A long time lobbyist for the National Rifle Association said a measure introduced this week to require every round of ammunition in the state be stamped with a unique serial number is the worst bill he’s ever seen.

State Rep. Sonya Harper, D-Chicago, officially introduced the measure this week. She said the effort is meant to reduce gun violence by being able to track where ammunition originated.

NRA Legislative Liaison Todd Vandermyde said there are all kinds of problems with the bill. One problem is how much it would cost the state’s ammo manufacturers to buy new technology to print unique numbers on each round. “Who, or anybody else, is going to want to have to spend millions of dollars in setting up new manufacturing processes, new equipment, new capital investments and how are they going to recover any of that in the short term?”

Vandermyde said there’s also a huge problem of introducing lasers stamping technology into an environment rich with gunpowder.

Shortly after announcing the legislation Harper said the cost to manufacturers would be “very minimal” but several of the state’s manufacturers said the cost would put them out of business.

Jim Stinar owns SNS Casting in Flanagan, a company that makes one of the components of ammunition. Stinar said if this bill becomes law, his shop, with its seven employees, would have to close down. “The technology that would be required to do this would be insurmountable to anybody,” he said.

Stinar said it would even be impossible for large manufacturers that make a million rounds a day to comply.

It’s not just jobs that would be lost, there would also be another level of bureaucracy tracking law abiding gun owners.

Vandermyde said the legislation would add a tax on every round sold in the state. “Then they want to sit there and record every person, the amount of ammunition you buy and the caliber in which you buy it.”

“It’s bad enough that we have the (Firearm Owners Identification Card) and there’s a registry of gun owners but now they want to get into what we’re shooting, what we’re buying and the rest of it.”

Harper said in an email the cost increase for consumers also “would be very minimal being no more than two cents more on a 50 round box of 9mm bullets that costs anywhere from $10-$25 now.”

Vandermyde said the legislation would also require imported ammo to be serialized, something he said would lead to Illinois being an ammo-free state.