Molon Labe !
Posted on 10/20/2002 3:15:55 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
FOR thousands of people in the Washington region ducking behind their cars as they pump gas, keeping their children indoors or missing the high school football season, there is no limit to what should be done to thwart the sniper who has shot 11 people this month.
But for a distinct, vocal minority, the two most innovative responses — using a military surveillance plane to look for the shooter and creating a so-called ballistic fingerprinting system that could have identified the rifle used in the killings (and its first purchaser) — are dangerous overreactions that raise threats even more sinister than the one posed by the sniper.
Their arguments are not just over whether the reactions are legal or constitutional, but also whether in the long run they are wise. The concern comes from people of various ideologies who share fears about a too-powerful government. Some worry about both gun privacy and military surveillance, others just about guns.
Eugene R. Fidell, a Washington lawyer specializing in military law, argues that the use of an Army plane is excessive, whether or not it complies with legislation limiting military involvement in law enforcement.
"What we have at the moment is simply a case the people have been unable to crack," he said. "That's not a basis for involving the military. Otherwise we're in the same box as banana republics, countries where the pervasive state is tolerated."
Representative Bob Barr, Republican of Georgia, a member of the board of the National Rifle Association, said merely knowing the original purchaser of a gun (as is now required for handguns in New York and Maryland) is of little value in fighting crime. And an effective ballistic fingerprinting law — which would create a computerized database that could use markings on a bullet to link them with the guns that fired them — would require a national register of gun owners.
"If the government knows what weapons you have," he said, "then it can, if it wants to at some point in the future, restrict their possession." And even a government that has no designs on lawfully owned guns, he said, has no business invading the privacy of gun owners to compile a list.
These arguments are hardly universal among advocates of individual rights. The American Civil Liberties Union, for example, has not taken a position on either issue. Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, disagrees with Mr. Fidell and Mr. Barr, though he has been an ally of each on other privacy-related issues — with Mr. Barr on government surveillance and with Mr. Fidell on the rights of gays in the military.
As to the fears of ballistic fingerprinting, "What harm could come from that," Mr. Frank asked. "Absent that, how do you get this guy? I think this is a real example of how the pro-gun people go too far. Many governments know who has guns and none of them has ever been taken away improperly."
The use of surveillance aircraft is "a good idea," he said. "It makes sense to have particularly expensive technology in the hands of the military and let police borrow it on appropriate occasions." That was a very different issue, he said, from having "soldiers arresting people."
Critics of military involvement in the search for the sniper generally agree that what the Defense Department is doing is only a small step beyond what it has done in the past, and is probably within the limits specified in the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 — itself a reaction to the use of federal troops to enforce laws during Reconstruction.
But David Keene, head of the American Conservative Union, said: "The mere fact that something is legal doesn't mean you ought to do it. And just because James Madison forgot to ban it, that doesn't mean you ought to do it."
Virginia Sloan, executive director of the Constitution Project, a nonpartisan group that seeks broader recognition of constitutional issues, said that "these are things we need to think about and hesitate about before we go forward because civil liberties, once lost, are not easily regained."
Mr. Barr also cited the slippery slope argument. "If you use this as a precedent, where do you then draw the line?" he asked. "The next time you have a sniper, do you bring the military in after two deaths?"
Representative Robert C. Scott, a Virginia Democrat, said: "I haven't seen the rationale for using the military in what are normal police investigations. One of the problems we have with the administration and civil liberties is that it is very difficult to articulate a principle by which we are working. What we have had is just a reaction — what they want to do in this case — without a rationalization." He complained that this was typical of an administration that would hold people without charges, or deny them access to lawyers.
But Mr. Scott, the senior Democrat on the Crime Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, parted company with Mr. Barr on the bullet-marking issue. He called for hearings on the subject, saying, "It appears to be a very important investigatory tool."
Mr. Keene of the American Conservative Union said the issue was not the potential effectiveness of either tool. Making every American give a DNA sample to the F.B.I. would also help the police catch more crooks, he said: "But in a free society you have to make tradeoffs, and law enforcement is not the only mission in our society."
Humor ping.
Molon Labe !
Well, I guess that depends on how you define “improperly”.
For the “Great Gay Legislator” complete and total confiscation of all privately held firearms would be completely appropriate.
And as for how do you get this guy? It is already too late to use any such method to get this guy. He already has his weapon and it has not been fingerprinted. Any future sniper could easily acquire an un-fingerprinted weapon or by simply changing the barrel on a fingerprinted weapon, change its ballistic fingerprint.
The Democrats are terribly good at this and manage to buy a few votes along the way.
How, could anyone with an once of intellect,believe that ballistic finger printing would work?
A barrel re-do, which is a quite common practice, would have them chasing their tail more so than they already are.
How do you get this guy?
. Passing the Homeland Security Bill would be a step in the right direction.
Because people like Barney Krank get their ballistic input from the NEA, PETA, MADD and Amnesty International.
They don't want the good citizens armed... even though they know illegal weapons are in ready supply for any thug who wants one.
I agree.
The great lie in all of this is that the "science" of ballistic fingerprinting exists. There is no classification and indexing system that would take you from an unknown bullet or shell case to a known, registered example. If you have a perfect set of ten fingerprints, you can go the the FBI fingerprint file and be led to a drawer (or computer file) where there may be one, none, or a hundred close matches. At that point, a trained lab expert has to maually compare prints, and hope for a match.
The gun grabbers, in doing their usual blood dance, have told their usual lies, and are saying a ready-made science exists when it can never work. This is another form of lie like the "smart gun", which is always just around the corner, technologically.
However, since it would take several years to "fingerprint" every gun, you can bet that your firearm will be lost or misplaced before they can get around to returning it to you.
Ask the state police that do "ballistic fingerprinting" how many cases it has solved. The answer is "zero". Ask them how often they even try to use the system, and you'll get the same answer, because it can't work. Their "science" is just smoke and mirrors.
By the way, I remember reading a few years ago that Los Angeles solved the problem of street shootings by installing a computerized sound tracking system that would triangulate the site of a shooting in under a second, and dispatch police. They boasted that shootings would then be impossible in LA. Since it worked so well, why aren't they using it in DC?
. Passing the Homeland Security Bill would be a step in the right direction.
Unless the sniper is a immigrant terrorist I don’t believe that this would help.
You are of course correct.
I do believe developing such a system is possible however. Such as you mention with fingerprints to narrow the field down. You could use data points such as caliber, number of rifling grooves, direction of rifling twist.
But the number of variables that would enter the data set after the samples were taken when the gun is new would make the system only marginally useful.
As a barrel ages the rifling markings on the fired bullet changes due to barrel wear. Things like cleaning the gun, use of mechanical lead/brass removers, and the firing of hundreds of rounds through a barrel substantially changes the barrel’s imprint on a fired bullet.
Oh, gross mechanical features could narrow it down to a few hundred, or hundred thousand, guns of the same manufacture. And then you'd have to hope the bad guy had the gun "fingerprinted" first.
After being burglarized (guns were in a safe, my coin collection wasn't), I learned a lot (the hard way) from the police fingerprint tech as he dusted for prints. He said even human fingerprints ain't what TV and the movies have cracked it up to be. Breaking even a common case of burglary takes a lot of luck, even with fingerprints. "Ballistic fingerprinting" of guns would be a thousand times less effective than that.
All the billions that would be spent on "ballistic fingerprinting" (it deserves quotation marks, just like "smart guns") would have no measurable result, except as an excuse to collect guns, and not bother to return them.
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