Ballistics Fingerprinting

January 29, 2003 1:41 PM

Large scale ballistic fingerprinting of guns doubtful. The California Attorney General's Office has said that large scale ballistic fingerprinting of all weapons is not yet practical. Ballistic fingerprinting spawned much discussion earlier on MeFi. I couldn't find the complete report online yet.
posted by stevefromsparks (5 comments total)

Seeing as it ballistic fingerprinting would be completely useless in the face of terrorists and their horrible jeweler's files of mass destruction, I'm glad to see even the stupidest state with regards to gun legislation (not even most restrictive, mind, merely stupidest) say this.*

Let's not even mention the efforts by John Bin Fogarty and his efforts to produce bullets from *gasp* scratch. One truly shudders to think.

*stupidity calculated based on number of gun laws passed by merit of 'does it look scary' alone instead of the more logical basis of 'is it used to commit crime?'
posted by Ryvar at 1:50 PM on January 29, 2003

A little of topic, I was for this, yet. As you hear about folks shot with their own guns or even the crook who uses a stolen one.

Also something that Bush said last night reminded me of a freedom for some & not a freedom for others in the world.

Being able to use deadly force to protect yourself w/o having to be stronger or better trained than your attacker, ownership of a handgun.
posted by thomcatspike at 1:56 PM on January 29, 2003

i know that this aspect has been discussed to death on MeFi, but i deplore this analogy; (from the article) "Similar to DNA comparison technology of a decade ago..." There is nothing similar about them. You can not change your DNA, you can replace all the parts of a firearm that would be of any value to this database, thus rendering it's value as a diagnostic tool nearly useless.

i agree that gun laws could and certainly should be reexamined to evaluate their usefulness and applicability, but this one seemed ill suited to it's task from the very beginning.
posted by quin at 10:49 PM on January 29, 2003

quin, or you could use a shotgun.
posted by HTuttle at 11:00 PM on January 29, 2003

Heh, only partially true though. While a shotgun won't provide any ballistic rifling, it will yield both firing pin and breech plate impressions. Of course these will only appear on the ejected cartridge, but it is evidence nonetheless.
posted by quin at 11:14 PM on January 29, 2003