Spent Casing. What for?

[CDH]

That was my understanding as well in that if you get the casing WITH your pistol and you get to keep it, then you can throw it away.

But if you buy a pistol and DON'T get the casing with it, then you live in a state where the FFL was required to keep it on file.
And somehow, we 2nd Amendment "enthusiasts" still think we're "winning".

Carter

 

[SDC]

How can this be used for registration\fingerprinting?

The idea is that the marks on the breech-face, firing-pin, and ejector will remain constant over a long enough time that the firearm can be matched back to other shootings that occur with it later. Here's an example: the case on the left was a test-fire from a Ruger P85 Mk II 9mm pistol that was seized from a drug dealer. The case on the right was one of several 9mm cases found at the scene of a drug-related attempted murder in the same area 4 months earlier. You can see that not only the firing-pin impressions match up, the striations left around the firing-pin impression (left by the breech-face hole that the firing-pin passes through) also match up. With the "ballistic fingerprinting" scenario in NY and MD, they simply enter a sample from all newly-purchased handguns into the system, and the system scans all crime-scene exhibits against those entries to see if they match. (It's more of a screening system/filter than anything else, since any matches would still have to be confirmed by a firearms and toolmarks examiner the "old" way, using the actual samples under a comparison microscope.)

 

[pharmer]

The last new gun I bought (S&W10-11) came with a set of keys and an empty case in a bag. Don't know what either is good for but I offered to trade them back to the dealer for a full box of ammo. Dontchaknow he didn't go for it. Guess he didn't need them either. Joe

 

[Carl N. Brown]

Ballistics marks left by a gun on casings should not compared
to "fingerprints" or "DNA": it is more comparable to dental records
taken at age eight, or tire prints at the tire store or shoe
prints at the shoe store: as guns, teeth, tires and shoes are
subjected to age and wear, the original charactertistics are
replaced, in part or sometimes wholly, by new characteristics
that result from age and wear.

The "ballistic fingerprint database" idea actually falls under the
gun control heading of "pricing strategy": any excuse to drive
up the price of a gun. It is more a backdoor tax than a legitimate
crime fighting tool.

 

[SDC]

Pharmer, your 10-11 would've been made in 1997; I'm not sure, but those keys might've been for the internal safety lock on your revolver. Is there a small hole on the side of the frame near the cylinder latch? If so, those keys can be used to lock/unlock the internal mechanism.

 

[SDC]

Ballistics marks left by a gun on casings should not compared
to "fingerprints" or "DNA": it is more comparable to dental records
taken at age eight, or tire prints at the tire store or shoe
prints at the shoe store: as guns, teeth, tires and shoes are
subjected to age and wear, the original charactertistics are
replaced, in part or sometimes wholly, by new characteristics
that result from age and wear.

Agreed, the marks will definitely change over time, but since most guns (especially most CRIME guns) aren't actually FIRED enough to change those marks, they would still be relevant to a comparison. OTOH, the ballistic fingerprinting schemes are simply a waste of time and money, since criminals don't go through the bother of buying their guns legally in the first place.

 

[carterbeauford]

Would replacing the firing pin, barrel, ejector etc. render this null and void?

I have a better idea, just hire some guns to work part time in a line up for the local PD. When your gun is a suspect, have him line up with the other guns and see if the accuser can pick him out.

 

[SDC]

Would replacing the firing pin, barrel, ejector etc. render this null and void?

Yes, in the same way that replacing your tires after you drop a dead body off in the countryside would prevent a match being made against your tires; however, since the vast majority of people that commit violent crimes with firearms have trouble remembering to change their UNDERWEAR on a daily basis, I don't see it happening anytime soon.

 

[ChiefThunderstick]

http://teams.gemstone.umd.edu/classof2007/trigger/Proposal.pdf

Here is some interesting reading. Ignore the mislabled gun part on page 3, it only shows the stupidity of the "forensic experts".

 

[SDC]

I can assure you that a "forensic expert" doesn't believe that a slide stop is a firing-pin, and that this was mislabelled by one of the statisticians running that study. In a study that I personally helped out on, the finding was that a typical firearm will change characteristics enough over the course of 100 rounds that the automated system will disregard it as a "possible", but that a "old style" visual comparison is still easily done to confirm a possible match. Since most drug dealers/murderers/freeway killers/etc. don't shoot anywhere near that many rounds between incidents, the system is still easily able to pick them out, but "polluting" it with a bunch of samples that AREN'T either crime gun test-fires or crime scene exhibits is useless.

 

[ChiefThunderstick]

SDC

This topic was about shells from new guns being catalogued. Criminals usually get their guns second hand and many times unclean (body(ies) ) on it already. I don't know about other shooters here, but when I get a new gun, 200 rounds are fired through it first time out, usually within a week, most times no more than 2 days.

One more thing, you would think that this study would seem superflous to a forensic gun expert. Would not an expert know that gun characteristics change over time with wear and tear. This makes the study just another display of wanton expenditure of our hard earned tax dollars.

 

[SDC]

If you look back, I've already said at least THREE times that I believe the sort of "ballistic fingerprinting" going on in NY & MD is a waste of time and money, but it seems to me that many of the people taking that stance here are wholly uninformed and are simply willing to disregard all sorts of forensic firearms examination on the same basis; ie. since "ballistic fingerprinting" is a waste of time and money, ALL forensic firearms examination is a waste of time and money. That is simply not the case, even given expected wear and tear on firearms.

 

[Vern Humphrey]

If I found a cartridge case packaged with my new gun, I'd assume it was in compliance with some cockamamie "ballistic fingerprinting" law.

If I found a casing in the package, I'd know someone at the factory had sausage for lunch.

 

[pharmer]

SDC, I was just being my usual sarcastic ass self. I know what the keys are for, just found it funny to get them with a gun that I bought specifically because there is no lock. Joe

 

[DoubleTapDrew]

Not sure if the info is publicly available or easy to find, but how long have they been doing this and has it ever been able to link a weapon to a crime, or lead to a conviction? I've seen it on CSI but i'm talking about reality

 

[SDC]

In the NY and MD programs (all newly-bought handguns "fingerprinted" at purchase), they've only had ONE successful match; a bar shooting in Maryland with multiple eye-witnesses, any one of which would have been enough to put the guy away. In that case, the "ballistic fingerprinting" scheme was merely "icing on the cake" as it were. When the technology is used the way it SHOULD be (ie. you put all crime scene exhibits on the system, and test all seized firearms), it works pretty well, tying together lots of previously-unsolved crimes, especially drive-bys and drug-related shootings.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

Please note that the "ballistic fingerprint system" that records a
scanned casing from a new gun linked to the (first) purchaser/owner,
is NOT comparable to the NIBIN system of linking CRIME SCENE
casing/bullet scans.

Given 80 million gun owners, 200 million guns, criminal users are
such a small subset (annually 430,000 felony crimes with guns which,
given multiple crimes same gun same perp, means less than 430,000
guns/criminals), that a national ballistic fingerprint system like MD or
NY would mean a huge noise pollution in the database and wasted
resources.

Linking crime scene casing/bullet scans is focussed and useful.
MD NY ballistic fingerprint databases are -- well, one hit and the past
what? 4 years? How many full-time officers could MD have added
for the funds spendt on that database?

 

[SoCalShooter]

They are test rounds fired through the weapon as proof the weapon works, thats my understanding. I reload them.