"fingerprinting" cases II
As a former tool mark and ballistic examiner and having taught a criminalistics course in a University Criminal Justice program, I am surprised to hear experts call identifying a fired case to a specific firearm "junk science". If done right and verified by another independent, qualified examiner, its a very good tool. If you think fingerprint analysis is a good investigative tool, then so are tool marks. I certainly admit that most forensic tools are as much art as science and some are clearly junk, but as long as there is a totality of evidence collected and presented that is in agreement, it is pretty convincing evidence. Of course DNA done properly is the most reliable form of physical evidence. I know we all hate the concept of any laws that relate to firearm manufacture or ownership, but we should not fight them with misinformation.
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I say BS and tell you why. I buy a brand new handgun to commit a crime or two. My state have that law to where the "finger printing" is required. Ok, no problem, I will buy a new barrel, slide, firing pin, and extractor. Fit it to the handgun and use it in the crimes. Then after the crimes, melt the all down into a nothing. But don't buy them with you name or address. You just got away with the crime, because it was not you handgun.
I almost forgot to add that you can pick up parts for the 1911A1 at gunshow with cash. As for you finger prints, wear gloves before you pull them out of the boxes.
These type of laws are useless.
Spec.40 -
Mr. Black,
Whether or not the "print" system works for either bullets or cases is not the major point.
The "printing" records are nothing without a record of what gun & who it belongs to. We are talking GUN REGESTERATION with a new twist.
The whole system sounds like it's of little value to law enforcement, necessitating the creation of a whole new bureacracy with the potential of mis-use.
How ever you sugar coat the reasoning for implimentation, the risk of abuse of power is there, & I for one am against it totally!
Jim0 -
Any firearms registration laws, including ballistic fingerprinting are, and would be un-needed if only our judicial system would not put the criminals back on the street. It seems that the first thing that is plea bargained away is the firearms charges, as they carry mandatory time with them.
A firearm is a tool that can be used both lawfully, and unlawfully. Just like a baseball bat, knife, car, truck, hammer, etc...and the list goes on. We had in our county a 17 year old girl run over one of her rivals, back, back over her, and run over her again...in a Dodge Neon...over a boy friend. I have not yet seen the Dodge Neon registered or on an the "Assault Vehicle" list. I have not seen a bottle of Jack Daniels with tracable chemical markers in them, or the need to register them incase of a drunk driver kills someone.
The solution is keep the criminals in Jail, the killers and rapist...exterminate them...make the Death Penalty mandatory...when an execution takes place, have our 1st ammendment beauracrats at CBS, NBC, ABC, ESPN, and CDNN put it on national news live, and up close.
Take the criminals off the street, not our bill of rights!
Best0 -
quote:Originally posted by joel_black
As a former tool mark and ballistic examiner and having taught a criminalistics course in a University Criminal Justice program, I am surprised to hear experts call identifying a fired case to a specific firearm "junk science". If done right and verified by another independent, qualified examiner, its a very good tool. If you think fingerprint analysis is a good investigative tool, then so are tool marks. I certainly admit that most forensic tools are as much art as science and some are clearly junk, but as long as there is a totality of evidence collected and presented that is in agreement, it is pretty convincing evidence. Of course DNA done properly is the most reliable form of physical evidence. I know we all hate the concept of any laws that relate to firearm manufacture or ownership, but we should not fight them with misinformation.
"but we should not fight them with misinformation"
That one part of a sentence sets off alarm bells. That one statement is misinformation and redirection in itself.
The entire lead in is predicated on an assumption that case matching is not junk science, and those calling it a junk science don't know what they are talking about.
It can and has been beaten repeatedly, and therefore is in fact 'junk science'.
If you got the loaded rounds, the gun unaltered, the spent casing etc, you can get to where you need to be evidence wise. 1 mil off the breach face, alteration or replacement of the extractor, alteration or replacement of the firing pin, and barrel/chamber lapping and the evidence is gone for ever.
The court room is supposed to be beyond a reasonable doubt. It does not take much to prove reasonable doubt in the cases where a prosecutor is over extending what little evidence he has and or mishandling it. Especially trying to tie the weapon to one particular person in that manner.
