System would fail
By Alan Gottlieb
Proponents of Maryland’s “ballistic fingerprinting” law – enacted two
years
ago as a new tool in the war against gun crime – have some explaining
to do,
considering a string of sniper shootings during the past few days in
the
Maryland suburbs just outside Washington, D.C. The Maryland law
applies only
to handguns, while the serial killer, or killers, used a rifle. But
even if
the law did include rifles, neither it nor a push for similar
ballistic-fingerprinting laws across the nation would provide a
serious
crime-fighting tool. Before looking to expand the use of ballistic
fingerprinting, lawmakers should ask how successful the Maryland law
has
been so far. The answer is a no-brainer. Ballistic fingerprinting has
not
solved or prevented a single gun crime in Maryland. Chances are, it
never
will. For ballistic fingerprinting to work as intended, a shell casing
and/or bullet must be recovered at a crime scene. Markings on the
bullet or
casing must match those from a gun in a database. That gun must be
found in
the possession of the criminal who used it. Since the majority of
armed
criminals use stolen guns, tracing a gun to its original owner
accomplishes
nothing. Supporters of ballistic fingerprinting don’t tell you that a
criminal can easily confound the system by changing the gun barrel or
the
firing pin, or otherwise altering the firearm. Gun experts know this.
Ballistic-fingerprint proponents are not gun experts.
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