By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 17, 2002; Page A11
The White House retreated yesterday from its criticism of a technology that helps authorities trace ammunition found at crime scenes. Now, the administration will study the possibility of a national database to record the unique markings made by guns when they are fired.
"The president wants this issue explored," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said. "There are reasons that people think that it could possibly move forward and other reasons that people think it may not be able to move forward."
The overnight change reflected the new complications that the elusive sniper in the Washington suburbs has introduced to the gun-control debate with an election three weeks away. Democrats had been playing down the issue because it hurt Vice President Al Gore in rural areas in the 2000 election. But political consultants said Bush risked alienating suburban swing voters by echoing the National Rifle Association's opposition to the technology at such a sensitive time.
The technology, known as ballistic fingerprinting or "gun DNA," is widely supported by law enforcement and is promoted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which is part of the Treasury Department. The ATF has a Web site devoted to encouraging local agencies to use the technology, including a "Hits of the Week" compendium of success stories.
Maryland has a registry of the unique markings on handguns that have been sold for the past two years, and some Democrats are promoting the idea of a national database. Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) reintroduced such a measure last week, saying it could have helped police catch the sniper.
On Tuesday, Fleischer was so critical of the technology at two consecutive briefings that a television correspondent told him he sounded like a defense attorney. Fleischer said then that Bush was not opposed, but he pointed to "a variety of technical issues involving the reliability and the accuracy of that program that bear looking into, and those issues will be explored." Fleischer also said a database could infringe on the privacy of law-abiding gun owners and compared the idea to building a database of human fingerprints in order to catch robbers and thieves....
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