CALIFORNIA FINDS NEW WAYS TO INCREASE GUN COSTS

California lawmakers Thursday voted to require weapons manufacturers to ensure that all bullets and cartridges are branded with distinctive serial numbers. Contained in two measures that are intended to help law enforcement solve cases, the proposal would be unique among states if approved by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The gun industry said the proposals were impractical and would force weapons makers to either write off the huge California market or adopt practices that would greatly increase the cost of their wares.

On the weapons measures, though a number of law enforcement officials backed them, there was strong opposition from Republican lawmakers, manufacturers and gun groups. Opponents said both measures would be useless in tracking most crimes back to their sources, because few criminals obtain their weapons through legal channels. "Criminals don't walk into gun stores," said Lawrence Keane, the general counsel for the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers Institute, based in Newtown, Conn. "No other state is even contemplating two such unworkable and ill-considered pieces of legislation."

One of the proposals, from state Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer and approved in the Senate, 21-14, would require manufacturers, starting in 2007, to stamp bullets sold in California with a identification number that police could trace to the store where the ammunition was sold. "We can put individualized serial numbers on cartons of yogurt, on almost everything in society, with very little additional cost," said Sen. Joe Dunn (D-Santa Ana), who sponsored the measure, SB 357.

The second measure, which was approved by the Assembly, 41-37, would mandate that all new semiautomatic handguns, starting in 2007, include technology that would stamp a distinguishing serial number onto a cartridge when it is fired. Assemblyman Paul Koretz (D-West Hollywood), the sponsor of AB 352, said the markings "won't always lead to the criminal, but it will create leads" for police.

Though Koretz said no law enforcement groups opposed his bill, Republican lawmakers criticized it strongly. Assemblyman Todd Spitzer (R-Orange) argued that criminals could plant spent shell casings to mislead investigators. "I'm incredibly concerned about the ability to frame innocent people through the use of this technique," Spitzer said.

U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, wrote to Schwarzenegger last month that he was "strongly opposed to this proposal because of the harmful impact it will have on the manufacturers of ammunition used by our nation's armed services and law enforcement agencies."

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New York: Pizza delivery is risky work: "Three robbers ambushed one man at the back door of a West Side house, kicking him in the head and sending him to the hospital. Another man was slammed into a wall on Laird Street and threatened up close with a large combat knife. Still another stared down the barrel of a gun and watched his car being stolen, leaving him abandoned on Domedion Street on a frigid February evening. These victims weren't looking for trouble. They just wanted to deliver some hot pizzas. All three men were on the job - which the federal government describes as one of the most dangerous professions in America: delivering pizzas.... The risk associated with the job is the nature of the business, some say. Others, though, are fighting back. They're carrying weapons or fighting their attackers. That's what happened April 20 in Niagara Falls, when a pizza deliveryman shot a teenager who tried to rob him with a fake handgun. The incident in a Pierce Avenue alley left 16-year-old Anthony Sheard dead of a gunshot to the head. The 54-year-old deliveryman for Mr. Ventry's Pizza is in counseling to help him deal with the incident. The deliveryman, who has not been named by police for fear of retaliation, was licensed to carry a concealed gun and did so because he was robbed three years ago.... "Every night when we come in, it seems there's one or two guys that get stuck up," said Detective Sgt. Thomas M. Vivian of the Buffalo Police Major Crimes Unit. "It seems like a really quick way for some of these guys to get money." That's why Jeff Owens, 20, a deliveryman for Metro Pizza on Clinton Street, will soon finish his pistol permit class with plans to start carrying a gun on his pizza rounds...."