a look at the company’s products.

TrackingPoint makes “Precision Guided Firearms, or “PGFs,” which are a series of three heavily customized hunting rifles, ranging from a .300 Winchester Magnum with a 22-inch barrel up to a .338 Lapua Magnum with 27-inch barrel, all fitted with advanced computerized scopes that look like something directly out of The Terminator. Indeed, the comparison to that movie is somewhat apt, because looking through the scope of a Precision Guided Firearm presents you with a collection of data points and numbers, all designed to get a bullet directly from point A to point B.

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