NSSF says science not on the side of ballistic fingerprinting

It may work in TV crime dramas, but the National Shooting Sports Foundation says the practice of identifying specific guns from the bullets they fire has no basis in reality, and apparently the association has convinced Maryland lawmakers to drop a program trying to do just that.

NSSF noted in a recent blog post that both houses of the Maryland General Assembly have voted to end the state's nearly decade-old ballistics imaging program. Also known as "ballistic fingerprinting," firearms manufacturers or retailers must submit spent cartridges that are photographed in hopes of matching cartridges found at crime scenes with a specific gun by comparing the marks left on the casings.

NSSF has long argued ballistic imaging programs are not based in science and are useless in solving crimes. It noted that New York State was the only other state to adopt ballistic imaging but it has already abandoned it.

"Legislators in too many states have a tendency to leap before taking a good look," said Larry Keane, senior vice president and general counsel at NSSF. "The result in Maryland and New York has been the now-discarded ballistics imaging distraction that law enforcement did not need and did not want." http://bit.ly/1DdpTw8

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