Re: Stop the presses -- Anti-terrorism bill not that bad

[JonWienk@ix.netcom.com]

On Tue, 06 Aug 96, hallam@Etna.ai.mit.edu wrote:
>
>Contrary to reports of some sort of inversion it is not the case that
>shell cases need to be found at the scene of a crime to cause an
>arrest and conviction. There are many people who are serving time
>after having left their fingerprints on shell cases found in a gun
>recovered after a crime. If the gun can be linked to a crime scene
>via balistics reports and the shells in the gun to an individual via
>fingerprints that is circumstansial evidence.

I am very skeptical of this. When a gun is fired, the shell casing becomes quite 
hot--hot enough to burn skin. (I have learned this from experience--once when 
firing my semi-auto .22 at a range, an ejected casing bounced off a post next to 
me and landed inside my collar. The resulting burn formed a blister on my neck.) 
This kind of heat has a tendency to evaporate the skin oils that fingerprints 
are composed of, which is going to make getting any useful print from the case 
extremely difficult. Also, when the gun is fired, the pressure inside the case 
presses it flat against the chamber wall, which is going to smudge the print, 
especially on semi-autos where extraction occurs while there is still a 
significant amount of pressure in the case. Furthermore, most shell cases are 
too small to get anything close to a complete print, which makes positive 
matching even more difficult. It is much more believable that prints were taken 
from the gun, which is handled more (thereby collecting more prints) and which 
generally doesn't reach skin-damaging temperatures.

Regardless of feasibility of collecting prints from cases, serial numbers on 
ammunition is still a stupid idea. Currently, all firearms are required to have 
serial numbers. However, serial numbers only rarely help solve crimes. Most 
criminals use weapons that have had the serial number welded over, filed off, 
etc. or that have been stolen, so the gun is registered in someone else's name, 
or both. Registration is a vastly more effective tool for the government to know 
where most of the lawfully owned firearms are (and who owns them) than it is at 
preventing or solving any crime. Putting serial numbers on ammo has all of the 
same problems, except the paperwork would be worse because people purchase ammo 
more frequently than guns.

Imagine someone breaks into your house while you are gone, and steals your 
serial-numbered gun and serial-numbered ammo. Then he uses them to stick up some 
of the local Stop-N-Rob's in your neighborhood while wearing the same gloves and 
ski mask he wore at your house. He fires numerous shots and reloads the gun 
several times, leaving fired cases in each store. After the last robbery, he 
dumps the gun in a storm drain, burns the gloves and mask, and catches the next 
flight to Tahiti. Do you really think that serial numbers on the gun or the ammo 
are going to help YOU?

Also, 32 bits of serial number is not enough. Over a billion rounds of .22 Long 
Rifle are fired in the US annually. Need I say more?

Since there are already natural means of positively matching bullets to guns, 
guns to cases, and guns to fingers, which cannot be used to falsely implicate 
anyone, , and since the claimed benefits of serial numbering can easily be 
circumvented by unscrupulous persons (in other words, CRIMINALS) I contend that 
serial numbers are a much better tool for facilitating a police state than for 
reducing crime.

On Tue, 6 Aug 1996, Rabid Wombat <wombat@mcfeely.bsfs.org> wrote:
>How about just numbering the criminals?  There's more room for the 
>numbers, there's precedent, and less specialized equipment is required.

obCrypto: How about defining the "number" as an MD5 hash of the X-Y coordinates 
of the entry points of 15 pellets of 00 buckshot in the criminal's chest, sorted 
in ascending order X, Y? (ORDER BY X ASC, Y ASC)
Jonathan Wienke

[End of gun rant. Sorry for burning up so much list bandwidth on this, but I 
recently had an experience where gang members were following me around for 
several weeks, trying to intimidate me from testifying against some of their 
friends who beat the crap out of some of my neighbors with sawed-off baseball 
bats... "Cold, dead, fingers" and all of that.]

"A conservative is a liberal who got mugged last night."
--Lee Rodgers

"1935 will go down in history! For the first time a civilized nation has full 
gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the 
world will follow our lead in the future!"
--Adolf Hitler

"46.  The U.S. government declares a ban on the possession, sale, 
transportation, and transfer of all non-sporting firearms. ...Consider the 
following statement:  I would fire upon U.S. citizens who refuse or resist 
confiscation of firearms banned by the U.S. government."
--The 29 Palms Combat Arms Survey  
http://www.ksfo560.com/Personalities/Palms.htm

1935 Germany = 1996 U.S.?

Key fingerprint =  30 F9 85 7F D2 75 4B C6  BC 79 87 3D 99 21 50 CB