BALTIMORE — Millions of dollars later, Maryland has officially decided that its 15-year effort to store and catalog the "fingerprints" of thousands of handguns was a failure.
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.
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.
Political Correctness is the language of lies, written by the corrupt , spoken by the inept!
guns sold in the UK are already traced... via their serial no. and that prevents guns being used in crimes just as little as 'fingerprinting' them. all it would do is tell you that once your gun was stolen, it is used for crime. which isn't really very helpful. it also does nothing to prove that a criminal is repeat offending, as you can't prove the same guy used it for whatever crimes. that is, assuming it isn't a .22 boltie, in which case, it would probably get dumped somewhere as it's no use to them
When guns are outlawed, only Outlaws will have guns
Tracing via serial numbers?
I used to have a Luger, serial no 5931. Alarm and despondency among police force---another one had turned up with the same number. I pointed out that they made a few million Lugers and they all had four digit serial numbers---if you included the date stamp, the problem went away. Four years ago, it happened again---two of us in the UK have Mauser 71/84s with the same number. After a short and useless police investigation it transpired that the date stamps were different. I have a couple of rifles on ticket with no visible number and three with no makers name. One of them is registered with the name of the barrel steel manufacturer.
A friend had a S&W model 19 which was registered with the frame part number. I pointed out that this revolver actually had a serial number---it was 2K2. Get it back to the US and no doubt a collector would pay a lot of money for it---no doubt it was destroyed in the hand-in. Serial numbers were put there for the manufacturers convenience. Many makers used the same numbers over and over. Many records are lost--often due to WW2 bombs.
Pretending to use serial numbers to trace anything is irresponsible. The "every barrel leaves unique marks on the bullet" story is also a myth. Consecutive button rifled barrels will almost certainly leave identical rifling marks: you can learn more from the fired case.
Fred
FredB wrote:Tracing via serial numbers?
I used to have a Luger, serial no 5931. Alarm and despondency among police force---another one had turned up with the same number. I pointed out that they made a few million Lugers and they all had four digit serial numbers---if you included the date stamp, the problem went away. Four years ago, it happened again---two of us in the UK have Mauser 71/84s with the same number. After a short and useless police investigation it transpired that the date stamps were different. I have a couple of rifles on ticket with no visible number and three with no makers name. One of them is registered with the name of the barrel steel manufacturer.
A friend had a S&W model 19 which was registered with the frame part number. I pointed out that this revolver actually had a serial number---it was 2K2. Get it back to the US and no doubt a collector would pay a lot of money for it---no doubt it was destroyed in the hand-in. Serial numbers were put there for the manufacturers convenience. Many makers used the same numbers over and over. Many records are lost--often due to WW2 bombs.
Pretending to use serial numbers to trace anything is irresponsible. The "every barrel leaves unique marks on the bullet" story is also a myth. Consecutive button rifled barrels will almost certainly leave identical rifling marks: you can learn more from the fired case.
Fred
I get the impression that micro stamping ballocks in california is hiding onto nothing, but then again its a blatant attempt to have a defacto ban on semi auto pistols in that crazy part of the world.
ordnance wrote:They carry out ballistic tests on Handguns here and keep the firead cases, so i assume they can trace them back to the firearm.
You must notify the police of any ‘one-on/one-off’ firearms transactions in Northern Ireland. Conditions
Handguns will require ballistic testing. You should contact your local firearms enquiry officer after the exchange
What if you get a new barrel, then with use the extractor & firing pin need replacing.
Markings on the case would be completely different. Do you have to provide a new case when you change parts?
ordnance wrote:They carry out ballistic tests on Handguns here and keep the firead cases, so i assume they can trace them back to the firearm.
You must notify the police of any ‘one-on/one-off’ firearms transactions in Northern Ireland. Conditions
Handguns will require ballistic testing. You should contact your local firearms enquiry officer after the exchange
What if you get a new barrel, then with use the extractor & firing pin need replacing.
Markings on the case would be completely different. Do you have to provide a new case when you change parts?
You would have to take that up with the Northern Ireland forensic science laboratory and the PSNI. Maybe they should just shut down the lab and not collect ballistic evidence, or carry out any ballistic testing of firearms. As people could just.
What if you get a new barrel, then with use the extractor & firing pin need replacing.
