General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Would requiring all gun owners to have a license, all guns to be registered, [View all]X_Digger
(18,585 posts)Ballistic fingerprint matching works when you have a (recently) fired casing from a gun, and the gun to compare it to. An examiner can say, "Within 75% confidence, this casing was fired from this gun."
If you take that same gun and fire 500 rounds through it, the fingerprint changes. An examiner would be able to match the 500th casing to the gun, but not the first.
And that's what ballistic fingerprints are-- the first casing ever fired from a gun. If you clean the gun with a good solvent, the carbon, lead, and copper build-up that create the 'fingerprint' will be removed.
It would be like taking the 'fingerprint' of every car in the US. Then trying to take a random tire print and matching it, even though the car may have driven 10,000, 20,000, or 50,000 miles since.
Free clue: real-life forensics doesn't work like it does on CSI.