Gun Gimmick in Mystery

[stchman]

its been a plot device many times. Changing barrel, firing pin, slide or just have a similar gun.
Ballistic fingerprinting is barely half a step above "lie detectors" Its subjective. The human eye WANTS to see what they brain tells it to look for.
You are looking for "Sandy" in a crowd. Its amazing how many folks look like "Sandy" that normally you would not think do at all.
Its great job security, and way to spend millions. But its main use is to eleminate guns. And provide a model/type.
Most could tell if brass shot from revolver, semi auto, what type of fireing pin hit/type.

My point exactly.

I would be hard pressed to believe that a someone could tell the difference in a slug from two identical Glock 17s.

 

[reddog81]

I think the technology would be very useful for ruling out guns or identifying a specific type of gun used, but identifying specific individual guns would be a crap shoot. How many 9mm Glock barrels are out there that would basically provide the exact same signature. Additionally any lead or copper fouling is going to change the bullet footprint/diameter more so than a microscopic difference in the tooling.

 

[Baldman]

On an episode of 'The Closer' the premise was they switched barrels in 2 guns to make it look like the other person took the shot. I don't recall the rest of it but I'm sure you can google it or check on Demand,

 

[Jim Watson]

About 60 years ago comic strip detective Kerry Drake was framed by taking a bullet fired from his .38 - I misremember how the offender got the bullet, but he got it - patching it, loading it into a smoothbore muzzleloader, and shooting someone he wanted out of the way and blamed on Drake. Took a lot of gumshoe to clear the hero.

 

[the Real Alpo]

230RN - Vera, Velda. You got me. Been a loooong time since I read Mike. But his buddy the homicide cop was Pat, his rod was Betsy, and he only kept six rounds in Betsy, which even back in high school when I was reading them, struck me as extremely dumb. Right up there with Spenser keeping an empty under the hammer of his J-frame Smith.

 

[the Real Alpo]

Skeeter article on Accidental Discharges.

Texas cop, practicing his draw in the locker room, put one through the wall AND through the Chief's brand new uniform, which was hanging in his office. I think the gun model was Colt Official Police. Another department, fifty or so miles away, issued the same gun, but one department used blue and the other was nickel.

The guilty guy made a fast trip to see a buddy at the other department, and the two of them visited a gunsmith, where both barrels were removed, the blue barrel was nickeled while the nickel barrel was stripped and blued. Then the barrels were installed on the other guns.

So when the Chief, as the shooter expected, required ballistics run on every gun in the department, to see who shot his uniform, nobody's matched.

 

[230RN]

P5 Guy asked,

How different are the barrels of Dan Wesson revolvers?

I was kind of wondering about that myself. Do they rifle a long barrel blank and cut it up to make the different lengths for the revolvers, or do they cut the blanks to different lengths and then rifle them?

Given the apparent vagaries* of ballistic matching anyhow, would it make any difference in terms of "bullet fingerprinting" which way they did it?

Would it make any difference if the original rifling process was "button rifling" versus "hammer forged rifling" versus "cut rifling?"

And would internal chrome plating of a barrel totally mask any "uniqueness" to individual barrels?

Terry

* I guess if you get an exact match, you're OK in terms of evidence, but if there are any variations, the evidence is suspect.

 

[MIL-DOT]

Skeeter article on Accidental Discharges.

Texas cop, practicing his draw in the locker room, put one through the wall AND through the Chief's brand new uniform, which was hanging in his office. I think the gun model was Colt Official Police. Another department, fifty or so miles away, issued the same gun, but one department used blue and the other was nickel.

The guilty guy made a fast trip to see a buddy at the other department, and the two of them visited a gunsmith, where both barrels were removed, the blue barrel was nickeled while the nickel barrel was stripped and blued. Then the barrels were installed on the other guns.

So when the Chief, as the shooter expected, required ballistics run on every gun in the department, to see who shot his uniform, nobody's matched.

I'm gonna call BS on this whole story . So, nobody was in this police locker room, or even in the entire police department building, that would've heard this gun shot?
And even practicing quick draws, it's gonna be real difficult to accidentally pull a DA revolver trigger, especially for a cop familair enough with his piece that he practices quick draws.
And the bullet would've gone through the uniform,and eneded up who-knows-where. And, whatever it hit, and then being dug out, could've done enough damage to wreck the ballistic evidence (wait,lemme guess: it landed in a bale of hay!!)
And then this chief was supposed to have retreived the bullet, then gone to a ballistics tech with it, like Captain Queeg with the strawberries, then had everyone in the dept submit samples, and all the while, 2 cops are getting rush jobs on not just the barrel switch, but two refinish jobs ? And this would take both their pistols out of commision for how long?? (and like this whole scenario isn't going to seriously tweek the gunsmith's Spydie senses).
Also, just imagine a scenario where cop 1 goes to cop 2, and says, "hey bro, do me a solid, and let's switch gun barrels, so some stupid crap I pulled can't be ballistically traced back to me", and cop 2 is just gonna say, "yeah, sure, why not"???
Not a friggin' chance !!

 

[jmorris]

It's called suspension of disbelief he was a lawman early on. 1974 untill the late 80's he was a writer as a job and his works even included some fiction.

 

[svtruth]

My My

very edifying, as usual
Sounds like we need a real forensic scientist to give us a lecture
Thanks for all your contributions

 

[the Real Alpo]

You go dig Mr. Skelton up and tell him he's a liar. I just reported what he wrote.

 

[hemiram]

How different are the barrels of Dan Wesson revolvers?

They would be as different between them as any other barrel on any other gun. Like say a pair of S&W 686 barrels would show differences in rifling, and so would a pair of DW's. I can tell the difference just by looking at both 6" stainless barrels I have. The one that came on my 715 is a lot smoother than the one on my blued 15-2. I got that one off ebay for a super price, so I can't really complain. It shoots fine.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

The gun manufactoring tools wear as they are used and are replaced as they wear out and start to reach maximum spec. Firing ammunition and cleaning (or not) can wear barrels, breech faces, firing pins, extractors and ejectors, changing their microscopic features.

They won't thoroughly clean or allow extraneous testing of the MLK assassination rifle apparently because part of its ballistic engraving on the bullets is due to jacket metal deposited in the grooves of the rifling.

On a similar note, former prosecutor turned crime novelist Allison Leotta wrote that a firearm has the worst surfaces for maintaining fingerprints and if you can find a usable fingerprint on a gun it is rare, not common.

This discussion reminds me, I missed my opportunity to buy a H&K USP conversion barrel, outside profiled for a .40S&W pistol but bored and chambered for 9x19mm Parabellum. They apparently don't make'em anymore.