The Utah Firearms Association OPPOSES this Bill.
This bill is currently in our Bill Tracker. You can monitor it’s status from there. The full body of the bill can be viewed on the le.utah.gov site here.
- To email, SMS or call your representative about this bill, find your legislator’s contact information here at le.utah.gov.
- To contact the sponsor, Senator Karen Mayne, email kmayne@le.utah.gov, or call or text 801-232-6648.
Serialization of firearms has been a federally-established requirement on all newly manufactured firearms since the Gun Control Act of 1968, and defacing them has carried penalty since the law went into effect.
This bill not only aims to increase the penalty for defacing a serial number from a class-A misdemeanor to a third-degree felony, but also criminalize the possession of a firearm with an altered serial number and make it a third-degree felony.
Like most laws proposed by advocates of firearms prohibition, this bill aims to pass responsibility of the criminal act to someone who didn’t perform the act; in this case, criminalize the individual who is in possession of a firearm with an “altered” serial number, instead of the individual that broke existing State and federal law to deface or alter it in the first place.
Criminals are known to already deface serial numbers in an effort to make tracking a firearm’s owner more difficult, and there is no reason to believe that increasing the penalty from a misdemeanor to a felony will amount to any effective deterrent.
This bill is both ineffective and onerous.
The Utah Firearms Association urges you to oppose this bill and contact your congressmen and implore them to do the same.