Forensic Firearms Examiners vs “Gun Nuts”

Here is an excel­lent arti­cle that explains what foren­sic firearms exam­in­ers face rou­tinely. “Gun nuts” or “Shooting enthu­si­asts” who have an opin­ion about the prop­er­ties of a given firearm or ammu­ni­tion type, and will argue their opin­ions based on those often incor­rect assumptions.

Give it a try. Walk into a few gun stores and ask employ­ees about “stop­ping power” of a par­tic­u­lar hand­gun. Be pre­pared for wild and var­ied answers.

I’ve per­son­ally encoun­tered this before, many times in the past. It isn’t even worth cor­rect­ing people.

Now imag­ine if you are a retained “con­sult­ing expert” by an attor­ney in a crim­i­nal case, and the attor­ney who has retained you starts argu­ing with you about the sci­ence behind foren­sic firearms exam­i­na­tion (bal­lis­tics if you were). I’ve only had it hap­pen once. I was shocked, it was like they were try­ing to “bully” me into agree­ing with their posi­tion. After around a half-hour of try­ing to explain the “chem­istry” and why they were wrong, I finally gave up, and showed them a Wikipedia page on the inter­net. It was only then that they believed me.

See the below example:

The opin­ion of those with just enough infor­ma­tion to be dangerous:

Armchair bal­lis­ti­cians in some local agen­cies pon­tif­i­cated that a .25 Auto could not pro­duce a through-and-through wound to an adult male skull.

The results of sci­en­tific testing:

It was a crimp groove run­ning across the bul­let. No .45 ACP bul­lets used by either offi­cer at the gas sta­tion were grooved. However, almost all .25 Auto FMJ bul­lets at the time were can­nelured, includ­ing the brand fired by the sus­pect. The can­nelure absolutely ruled out either .45 ACP. Had the pic­ture been taken with a dif­fer­ent cam­era, from a dif­fer­ent angle, or a few min­utes ear­lier or later, we would not have been able to close the case. To us, the most reward­ing aspect of that case was eas­ing the mind of a fine police offi­cer who needed truth, not speculation.

Please read the rest of this arti­cle to learn about another foren­sic firearms examiner’s expe­ri­ence in this matter.