Maryland scraps gun "fingerprint" database after 15 failed years

[usmarine0352_2005]

Good riddance.







http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-bullet-casings-20151107-story.html

Maryland scraps gun "fingerprint" database after 15 failed years

Maryland spent millions on a gun database that solved no crimes.

11/08/15


Millions of dollars later, Maryland has officially decided that its 15-year effort to store and catalog the "fingerprints" of thousands of handguns was a failure. Since 2000, the state required that gun manufacturers fire every handgun to be sold here and send the spent bullet casing to authorities. The idea was to build a database of "ballistic fingerprints" to help solve future crimes. "Obviously, I'm disappointed," said former Gov. Parris N. Glendening, a Democrat whose administration pushed for the database to fulfill a campaign promise. "It's a little unfortunate, in that logic and common sense suggest that it would be a good crime-fighting tool."

But the system — plagued by technological problems — never solved a single case. Now the hundreds of thousands of accumulated casings could be sold for scrap.

Worse, the system Maryland bought created images so imprecise that when an investigator submitted a crime scene casing, the database software would sometimes spit out hundreds of matches. The state sued the manufacturer in 2009 for $1.9 million, settling three years later for $390,000.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

I read long ago that gun control advocates admitted the Maryland ballistic fingerprint data base would not solve any crimes, but they were for it because it raised the cost of buying a gun by an average of $55 dollars, and that to them was good because it restricted gun sales. Remember what the Supreme Court said over a century ago when a state tried to ban the national bank and, when the state couldn't ban it, imposed a punitive state tax on the national bank: the power to tax is also the power to destroy what you cannot ban outright. The ballistic fingerprint was just a sin tax against guns; tax money that could have been used for programs known to help policing or fight against crime.

I wonder, if like micro-stamping, this great and wunnerful anti-gun crime-fighting tool was sold to the politicians by lobbyists for the vendors of the Holy Batman! Gee Whiz Gimmick.

Wasn't the Canadian long gun registry (that failed to deliver any crime-fighting wonders as promised and was repealed after 17 years) also promoted by those with a buck to make, lobbyists for the computer industry that benefited from the establishment of a national registry of rifles and shotguns?

Predictions:
o Hillary will make a national ballistic fingerprint database part of her campaign platform.
o Media Matters will blame Fox News and John Lott for undermining the "fingerprint" database with faux research.

 

[Vern Humphrey]

"Obviously, I'm disappointed," said former Gov. Parris N. Glendening, a Democrat whose administration pushed for the database to fulfill a campaign promise. "It's a little unfortunate, in that logic and common sense suggest that it would be a good crime-fighting tool."

The problem, Parris, is that you don't HAVE either logic or common sense.

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

Great!

Now if we can just get MD to scrap the rest of their oppressive gun control laws, that would be AWESOME!

Then maybe I can quit worrying about carrying/transporting firearms in my vehicle whenever I'm visiting a brother in the DC/Manasas area and might be driving around various places that cross over into MD.

 

[The Alaskan]

Good news, even by my standards.

Lots of "good ideas" don't work out in the real world.

I'm surprised they had the character to admit they were wrong.

 

[bannockburn]

Dear former Gov. Glendening:

If you had used logic and common sense in the first place you wouldn't have wasted so much of the taxpayers hard earned money on such a flawed and worthless program.

Kudos for finally realizing that some 15 years later.

 

[mbopp]

Good news - NY scrapped their COBIS database
Bad news - we got the (un)SAFE Act.

 

[Slamfire]

Another example of what Corporate pseudo science and campaign contributions will accomplish. Lots of taxpayer money down the drain and high Corporate profits.

 

[Red Wind]

And Canada still has their handgun registry. Since 1934, 81 long years, and the RCMP says it has yet to help solve a single crime except perhaps tangentially.

 

[Deaf Smith]

15 years huh? Some people got cushy jobs for 15 years at state expense (and no doubt a nice retirement package.)

