Reporter's Notes: How to ID a Bullet
I was excited to be working on this story. After all, it’s not that often that a primarily environmental reporter gets to spend a couple weeks focusing on forensics technology and the debate over gun control (let alone receive firearms training on a 38-special from a senior criminalist at the DOJ’s California Criminalistics Institute). In the end, there was much, much more to report than I could squeeze into five minutes.
Supporters of microstamping will want to have heard from the technology’s inventor, Todd Lizotte of NanoMark Technologies. Lizotte reports a much higher success rate than the UC Davis study and, according to a microstamping supporter I spoke with, has declined any potential profits he might have made on it.
Microstamping itself has far more subtleties than I was able to report on. Fred Tulleners experimented with (and had various degrees of success with) several different types of stamping, as documented in the report he and others prepared for the California Policy Research Center. Even for a non-ballistics expert, that report makes for compelling reading. Tullener’s personal opinions on microstamping are also more complex than the story allows: He told me that he would like to see more investment in law enforcement and detection — on the street investments, in other words, rather than new technologies.
I also want to point out that the story overestimates the overall success rate of Tulleners’ microstamping tests. I say that microstamping worked “roughly three quarters;” of the time; in actuality, Tulleners says it was closer to 50 percent.
And finally, there’s more afoot in the world of gun control technology than I was able to delve into. For example, “Smart Guns,” which would recognize and respond exclusively to their registered owner’s grip. Supporters point in particular to the number of minors killed while playing with their parents’ guns. Of course, controversy follows every new gun proposal. Here’s a Wired article about the Smart Guns debate.
Listen to the “How to ID a Bullet” Radio report online, as well as find additional links and resources.
Hello Ms. Standen,
I am glad you had the time to check out microstamping. As the co-inventor of the technique I am always glad when people get a chance to evaluate it.
We have been developing the technology since late 1993.
What has been baffling to me is the method forensic scientists use to evaluate technology such as microstamping.
Microstamping helps identify firearms when no firearm is recovered at a crime scene. This happens, approximately 45% of the time. In these cases if no witnesses come forward, the case goes cold.
The issue is, does this help in tracking the source of illeagl firearms. The answer is a resounding yes.
Even is Fred Tulleners, worse case scenario, 50% of the time, which is 100% more information than they have now. The question is whether 50% more opportunities to trace firearms back to the source is better than 0%. Firearms make there way into the criminal network; the question is whether it would be better to identify the firearm the first time it is used in a heinous crime or possibly recover it after it has been used in several crimes?
What I believe, Mr. Tulleners should have considered is benchmark the technology against existing firearm identification technology. Many times, the arguments about not using microstamping are the same issues facing existing forensic techniques, such as planting evidence, defacing the firearm, switching barrels, switching pins, etc.
These arguments are also face existing firearm identification techniques. For example a colleague sent me an image of a .40 cal cartridge and a 9 mm cartridge fired from the same firearm. He had just changed the barrel, which he can buy without a problem. That alone would make it nearly impossible for the NIBIN system, or CoBIS (NY) or RBID (MD) to identify the firearm. All technology has limitations; the question is how intelligent are common criminals?
Take for instance, NIBIN, National Integrated Ballistic Information Network.
They have loaded into the imaging database approximately 1.2 million images of crime scene cartridges. I have been told NIBIN has made about ~22,000 matches. Most of these matches are just confirmations that the cartridges found at crimes scene are matched internally to other images within the database, they are no convictions or matches to actual firearms. But, let’s just say these are sold matches.
That means the NIBIN system has a success rate of about 1.8% so far in ~10 years.
Most of the analysis on microstamping to date focused on the technology as a function of the firearm instead of its intended use, as trace evidence for an investigative lead. It is well established that traditional firearms examination is based on the premise that a firearm doesn’t produce 100% of the marks each time it is fired. In a forensic handbook I recently purchased it states a recovered firearm should be test fired greater than 5 times or more so that sufficient markings can be identified on each cartridge or projectile for a possible match.
I agree with Mr. Tulleners, funding should be directly towards street level work. That is benefit of microstamping, no cost to the state. Take for instance the cost, I have produced the markings and reduced the process time down to a level where the price per firearm would be <$5.00. There are only approximately 900,000 semiautomatic handguns manufactured each year. That is a total cost of $4.5 Million, for implementation across the entire USA.
The ATF’s NIBIN platform costs tax payers at the state and the national levels nearly $60 million per year. CoBIS in NY cost NY tax payers nearly ~$4 million per year.
However, for law enforcement to target trafficking they need solid INTEL to work with. The trace system is the only way to accomplish this.
Trafficking in firearms is a pattern crime, you need data to identify a pattern, and at that point you can apply resources to set stings or use other methods to identify and arrest traffickers.
So, what is the cost of microstamping? To law enforcement it is zero cost, because the technology is just another type of tool mark they current analyze. All the tools for analysis exist in the forensic lab. There is no new infrastructure.
When you benchmark existing methods of firearm and toolmarks analysis with microstamping you realize all firearms currently microstamp. Current microstamps are random, unintentional markings that are transferred from machining marks and surface roughness created during the manufacture of the firearm.
Our technique “Ballistic ID Microstamping” just adds in a few features on the same scale, however the marks are “intentional”, taking the form of a code that can be used to recover the serial number of the firearm.
Simply put, microstamping is just a method to increase the quality of the physical evidence left at a crime scene.
When analyzing the technology you need to treat it as trace evidence. What I feel has been demonstrated in the research papers done on non-optimized firing pins, is that the researchers approached the technology from a function of the firearm, instead of the ability to extract evidence.
If you have any questions, please contact me.
Best regards,
Todd Lizotte
Co-inventor of Microstamping