The terrorists fired over 200 rounds in last night's gun battle with police.

[sarisataka]

47. Damn them gun nuts at the National Academy of Sciences

RECOMMENDATION: Detection markers in black and smokeless powders should not be implemented at the present time.

X-ray systems and dogs currently provide a strong capability for detecting bomb containers and unmarked black and smokeless powders in the scenarios considered by the committee, and most powder bombings currently take place at locations in which deployment of bomb detection systems is not practicable (see Table 1.4 in chapter 1). Therefore, the committee believes that the effectiveness of a marking program would be limited at the present time. Institution of a marking program would incur significant costs. At the current level of fewer than 10 deaths and 100 injuries per year and very few terrorist incidents, the committee believes that the benefits are not sufficient to justify such a marking program. If the threat were to increase substantially in the future and test data were available, benefits might exceed costs, and a marking program might be warranted. A marking program for black and smokeless powders would be justified only if three criteria were met: the frequency and severity of black and smokeless powder bombs were found to be high enough to justify marking; the markers first were thoroughly tested and found to be safe and effective under conditions likely to be encountered in the legal and illegal uses of the powders; and the social benefits of markers were found to outweigh the costs of their use.

http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=6289