Police Challenge Gun Control Advocates on Ballistic Imaging
By Jeff Johnson
CNSNews.com Congressional Bureau Chief
October 29, 2002

Capitol Hill (CNSNews.com) – Even before two suspects had been captured in connection with the murders of ten people and the wounding of three others in the Washington, D.C. area, gun control advocates claimed a national registry of so-called “ballistic fingerprints” was needed to solve such crimes. They also claimed law enforcement supported the idea. But new information made public Monday challenged those claims.

“A National Ballistics Database would have provided law enforcement with a vital tool in the sniper investigations, and could have helped to catch the killer before so many people died,” claimed the website of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence Monday. “If a nationwide ballistic fingerprinting system had existed, police would have been able to trace the bullets to a specific gun.”

The Brady group’s plan calls for a sample, fired bullet to be collected from every new gun sold in the U.S. Sample shell casings would be collected from each semi-automatic firearm as well. Distinctive markings left on the bullet and casing by the unused barrel and semi-auto ejector would be scanned into a computerized national firearms registry and linked to the gun’s serial number.

At a press conference Friday, Mike Barnes, president of the Brady Campaign, alleged that those markings are similar to human fingerprints, and are just as accurate for identification purposes.

“You can match the first bullet with the 5,000th bullet,” Barnes claimed.

An “urgent message from Sarah Brady,” chairwoman of the Brady Campaign, sent last week asked readers “to rush an emergency gift,” to help promote such a system, and claimed that, “for years police have called for the creation of such a database.”

But a document obtained by CNSNews.com over the weekend from the Grand Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) – the nation’s largest membership organization exclusively for law enforcement officers – contradicted those claims.

“The FOP does not support any federal requirement to register privately owned firearms with the federal government,” the document stated. “Without federally-mandated registration of the more than 200 million firearms in the U.S. today, such a database would be no more effective than the current NIBIN [National Integrated Ballistic Information Network] maintained by ATF [the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms].”

The NIBIN system is restricted to comparisons of ballistics data associated with bullets, shell casings, and weapons used in the commission of a crime. The “FOP Viewpoint” report noted that – when authorities recover a recently fired bullet from a crime victim or scene, and later obtain the weapon – imaging technology can be used to confirm the link between the two pieces of evidence.

“This has proved to very effective to investigators, enabling them to link multiple shootings in which the same firearm was used (such as the recent murders in the Washington area),” the FOP wrote, “and to definitively connect recovered firearms to a particular shooting and/or crime.”

But the report also noted the limitations of such a system.

“In all cases, it is necessary that investigators recover a bullet or shell casing from the crime scene which is intact enough to allow forensic analysis to be able to identify the ballistic markings,” the group stated. “The firearm must then be recovered in order for the gun and the bullet or shell casing to be conclusively linked.”

The document explained that a “chain of evidence” must be established and maintained in order for ballistic imaging data to be useful to law enforcement.

“An intact bullet or shell case needs to be recovered from the crime scene, then linked to a gun and then the gun linked to a shooter,” the FOP concluded. “Ballistics imaging and comparison technology is very limited in accomplishing the latter.”

The FOP even challenged the use of the terminology “ballistic fingerprinting” to refer to the investigative technique.

“Since ballistic imprints, unlike fingerprints and DNA, can be altered, either deliberately or simply through normal use,” the group asked, “how will we ensure the validity of the findings?”

Kevin Watson is legislative director for the Law Enforcement Alliance of America (LEAA), a membership group of law enforcement officers and private citizens supportive of police. He told CNSNews.com that legislators have to look past the latest “buzz word” from gun control advocates to find what really helps get criminals off the streets.

“A lot of the people who push ideas like this say that, ‘Well, even if it just catches one crook it can’t hurt,’” he noted. “But if it costs $3 trillion and only catches one crook it sure does hurt, because that’s money that could be spent elsewhere on things that we know do work.”

The FOP report agreed.

“These are law enforcement dollars best spent elsewhere,” the report stated.

Both groups support research into the concept, as long as it does not deplete needed resources, and is driven by a law enforcement, not gun control agenda. But significant research into the idea has already been completed.

Watson noted that, in a year-old study by the California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Forensic Services, significant problems were discovered with the concept of linking guns used by criminals to bullets or shell casings that passed through those weapons when they were new.

After firing a variety of ammunition through known test guns, the so-called “ballistic fingerprinting” system incorrectly matched bullets to guns other than the one from which they were fired as often as 62.5 percent of the time. The system also matched shell casings to guns other than the one from which they were ejected as often as 77.8 percent of the time.

Those inaccuracies haven’t deterred gun control advocates from supporting the idea, Watson said, because they see it as another opportunity to register firearms owned by law abiding citizens.

“It’s perfect for the gun control folks,” he asserted. “It’s an idea that sounds wonderful, that – without any education – looks like a neat idea, and the NRA is opposed to it, so it allows them to demonize gun owners over another false issue.”