Myth: A database of ballistic profiles will allow police to trace gun crimes

Fact: The National Research Council deemed a national ballistics database as impractical due to practical limitations of current technology for generating and comparing images of ballistic markings.¹

Fact: Maryland’s ballistics database “is not doing anything”² and “has not met the mission statement of the state police.”³ In the first five years of implementation, it failed to lead to any criminal arrest or convictions, despite collecting over 80,000 specimens at a cost of $2,567,633.⁴

Fact: More than 70% of armed career criminals get their guns from “off-the-street sales” and “criminal acts” such as burglaries⁵, and 71% of these firearms are stolen.⁶ Tracing these firearms will not lead to the criminals, as the trail stops at the last legal owner.

Fact: Computer image matching of cartridges fails between 38-62% of the time, depending on whether the cartridges are from the same or different manufacturers.⁷

Fact: “Automated computer matching systems do not provide conclusive results” requiring that “potential candidates be manually reviewed”.⁸

Fact: Criminals currently remove serial numbers from stolen guns to hide their origin. The same simple shop tools can change a ballistic profile within minutes. “The minor alteration required less than 5 minutes of labor”.⁹ Criminals will make changing ballistic profiles part of their standard procedures.

This is an excerpt from “Gun Facts” by Guy Smith, available free from http://www.gunfacts.info