Sporting Arms Industry Statement on Failures of Ballistic Imaging Database

Scientists said this wouldn’t work before these states dropped mil­lions of dol­lars into these pro­grams. Ultimately the mea­sure of suc­cess in a sys­tem like this must be the num­ber of addi­tional con­vic­tions made due to the program.

Those con­vic­tions (if there are any) are extremely few and far between.

Original arti­cle posted here.

NEWTOWN, Conn. — Following an AP arti­cle (“NY new-gun data­base has yet to lead to pros­e­cu­tion,” September 29, 2008) cit­ing the fail­ures of the New York and Maryland bal­lis­tic imag­ing data­bases, and tes­ti­mony yes­ter­day in a Washington, D.C. City Council hear­ing where the Executive Director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence con­ceded that bal­lis­tic imag­ing has “not been suc­cess­ful,” the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute (SAAMI) – an asso­ci­a­tion of the nation’s lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers of firearms, ammu­ni­tion and com­po­nents – released the fol­low­ing statement:

The fail­ure of the New York and Maryland bal­lis­tic imag­ing data­base sys­tems to solve any crimes in their nearly eight years of exis­tence was pre­dictable. In 2001, California wisely rejected set­ting up its own bal­lis­tics imag­ing sys­tem because research, includ­ing by the California Department of Justice, proved that a data­base of law­fully pur­chased firearms (that are rarely ever used in crimes) would not be an effec­tive law enforce­ment tool. Another study released ear­lier this year by the National Research Council con­firmed the find­ings and advised against set­ting up a national bal­lis­tics imag­ing sys­tem. New York and Maryland have wasted mil­lions of tax­payer dol­lars on sys­tems doomed to fail.

It is believed that New York has even stopped enter­ing images into its data­base – with a back­log of over 25,000 car­tridge cases — because the com­puter server hous­ing the data­base is offline and isn’t even in the state.

In 2004, a report by the Maryland State Police Forensic Sciences Division con­cluded that the bal­lis­tic imag­ing sys­tem “had not proven to be a time sav­ing tool for the firearms exam­iner or an inves­tiga­tive enhance­ment to the crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tor,” and that “it has sim­ply failed in the mis­sion and vision con­cepts orig­i­nally estab­lished for the pro­gram.” [empha­sis in original.]

These “retail point — of — pur­chase data­bases” should be dis­tin­guished from the bal­lis­tics imag­ing data­base of crime scene evi­dence main­tained by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, called the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, which has had some suc­cess in devel­op­ing inves­ti­ga­tory leads.

As the fail­ures of bal­lis­tic imag­ing are becom­ing known, some gun con­trol advo­cates that had ini­tially sup­ported man­dat­ing bal­lis­tic imag­ing data­bases are now pro­mot­ing a new tech­nol­ogy, called firearms microstamping.

Firearms Microstamping is the patented process that laser engraves the firearm’s make, model and ser­ial num­ber on the tip of the gun’s fir­ing pin so that, in the­ory, it imprints the infor­ma­tion on dis­charged car­tridge cases.

Microstamping is a nascent tech­nol­ogy that numer­ous inde­pen­dent stud­ies , includ­ing by the NRC, University of California at Davis and renowned foren­sic sci­en­tist Professor George Krivosta, have proven to be unre­li­able and eas­ily defeated in mere sec­onds using com­mon house­hold tools. Furthermore, micro­stamp­ing can be sim­ply evaded by crim­i­nals by switch­ing out micro­stamped parts on a firearm for unmarked spare parts. In fact, yes­ter­day Washington, D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier joined the firearms indus­try in call­ing for fur­ther research into micro­stamp­ing prior to any leg­isla­tive mandate.

While the firearms indus­try wel­comes fur­ther inde­pen­dent study of either tech­nol­ogy, SAAMI sup­ports allo­cat­ing tax­payer dol­lars to proven means of crime reduc­tion such as more police offi­cers and more prosecutors.

SAAMI was cre­ated in 1926 at the request of the U.S. gov­ern­ment to cre­ate stan­dards related to safety and reli­a­bil­ity. Technical excel­lence is always our goal and safety is always the pre­req­ui­site. SAAMI sup­ports science-based solu­tions to the many issues related to firearms, ammu­ni­tion and com­po­nents. Information and a descrip­tion of the func­tion of each com­mit­tee is avail­able by vis­it­ing the SAAMI Web site at www.saami.org.