General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMaryland is stopping a good program that identifies guns used in crimes
This sucks balls I was hoping it or something similar would be law here in California soon. I guess the gunnuts will just say look Maryland stopped using it so why would we need it?
I don't know why anyone would't want to help solve gun crimes it just makes sense doesn't it?
snipped
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.http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-bullet-casings-20151107-story.html
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.
"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."
sarisataka
(18,770 posts)why it is being ended?
15 years
$5 million
0 crimes solved
...
SickOfTheOnePct
(7,290 posts)In theory it sounds like a good idea, and I'm not sure why it hasn't helped...but, it appears to be a huge waste of money.
yeoman6987
(14,449 posts)Nobody should be disappointed in this failure going away. Heart was in the right place but the program was a disaster.
If no gun crimes were solved I'm sure it was only because either someone was not doing their job correctly or someone didn't want it solved.
This program just needed to keep running. And 5 million for 15 years seems like small potatoes after all how much is all the new toys the damn cops get every year?
X_Digger
(18,585 posts)Would a 'tire fingerprint' of your car be useful after you've put 30,000 miles on it? Would the tread still match?
Same problem.
JonathanRackham
(1,604 posts)Easy to plant evidence too. Pick up spent casings and bullets at a range and leave them at a crime scene. But hey the police don't care who goes away for a crime even if they're innocent.
sarisataka
(18,770 posts)should be wasted before calling it a bust and putting the money to use in programs that work? Or should they just act like the Pentagon and keep throwing money at a program until it does something, then declare it a success?
Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)"Feel good" prohibition legislation can get awfully expensive.
NutmegYankee
(16,201 posts)A gun wears in as each bullet is fired and the barrel after normal break-in (300-500) rounds will not match the first round fired for the database. Ballistic fingerprinting only works if the bullet was fired recently and can be compared before the gun is used much afterwards.
Amishman
(5,559 posts)Does anyone know if the NY system had the same problem, or was the MD system a flawed implementation?
NutmegYankee
(16,201 posts)I'm just going on my engineering experience. Wear is a normal phenomenon in mechanical systems. It's especially bad in dry contact systems, like a bullet to barrel. Replacement barrels are available for that very reason.
onehandle
(51,122 posts)Tick tick tick...
The tipping point approacheth.
sarisataka
(18,770 posts)friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)I rather doubt any gun owner is shaking in their boots with worry over empty boasts
from gun prohibitionists.
Response to onehandle (Reply #4)
friendly_iconoclast This message was self-deleted by its author.
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)Lizzie Poppet
(10,164 posts)mwrguy
(3,245 posts)sarisataka
(18,770 posts)a program that has been in effect for 15 years and cost $5 million without producing a single success should be continued?
GGJohn
(9,951 posts)And you and your ilk wonder why gun control is a smoking wreck in this country.
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)As witness the OP expressing sadness that a "good" program (that solved not *one* crime
in 15 years) got a long-delayed axing...
pipoman
(16,038 posts)Unbelievably even dumber than the OP....
Lizzie Poppet
(10,164 posts)Got nothing? Sling out nasty accusations of racism! That's some top-shelf thinkin' there, ace.
SickOfTheOnePct
(7,290 posts)when it hasn't identified a single gun used in a crime.
ryan_cats
(2,061 posts)Stunning achievement. If you were the contractor.
...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...
Duckhunter935
(16,974 posts)ryan_cats
(2,061 posts)Even better, they are linked to a different gun. I smell opportunity!
X_Digger
(18,585 posts)The thing about a 'ballistic fingerprint' is that unlike the fingerprints on our hands, 'ballistic fingerprints' change with use of the firearm and cleaning. Fire 500 rounds of ammunition in an afternoon through a handgun, and the 'fingerprint' will have changed.
They're completely destroyed by replacing the barrel on the gun (a 5 minute procedure for many guns), something that many gun owners do to increase precision or to reduce wear and tear (like changing tires on a car.)
Matching a casing to a gun works when you find a freshly used gun on a suspect, and you have casings recently fired from it to compare to. With any length of use between the first point and the second, the 'fingerprint' match becomes inconclusive. Imagine a 'tire fingerprint' on your car as it rolls off the lot, and compare to the 'tire fingerprint' after 30,000 miles-- or after you get a new set of tires from Pep Boys.
The whole CSI / NCIS / Law & Order slew of tv shows have given folks an unrealistic expectation for the science of criminal forensics.
JonathanRackham
(1,604 posts)Apparently.
madville
(7,412 posts)That money could be better spent elsewhere, probably been going to some kind of politically-connected contractor anyway
Kang Colby
(1,941 posts)for Maryland to realize the program was a failure, then another eleven years to shut it down. Ballistic databases and micostamping are just fairy tales used by gun control supporters to increase the cost of gun ownership. Nothing more.
krispos42
(49,445 posts)...But they were called "gun nutz" spouting "NRA talking points".
