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Politics : The 2nd Amendment-- The Facts........ -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ManyMoose who wrote (1594)	10/16/2002 10:31:30 PM
From: Gordon A. Langston	Respond to of 10167

"There are several issues associated with an automated imaging concept that have to be considered. These relate to issues that impact the efficacy of the use of ballistics imaging when applied to large numbers of commercially produced firearms. These are: "1. Current imaging systems require trained personnel, ideally a firearms examiner for entry, searching, and verification. The use of technicians typically results in a higher number of false positives that need to be optically confirmed. "2. Current systems may not be as efficient for rimfire firearms and are limited to autoloading weapons. Proposed systems will not practically accommodate revolvers, rim fires, certain shotguns and rifles. A large proportion of firearms sold in CA may never make entry into the system. "3. It is unknown at this time whether or not the algorithm can successfully ID a cartridge case fired after typical break-in and wear have occurred back to the #1 casing fired at the time of manufacture. Performance test #7 (See page 8-11) showed that even in a limited database, the ranking of subsequently fired casings could drop enough to fall from a candidate list for consideration. Typically quoted existing research/papers regarding persistence of fired marks on fired cartridge cases were written based on manual comparison by qualified firearms examiners, not automated correlation techniques. "4. All potential "hits" flagged for further inspection by computer correlation must be confirmed by "hands on" microscopic examination by a qualified firearms examiner. "5. Firearms that generate markings on cartridge casings can change with use and can also be readily altered by the user. They are not permanently defined identifiers like fingerprints or DNA. Hence, images captured when the firearm is produced may not have a fixed relationship to fired cartridge casings subsequently recovered. "6. Cartridge casings from different manufacturers of ammunition may be marked differently by a single firearm such that they may not correlate favorably. "7. As the database increases in size, there is an increased potential for a firearm type to be over-represented in that database. As progressively larger numbers of similarly produced firearms are entered, images with similar signatures should be expected that will make it more difficult to find a link. Therefore, this increase does not necessarily translate to more hits. "8. Fired cartridge casings are much easier to correlate than fired bullets. "9. Not all firearms generate markings on cartridge casings that can be identified back to the firearm." www.nssf.org/PDF/CA_study.pdf