Ballistic Fingerprinting

According to forensic science, ballistic fingerprinting is a method of tracing shell casings back to a certain firearm. When a bullet is fired from a gun, markings are left on the shell casing. Generally, there's two important markings, one being the point where the firing pin hits the primer, and the other being the extraction point or where the shell casing is hooked and ejected. The idea is that every new firearm would be fired and that fired bullet and empty shell casing would be sent into the government to be entered into a national computer analysis database. It is concluded that after a crime has been committed, the pre-sale ballistics data will be matched to that of the crime scene.

New York and Maryland have required ballistic fingerprinting since January of 2000. So far, it has not helped solve a single crime. In 2003, California ballistic experts stated that ballistic fingerprinting is not feasable at this time. A study was done which involved firing more than 2,000 from 790 handguns. The report concluded that the ballistic fingerprinting on the shell casings were so greatly different, pistols firing ammunition from the same manufacturer, failed 38% of the time matching the first bullet to the second. When the ammunition was from two different manufacturers, the test failed 62% of the time.

This is a highly controversial method as many people do not think it will work. Again, in 2008, California ballistic experts stated that we aren't ready for ballistic fingerprinting and there isn't likely to be a success story anytime soon. The idea seems unfathomable to me. Every time a gun is fired, it wears on the barrel, and the wearing of the barrel will create different markings on every single fired round, even if it's from the same manufacturer. The technology is just too unreliable at this time. I don't know if I feel that this technique can even work, but I am optimistic.

Sources:
Milloy, S. (2002). How Reliable Is Ballistic Fingerprinting?
Fox news. Retrieved from
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,66007,00.html

Lee, Philip F. (2003). Ballistic Fingerprinting Brief.
Retrieved from
http://www.mcrkba.org/BallisticFingerprinting.html

Derek Rasey. Personal interview. February 24, 2011.