Since I'm a programmer let me tell you for such a system they would need a form of document imaging (the photos of such things as the fired bullets, fired cartridge cases, another related marks) of each and every gun shipped into Maryland. That means a forensics team to do test every gun and another team to do the input of the data. Plus a network to allow any agency to access the data (VPN probably.) Plus on the other end another team to make images of the evidence found, transmit it, and hope the images are clear enough to evaluate against those on the database.

It's alot more complex than that but thats just a start of what it would take.

So it failed. Bet they used some good-old-boys who had connections to the legislature to get the cushy jobs. Course it failed.

Deaf

 

[USAF_Vet]

And Canada still has their handgun registry. Since 1934, 81 long years, and the RCMP says it has yet to help solve a single crime except perhaps tangentially.

Michigan has a handgun registry, too. To my knowledge, it hasn't put a single criminal behind bars, let alone return a stolen pistol to its rightful owner.

I would like to see it go away.

 

[toivo]

Good news - NY scrapped their COBIS database
Bad news - we got the (un)SAFE Act.

Slightly better news: the "SAFE" Act's ammo BG check database was scrapped when the state gov realized it was going to cost them $100 million to get it up and running. Suddenly "safety" wasn't so "urgent." Now we can buy ammo online again -- for the time being.

 

[22-rimfire]

Real life is not as it is pictured on NCIS.

The amount of government waste is scary on flawed laws. But they succeeded in raising the price of almost every new firearms sold in Maryland. That was a win for progressives.

 

[CoRoMo]

There are a few more states that require this of handgun manufacturers. New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, I think? Not sure of all of them, but if they'll all drop their programs, it'll maybe lower the manufacturing costs a bit.

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

Real life is not as it is pictured on NCIS.

If there's anything I learned about NCIS (NIS back in the day, when I first learned this valuable lesson), it's that NCIS isn't there to learn the "truth". They're there to investigate and gather enough evidence to get a conviction.

And that's EXACTLY how their questioning goes, too.

The lessons I took away from that were:

1. If you're being questioned, do NOT waive your rights.

2. If you're being questioned, do NOT answer anything without your attorney present.


I have never watched NCIS, except briefly in passing when other people were watching. It has no real practical basis in reality, legal or otherwise.

So the valuable lesson for OTHER people to take away from this is:

"TV shows are for ENTERTAINMENT, not legal advice."

 

[Deaf Smith]

Well you guys did hear DHS spent a BILLION DOLLARS on a document imaging system for their immigration system and now have online... one document.

Yes one.. billion, not million, dollars.

So you see Maryland got off cheap.

Deaf

 

[Red Wind]

^Yeah, and I think we got 9 guys/gals in Syria for many millions of dollars. But at 20 trillion and counting debt, who cares?

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

You guys aren't properly appreciative of our government spending habits and the efforts of our great President to get us through our economic woes.

Ever so thankful was I, after watching President Obama spend us trillions more into debt during his time in office, when he froze my annual cost of living for three consecutive years because we must all make sacrifices to limit spending and debt.

And a grateful man I was when he then deigned to give me a paltry 1% annual cost of living pay raise for the next two years, as he jacked the federal minimum wage up 39.3% in one fell swoop.

You guys are so unappreciative.

 

[taliv]

(this probably needs to get back on topic fast. this isn't the place to discuss politics, even bad politics.)

 

[SuperNaut]

So what does this bring us to?

Hair Sample Analysis = Junk Science
Psychological Profiling = Junk Science
Fingerprint Analysis = Junk Science
Fire Pattern Analysis = Junk Science
Blood Spatter Analysis = Junk Science
Bite Mark Analysis = Junk Science
Bullet Lead Analysis = Junk Science
Firing Pin Analysis = Junk Science
Ballistic Analysis = Junk Science

Basically the whole of Forensic Science - isn't.

Remember how "scientists" would say that the chances that a DNA match was wrong was "a one in a million chance?" Turns out it is more like 1 in 3. Kinda shakes your belief in the system, a little.

Or maybe a lot...

 

[tactikel]

Just a program to enrich the company's investors (and possibly some politicians-'The Chicago way"), and to hassle lawful gun owners.
Did anyone inform these " geniuses" that as simple tools firearms are easily modified and polished. Any chamber and boltface can be polished in minutes to render the "registry" useless. DUH!