Stolen or not, what about guns used in a crime?
So how are the police supposed to link a gun that you purchased to a crime that was committed?
This is not as it is depicted on the forensic shows. In practice, it is very, very difficult to do. I recall that New York required ballistic examples of a case from all the pistols sold in New York for about 10 years. As I remember, they never solved *one* case in that entire time with that information. They finally gave up on it as being a waste of time.
This is not to say that in a particular crime, where cases an largely undamaged bullets have been recovered, that the forensics might be helpful in making a case.
But in reality, guns are almost *never* matched to crimes via ballistic evidence, unless separate evidence exists to link the person who has the gun and the crime.
You have given me an idea for a separate article, though.
Well, the example I gave was a subsequent use of the privately purchased firearm in a legitimate self-defense situation. Let’s say you put two rounds center-mass in a mugger. For grins and giggles they send the rounds off to ballistics and they match to rounds recovered from a murder committed before you purchased that firearm. Turns out you bought a murder weapon. The issue is ... how do you defend yourself against that possibility? The odds might be very low but the cost is astronomically high.
Yeah, I love how the guy looks at a recovered round under a microscope and confidently pronounced that it was fired form a Glock, manufactured in April or May of 2004 on the north end of the shop, with black grips. Should me more like "This was fired from a pistol with polygonal rifling, so maybe a Glock."
I recall that New York required ballistic examples of a case from all the pistols sold in New York for about 10 years. As I remember, they never solved *one* case in that entire time with that information. They finally gave up on it as being a waste of time.
I thought they solved ONE, or maybe I'm thinking of some other registration scheme.