Ballistic Fingerprinting's A Dud

[NATO AIR]

wow, I didn't know about this. very interesting to see a failure like this.

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/lott200502040751.asp

Ballistic Fingerprinting’s a Dud
Another failed gun-control strategy.

By John R. Lott Jr.

Ballistic fingerprinting was all the rage just a couple of years ago. Maryland and New York were leading the way where a computer database would record the markings made on the bullets from all new guns. The days of criminals using guns were numbered.

Yet, a recent report by the Maryland State Police's forensic-sciences division shows that the systems in both states have been expensive failures. New York is spending $4 million per year. Maryland has spent a total of $2.6 million, about $60 per gun sold. But in the over four years that the systems have been in effect neither has solved a single crime. To put it bluntly, the program "does not aid in the mission statement of the Department of State Police."

The systems have drained so many resources from other police activities that ballistic fingerprinting could end up actually increasing crime. In New York, how many crimes could 50 additional police officers help solve?

The police explain the program's inability to reduce crime because criminals have simply not been using the guns that have been entered into the database. In some cases the claim is that the wrong data has been entered into the computers.

The physics of ballistic fingerprinting are straightforward enough. When a bullet travels through the barrel of a gun, the friction creates markings on the bullet. If the gun is new, imperfections in the way the barrel is drilled can produce different markings on the bullet; such imperfections are most noticeable in inexpensive guns. In older guns, the bullet's friction through the barrel can cause more noticeable wear marks that help differentiate between guns. Many other factors influence the particular markings left on the bullets — for instance, how often the gun is cleaned and what brand of cartridge is used.

Precisely because friction causes wear, a gun's ballistic fingerprint changes over time — making it drastically different from such forensic evidence as human fingerprints or DNA. The recording of a child's fingerprints or DNA still allows for identification much later in life; the same is not true of the bullet markings. A ballistic fingerprint is less like a human fingerprint than it is like the tread on a car tire.

Brand-new tires are essentially identical, so new-tire tracks at crime scenes leave investigators with pretty limited information. Unless there happens to be a particular imperfection, only the brand and model of the tire can be identified. Imprints on bullets are similar. When a bullet is fired from a new gun, investigators can typically identify only the type of ammunition and the type of gun. Over time, though, friction causes the tread on tires to wear. It would be easy to take the tire tracks left at a crime scene and match them with a suspected criminal's car; but the more the car is driven after the crime, the harder it is to match the tire tracks left at the scene to the tires when they are eventually found. Similarly, the greatest friction on a gun occurs when the gun is first fired — and that dramatically reduces the usefulness of recording the gun's ballistic fingerprint when it is purchased.

Moreover, ballistic fingerprinting can be thwarted by replacing the gun's barrel — just as criminals can foil tire matching by simply replacing their tires. In general, the markings on bullets can be altered even more quickly and easily than the tread marks on tires: Scratching part of the inside of a barrel with a nail file would alter the bullet's path down the barrel and thus change the markings. So would putting toothpaste on a bullet before firing it.

Ballistic fingerprinting faces other difficulties. For example, even if the gun was not used much between the time the ballistic fingerprint was originally recorded and the time the crime occurred, police still have to be able to trace the gun from the original owner to the criminal — but only 12 percent of guns used in crimes are obtained by the criminal through retail stores or pawn shops. The rest are virtually impossible to trace.

A recent study by the State of California points to further practical difficulties with ballistic fingerprinting. The study tested 790 pistols firing a total of 2,000 rounds. When the cartridges used with a particular gun came from the same manufacturer, computer matching failed 38 percent of the time. When the cartridges came from different manufacturers, the failure rate rose to 62 percent. And this study does not even begin to address problems caused by wear, so the real-world failure rate can be expected to be much higher. The California report warned that "firearms that generate markings on cartridge casings can change with use and can also be readily altered by the users." Further, it warned that the problems of matching would soar dramatically if more guns were included in the sample. The study's verdict: "Computer-matching systems do not provide conclusive results...potential candidates [for a match must] be manually reviewed."

While registering guns by their ballistic fingerprints is a relatively new concept, we have had plenty of experience using gun registration in general, and it has come up woefully short. A few years ago, I testified before the Hawaii state legislature on a bill to change registration requirements. Hawaii has had both registration and licensing of guns for several decades.

In theory, if a gun is left at the crime scene, licensing and registration will allow the gun to be traced back to its owner. Police have probably spent hundreds of thousands of man-hours administering these laws in Hawaii. But despite this massive effort, there has not been a single case in which police claimed that licensing and registration have been instrumental in identifying a criminal.

The reason is simple. First, criminals very rarely leave their guns at a crime scene, and when they do, it is because the criminals have been killed or seriously wounded. Second — and more important for ballistic fingerprinting — would-be criminals also virtually never get licenses or register their weapons. The guns that are recovered at the scene are not registered.

Good intentions don't necessarily make good laws. What counts is whether the laws actually work, and end up saving lives. On that measure, ballistic fingerprinting is just another failure in a long line of gun-control measures.