People go to jail who shouldn't have, and people who should have don't in my opinion.0 -
Well, I think Joel makes several good points. And, I apologize to all scientists I may have offended.
Let's not get side-tracked by the problems in the criminal justice system. Ballistic fingerprinting of fired cases has severe limitations, & I'm sure that the scientists who developed the process were aware of them & reported them to management. I doubt the scientists were ever asked, "Is this a cost effective way to reduce firearms crimes?" More likely, the marketing folks at the company saw lots of municipalities paying millions of dollars for their equipment & services, & didn't really care if someone could alter a gun with 5 minutes alone with a pad of steel wool.
The problem is that governments often see a quick fix, & politicians only worry about the next election. Wasting our money is rarely a priority.
So, if not "junk science", what do we call ballistic fingerprinting? How about, "the failure of science to solve widespread social problems"?
Neal0 -
Joel- agree that tool marks, including firing pin and extractor markings, CAN be an investigative tool. However, in the case of Maryland, where a sample case from a new gun must be filed with the state- well, that's nice. For a while. Do you agree that the markings produced by an extractor will change as the weapon is used, and the extractor wears? I have one Ruger auto bought in 1970, has probably shot at least 50,000 rounds of ammo- if wear has not changed the initial machining marks on the extractor/ firing pin, I would be astounded. And while I have seen tool marks used in a sucessful prosecution, maryland has yet to gain one conviction from their data base- despite several million dollars, and multiple years of use. 0 -
In the old days before AFIS, despite Hollywood movies, fingerprints solved few crimes. You would send prints into the FBI and wait years for a response. Ballistic fingerprinting is worthless without a similar searchable database with predefined points of identification. It does not create a defacto "gun registration" because the fired bullet and/or cases are only tied to a firearm, not an owner. There is already a national database of cases found at crime scenes and it has helped to bring some criminals to justice. Pointing out that firing pins can be altered and barrels changed presupposes that most criminals have functioning brains, which is not the norm. 0 -
Yes, of course its possible for someone who knows what they are doing to alter/conceal a guns' ballistics, though that doesn't by itself invalidate the process of matching a case to a gun.
The fact that someone can easily put on gloves doesn't by itself invalidate ordinary fingerprints, and the fact that its relatively easy to swap out certain critical parts from certain guns (eg Glocks, 1911s, etc) doesn't invalidate ballistic type matching either.
Without getting into a wetting contest here, my understanding is that its often more conclusive to determine with certainty that a particular case was NOT fired from a given gun that that it was.
Saying a shell is "consistent with" having been fired from a given gun is a bit different than saying it has "definitely been" fired from that gun.
This idea of "ballistic fingerprinting", ie that every gun leaves a unique pattern on every case or bullet fired through the gun is false. We know that it isn't true.
As one example, a brand new gun (and the test cases are all taken from new guns) for example, isn't necessarily going to leave the same pattern of marks on a bullet or shell casing as the exact same gun after firing 2000 rounds and having been cleaned fifty times.
The original question, though, wasn't about matching a case to a gun, it was about the practice of maintaining individual fired shells from new guns for *potential* forensic use later. This practice has largely been a waste of time and money, so far as I know NEVER resulting in a single conviction.
Its one thing taking a gun you think was used to fire a particular case and trying to match it to a case, and quite another thing to take a database of (say) 100,000 cases and trying to find a match to a case found at a crime scene.
On ACTUAL fingerprints, you'd think that it should be cut and dry, but I think anyone really familiar with the "science" knows that there are plenty of unqualified and unscrupulous fingerprint "experts" out there, and that a fingerprint "match" isn't necessarily so.
There is plenty of "junk science" in the fingerprint field too.
quote:http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/4325774.html?page=2
A 2006 study by the University of Southampton in England asked six veteran fingerprint examiners to study prints taken from actual criminal cases. The experts were not told that they had previously examined the same prints. The researchers' goal was to determine if contextual information-for example, some prints included a notation that the suspect had already confessed-would affect the results. But the experiment revealed a far more serious problem: The analyses of fingerprint examiners were often inconsistent regardless of context. Only two of the six experts reached the same conclusions on second examination as they had on the first.0
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