The technical issues, which were raised by knowledgeable people, were dismissed by gun-hating people that simply wanted something to piss off the NRA and attack "gun fetishists".
liberal N proud
(60,344 posts)A finger print can be used to identify a person in a crime. Why can't a fired shot be identified by the spent casing and or bullet?
Back it up, don't just post rhetoric.
Adrahil
(13,340 posts)Such "ballistic finger primting" is only usefule if the reference "print" is from a time very close to the time the weapon was usedd in crime. Otherwise, wear dramatically reduces the chance of a match, and vastly increases the chace of flase positives if the criteria is widened. In short, it doesn't work. A lot of ballistics experts said so when these programs were introduced, but many gun control advocates aren't really technically aware people.
pipoman
(16,038 posts)Every manufacturer advocates between 500 and 2000 rounds breakin period. After 100 rounds the casing mailed in would not be identifiable as from the same gun.
Someone above made an accurate comparison about taking a tire print of a new car and comparing it to a print off the same tire after 30k miles...worthless..
Gun controllers really don't care if their schemes don't work, they just want to do something even if it is wrong....and they certainly aren't interested in the opinions or even facts from the people who have technical knowledge of the subject.
jmg257
(11,996 posts)legally from a dealer in NY and Maryland, where registration and permits are required and casings would be sent in,
were actually used in crimes.
krispos42
(49,445 posts)Unlike fingerprints, mechanical marks wear over time. The distinctive pattern of grooves that a gun barrel leaves on a bullet as the bullet is forced down the barrel will change due to mechanical wear. The barrel of a gun is slightly smaller than the bullet; the bullet is forced down the barrel under extreme friction to form a gas-tight seal.
Identifying a bullet fired from a particular gun (not just a make and model, but tying it to a unique serial number) depends on identifying slight, unique marks from the manufacturing process used to make the barrel.
As the barrel wears, the marks will fade or change.
Same thing for marks on a fired case from a handgun.
I'll continue this later.
NutmegYankee
(16,201 posts)Every time a bullet goes down the barrel it wears down the surface like sandpaper or a file. After just a hundred rounds or so the barrel will no longer leave the same marks as the slight imperfections in the machined surface wear away and leave new inperfections.
Fingerprints on a hand are replaced by skin cells that grow in only that pattern as the old skin sloughs off, but once metal is worn/eroded away, it doesn't get replaced.
krispos42
(49,445 posts)A gun can be identified through ballistic fingerprinting assuming they find the gun before much wear has occurred on the moving parts of the gun. The classic example is the cops recovering slugs from a victim's body and finding a gun nearby that was apparently tossed away. The bullets test-fired from the recovered guns will be bullets fired right after the gun was used to kill somebody; the marks from the rifling on the bullets should be identical.
Now if you were to put two thousand rounds through the gun and then checked bullet #2,001 to the slug recovered from the victim, your case is much weaker because of the wear and tear that the rifling has been through.
Barrels can also be manually modified; deliberately damaged by a file to destroy evidence, for example. People who home-gunsmith also do stuff to improve the accuracy of their guns by polishing the rifling using various methods. The example below is called "fire lapping", performed by coating a few dozen bullets in increasingly-fine abrasive powder and shooting them down the barrel.
http://www.ktgunsmith.com/firelapping.htm
And people use other things to scrub copper, lead, and powder residue from the barrels of their guns. Bronze-bristle brushes, fine steel wool, various cleaning chemicals.
I suppose somebody could also soak a barrel in battery acid to modify the ballistic fingerprint.
Finally, the easiest thing to do is simply buy a replacement barrel. Less than $100 gets you a brand-new Glock barrel. Ones for a .45 auto start at about $60.
Same thing goes for "microstamping".
Both systems also require that the person the gun is being registered to is the same as the person pulling the trigger. It depends on a chain of traceability that ends with the shooter. Obviously, this is difficult to achieve!
The system would only work under the following conditions:
The registered owner of the gun was the shooter, the gun was shot very little before being used for murder, and the gun was not modified.
And in those situations, the murder was probably a crime of passion or anger and there was a boatload of other evidence such that a ballistic match was merely a minor bonus.
ileus
(15,396 posts)TeddyR
(2,493 posts)Have a program designed to solve crimes and between the two states spent $50 million and solved ONE crime over 15 years? And people are disappointed that this program, which could be the poster child for government waste and is a demonstrable failure, was discontinued? There MAY be a government program somewhere in the US that is a bigger waste of money, but I'd be surprised. $50 million in taxpayer money that could have gone to the homeless, or child protection services, or to improve infrastructure, instead is lining the pockets of some company paid to implement a program that never worked.
Brickbat
(19,339 posts)Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)1). The junked "ballistic fingerprints" test,
Or
2). Improvement in the NICS data base and reporting process?
Straw Man
(6,625 posts)I fixed it for you.
Considering that it was a tech-based solution to begin with, I would say "plagued by technological problems" is a polite way of saying "was an abject failure."