The Mysterious "Taggant"
by Franklin H. Littell
Few readers will remember, but the Anti-Terrorism Bill that recenty cleared Congress included one arcane but highly important clause. That clause was the requirement that ammunition carry identification ("finger-prints").
Although police and public safety officials had tried for many years to get the provision enacted into law, manufacturers of explosives had until now succeeded in de-railing every effort for socially responsible control. They had used their well-financed "front," the National Rifle Association (NRA), to defeat the sensible requirement that explosives carry identification.
That method of identification, which has been available for decades, makes use of markers called "taggants." Through the insertion of "taggants" it becomes possible to trace the path of an artillery shell, machine gun bullet, handmade bomb, or other such killing weapon. From the point of impact back through the middle man to the explosives factory, the arc of responsibility can be discerned.
The "taggant" is a tiny plastic dot, available in many different hues. A pattern can be implanted in explosives without affecting their power, dependability, or accuracy. By that "finger-print" a recovered bullet or shell, landmine or grenade or amateur bomb can be identified and traced to its source.
Until now, the National Rifle Association has been able to block legislation to slow down traffic in anonymous anti-personnel weapons. The NRA`s favorite device to appeal to public opinion has been to publicize the happy scene of some young father teaching his son to plink rabbits. (With light artillery? with machine guns? with hand grenades?) The NRA has also been one of the earliest and most lavish lobbies in the use of cash outlays to Representatives and Senators, helping to give us today "the best Congress money can buy."
The "taggant," a device long available for finger-printing explosives, will not directly limit the anarchic mass distribution of tools for killing but will rather make it possible to identify the chain of responsibility after the damage is done. Still, American companies that have been engaged in the sub rosa and enormously profitable shipment of arms to the Muslim forces in "Bosnia," in breach of the UN embargo, will have to think twice about the possibility that their misconduct may become known to citizens at large, both in America and around the world. And the cartridge manufacturers that have produced the "cop-killers" that penetrate the officer`s vest or automobile will be compelled to be a little less bold in their anti-social behavior.
After the lawyers on the court floors get through with their financially profitable delaying tactics, and after the lawyers on the bench ("judges") play their accustomed role in the delay of law and justice, and after the NRA has used its subventions to pay for another excruciatingly banal series of TV shows about juvenile rabbit hunters to disguise what is really going on, the common sense of the public may win out. The concern of citizens for police safety and lives may unite with the moral outrage of true American patriots, who resent seeing their country play the part of a duplicitous trader, to get the use of "taggants" enforced.
"Taggants" are part of an effective answer to terrorism and rogue military actions, both foreign and domestic. Their use should be expected to also sharply reduce the mayhem in American cities and in the countryside, helping to staunch the flow of explosives to individual criminals, companies of terrorists, and private armies.
Lest we forget, the fighting in the streets between private armies was one of the destructive forces that undermined the Weimar Republic and made the Führer`s promises attractive to a substantial percentage of sober and hard-working Germans. Hitler never won a democratic election or a majority vote, but his minority machine was strong enough that the President, General Hindenburg, appointed him, and prominent industrialists supported him, in establishing a government of centralized violence to replace the anarchy of dispersed violence.
One of the major factors in destroying a republic is by fraud, bribery, and false "fronts" to cause the voters to lose faith in the democratic process. The Anti-Terrorism Act restores hope in America, that in their Constitutional mandate to secure the general welfare the Congress and the President will identify and curtail the illicit manufacture, distribution, and misuse of anti-personnel weaponry.