— John Lott, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of The Bias Against Guns and More Guns, Less Crime.

 

[CivilLiberty]

wow, I didn't know about this. very interesting to see a failure like this.

Yes, more asinine government waste. The idiocy of the ballistic fingerprinting program is only exceeded by the idiocy of the bureaucrats that came up with the idea.


A

 

[Avatar4321]

Yes, more asinine government waste. The idiocy of the ballistic fingerprinting program is only exceeded by the idiocy of the bureaucrats that came up with the idea.


A

Cant disagree here. You know you would have thought that someone would simply think you know since the gun wears away over time this finger printing isnt going to be very helpful if this gun is used alot. a freakin kid could probably figure that out. why cant politicians?

 

[Johnney]

<b>The police explain the program's inability to reduce crime because criminals have simply not been using the guns that have been entered into the database</B>. In some cases the claim is that the wrong data has been entered into the computers.

HOW DARE THEY!
do these morons think criminals are going to stay inthe stoneage? hell they evolve faster than forensic science ever thought of. to think they dont know anything about "throw away guns" is ridiculous.
by this logic, there was a line someplace where one who like to steal could get a weapon?

 

[CivilLiberty]

Cant disagree here. You know you would have thought that someone would simply think you know since the gun wears away over time this finger printing isnt going to be very helpful if this gun is used alot. a freakin kid could probably figure that out. why cant politicians?

Not to mention the fact that it takes all of 2 minutes with a simple tool to alter the rifling such that the fingerprint has changed to the degree that no computer search could ever match it. I mean, doh!


A

 

[CivilLiberty]

When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ball-point pens would not work in zero gravity.

To combat this problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 billion developing a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to over 300° C.

The Russians used a pencil.

This story, posted in your sig, has gotten more outlandish over the years, and while amusing, it is quite false.



From SNOPES:

http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp

The true story: (emphasis added my me)

NASA never asked Paul C. Fisher to produce a pen. When the astronauts began to fly, like the Russians, they used pencils, but the leads sometimes broke and became a hazard by floating in the [capsule's] atmosphere where there was no gravity. They could float into an eye or nose or cause a short in an electrical device. In addition, both the lead and the wood of the pencil could burn rapidly in the pure oxygen atmosphere. Paul Fisher realized the astronauts needed a safer and more dependable writing instrument, so in July 1965 he developed the pressurized ball pen, with its ink enclosed in a sealed, pressurized ink cartridge. Fisher sent the first samples to Dr. Robert Gilruth, Director of the Houston Space Center. The pens were all metal except for the ink, which had a flash point above 200°C. The sample Space Pens were thoroughly tested by NASA. They passed all the tests and have been used ever since on all manned space flights, American and Russian. All research and developement costs were paid by Paul Fisher. No development costs have ever been charged to the government.

Because of the fire in Apollo 1, in which three Astronauts died, NASA required a writing instrument that would not burn in a 100% oxygen atmosphere. It also had to work in the extreme conditions of outer space:
In a vacuum.

With no gravity.

In hot temperatures of +150°C in sunlight and also in the cold shadows of space where the temperatures drop to -120°C

(NASA tested the pressurized Space Pens at -50°C, but because of the residential [sic] heat in the pen it also writes for many minutes in the cold shadows.)

Fisher spent over one million dollars in trying to perfect the ball point pen before he made his first successful pressurized pens in 1965. Samples were immediately sent to Dr. Robert Gilruth, Manager of the Houston Space Center, where they were thoroughly tested and approved for use in Space in September 1965. In December 1967 he sold 400 Fisher Space Pens to NASA for $2.95 each.

Lead pencils were used on all Mercury and Gemini space flights and all Russian space flights prior to 1968. Fisher Space Pens are more dependable than lead pencils and cannot create the hazard of a broken piece of lead floating through the gravity-less atmosphere.

 

[Merlin1047]

wow, I didn't know about this. very interesting to see a failure like this.

Interesting piece. Learned some stuff. Now I have a headache. :duh3:

Perhaps one of the reasons that fingerprinting has not resulted in arrests is because the guns purchased and identified by this system belong to law abiding citizens. I know this is a gross oversimplification, but this just proves the old saw that "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns".

 

[NATO AIR]

Interesting piece. Learned some stuff. Now I have a headache. :duh3:

Perhaps one of the reasons that fingerprinting has not resulted in arrests is because the guns purchased and identified by this system belong to law abiding citizens. I know this is a gross oversimplification, but this just proves the old saw that "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns".

Good point. Isn't that how it is in Britain now?

 

[dilloduck]

Interesting piece. Learned some stuff. Now I have a headache. :duh3:

Perhaps one of the reasons that fingerprinting has not resulted in arrests is because the guns purchased and identified by this system belong to law abiding citizens. I know this is a gross oversimplification, but this just proves the old saw that "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns".

Crap---I thought we were gonna be able to nab them law abiding gun toters! :bat: