Thread: Firearm Registry Data Questions and Answers

Having firearms with the same serial number is more common than you'd think, especially considering that the original purpose was to ensure the bits that needed to be together (bolt and action) stayed together. The older design military firearms used a repeating block of numbers and letters that could be repeated several times in a year, which means that each factory might have produced 4 or 5 rifles of the same number each year. In those days, the firearms went into a rack and had a corresponding rack number that was stamped onto the firearm to make sure that they were accounted for. The use of a serial number in the context of identification is a fairly modern idea. How that's going to work in the modern world is something we are going to have to crash test dummy - it's the people interpreting the data that will make or break the system.