Some spies use it also. They burn the flesh off their fingertip pads, when the area heal, their are no ridges to allow identification.

He sounds like a class one idiot with a lethal weapon. You know, “Super Elite.”

there will be people out there to identify him.

Altering his prints smacks of some sinister force/s backing him.

I suspect he'd have more efficient weaponry. No, the fingerprint thing smacks of a dumbass who really thinks that would prevent the police from learning his identity.

tear huge holes in bodies. And they've been used in several mass shootings (see Columbine for one).

They can be very lethal and thre are even semi-auto versions of them. I mean come on, five are dead and more injured.

And IMO it's suspicious to me this guy carried no ID, altered his prints and won't identify himself. Who/what is he hiding?

Police have lots of other ways to identify people nowadays. They don't need driver's licences and fingerprints anymore.

But yeah, he likely is some garden variety dumbass.

He may hang out on the fringe of society or have a desire to. Police indicated that him and the paper have a history, cops will likely piece together things in a day or so.

the police once before, and he’s in MD resident.

An example would be 3 people are burned unrecognizable. Since you know who the victims are, you can obtain their dentist's records to identify the remains. If you don't have a clue who the victim is, you have no way to obtain a dentists record, which is otherwise private medical info.

my mistake

like dead people the strip off the skin like a glove

They can be removed temporarily by damaging the upper layer but if he burned them down to or damaged the 2nd layer they may not return. More likely they will take dental impressions and attempt to hasten DNA.

"Holy pinkie swear, Batman-- he's got no fingerprints!"

He’s quite the expert advising right wing nutters on covering up and destroying evidence

... The shooter, who used a shotgun, is refusing to talk to investigators or give his name, and he was not carrying any identification, a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation told the Los Angeles Times, speaking anonymous because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

“He’s not been particularly cooperative,” County Executive Steve Schuh said in an interview with CNN. “Law enforcement does have a name” for the suspect, but officials haven’t confirmed it ...

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/la-na-newspaper-shooting-20180628-story.html

Skin cells actually grow back and the prints will return eventually, unless he went crazy and took all the layers off and then that would be a bloody mess.

He is someone's neighbor , relative .

figured they'd see him on the news some day.

They'll figure it out soon enough

Strap him down.

They can only take it from you (and catalog it) when you're arrested (at minimum). Same goes for fingerprints, too, though so the fact that he was careful to try to destroy them suggests ... dude's been arrested. And if he has been, facial recognition is gonna nail him anyway.

If he's not been arrested though and has like lived out in BFE Montana on some militia ranch his whole adult life ... it could actually turn out to be hard to ID him.

I should also say if the print removal is all healed i.e. done awhile ago, first place to start is with people who were arrested in the past ... who lacked prints ... can't be THAT many of 'em.

Going to be interesting as information come out on him. Sounds like a rightwing nut that has been waiting to pop for a while.

through facial recognition software.

I've heard that It's actually easy to temporarily remove your fingerprints: pineapple juice. Give him a couple days for them to come back, then fingerprint him.

He said it was just a false rumor being spread on the internet.