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The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. - Ayn Rand "I don't just want gun rights... I want individual liberty, a culture of self-reliance....I want the whole bloody thing." KdT
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Wahabism Delenda Est   
Hey, FEC!  BITE ME! I'm a Member of the McCain-Feingold INSURRECTION!   "Jeez, Kevin... calling you an asshole would be a huge understatement, wouldn't it?" -Jack Cluth, The People's Republic of Seabrook (Coming from you, Jack, it's an honor.)  email: gunrightsAT comcastDOTnet INVITATION: If you have never shot a firearm, regardless of your position on the right to arms, and if you live near or visit the Tucson, AZ metropolitan area, I invite you to go shooting for a day. I will provide the arms, ammunition, targets, safety equipment, range fees and instruction. All you have to do is show up. 4 Takers To Date DO YOU LIVE SOMEWHERE ELSE and want to try shooting? Click HERE  Proud Gun-blogging member of the Pajamahadeen since May, 2003!
Debates: "The Commentary" A OLD discussion on gun control between me and an Irishman living in London Start here. UPDATED! Now with archive! Post #1 by Alex, a Guest A multi-post discussion hosted here at TSM My short exchange with Professor Saul Cornell of the Second Amendment Research Center Best Posts: The "Rights" Discussion: What is a "Right?" What is a "Right"? Revisited, Part I Part II Rights, Morality, Idealism & Pragmatism, Part I Part II Part III Part IV The United Federation of Planets Is the Government Responsible for Your Protection? Part I & Part II 1975 in Washington, D.C. vs. 2004 in Canton, Ohio Go Ahead, Rely on the Government for Your Protection The Other Side Liberal vs. Conservative: Both are Necessary The Blog that Ate Poughkeepsie Updated and restated as: Of Laws and Sausages Militias A Mistake a Free People Get to Make Only Once This is NOT What I Wanted to Read TRUST The Lying "News" Media, Pt. II Say WHAT? Bias? What Bias? Agenda? What Agenda? The Church of the MSM and the New Reformation Let's See if I Can "Germinate an Intelligent Thought" Here The ACLU Hasn't Changed its Tune They Never EVER Stop It is Not the Business of Government Five Reasons Why It ISN'T They Keep Making Better Fools Five Month Investigation, 10 Tracer Rounds, Two Felony Convictions That Sumbitch Ain't been BORN! On Guillotines and Gibbets England Slides Further Towards Bondage Pressing the "RESET" Button Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothin' Left To Lose A Terrible Resolve The Courts Will Not Save Us Trilogy: The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions "Game Over, Man. Game Over." An Important Question And the denouement: Hudson Was Wrong The Dangerous Victims Trilogy: "(I)t's most important that all potential victims be as dangerous as they can" Violence and the Social Contract Governments, Criminals, and Dangerous Victims In the same vein: Those Without Swords Can Still Die Upon Them The True Believers Trilogy: True Believers March of the Lemmings Reasonable People Also in the same vein: Tough History Coming Technical Dissertations Why Ballistic Fingerprinting Doesn't (And Won't) Work Spin, Spin, Spin Speaking of Teddy Kennedy... This is the Kind of Thing That REALLY IRRITATES ME Questions from the Audience?
BLOGROLL:
PROTESTWARRIOR Some people who are taking the fight to the Left. And some GREAT T-shirts, too. DAILY READS I need a longer day! Day by Day InstaPundit Lileks' The Bleat Kim du Toit Mostly Cajun View from the Porch Of Arms and the Law TFS Magnum Ravenwood's Universe Irons in the Fire Say Uncle TRUE EXCELLENCE American Digest The Belmont Club The Volokh Conspiracy Michael Yon Varifrank Eject!Eject!Eject! Eternity Road Oleg Volk Personal Effects ON INDEFINITE HIATUS USS Clueless The Safety Valve Ipse Dixit The Lopsided Poopdeck Acidman (RIP) Skywritings Publicola D.C. Thorton Smoke on the Water OTHER GUN/RIGHTS BLOGS Airborne Combat Engineer AlphaPatriot Alphecca American Dinosaur A Day in the Life of an Ambulance Driver The Anarchangel The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler Argghhh! The Bitch Girls Boots and Sabers The Breda Fallacy Call Me Ahab Carnaby Fudge Clayton Cramer Cogito Ergo Geek Countertop Chronicles Cowboy Blob Critical Mastiff Cryptic Subterranean FreedomSight From the Heartland Fun Turns to Tragedy!!! The Geek with a .45 Gunwatch Heartless Libertarian Hell in a Handbasket Individ Justin Buist's Blog The LawDog Files Lead and Gold Les Jones Mad Ogre The Michael Bane Blog Moral Flexibility Mr. Completely Murdoc Online The Munchkin Wrangler Ninth Stage No Looking Backwards No Quarters Oscar Poppa Outrageous Malfunction Pass the ammo Posse Incitatus Random Nuclear Strikes Reasonablenut Resistance is Futile! Sandcastles and Cubicles SlagleRock's Slaughterhouse Snowflakes in Hell Surly Curmudgeon Texican Tattler The Ten Ring South Park Pundit Triggerfinger The View From North Central Idaho Vox The War on Guns Weck Up To Thees! Wince and Nod Xavier Thoughts .45 Caliber Justice BLOGGERS I'VE MET Cowboy Blob Kim du Toit Mrs. du Toit Serenity Smoke on the Water The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler On the Patio Fodder of Ride Fast & Shoot Straight Rivrdog Say Uncle JimmyB, The Conservative UAW Guy KeeWee Mr. Completely Og the Neanderpundit USCitizen of Traction Control World Examiner Joe Huffman Chris & Mel John and Beth Donovan Sebastian of Snowflakes in Hell DirtCrashr of Anthroblogogy Rob of The Kitchen Maj. Chuck Ziegenfuss of From My Position... On the Way! Matthew of Triggerfinger Sarah of Carnaby Fudge KevinP who maintains this excellent Wikipedia entry on the Joyce Foundation Dave Hardy Clayton Cramer Primeval Papa FURRINERS Kiwi Pundit The Policeman's Blog Free Market Fairy Tales Samizdata Musing The Second Version OTHER GOOD READS Baby Troll Blog The Winds of Change Sense of Events The Everlasting Phelps Knowledge is Power QandO Blog Radio Blogger THE PSYCHE BRIGADE Dr. Sanity Dr. Helen One Cosmos ShrinkWrapped Neo-Neocon Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred OTHER AZ BLOGS Useful Fools Zonitics Jackalope Pursuivant Primeval Papa DEPT. OF OUR COLLAPSING SCHOOLS Joanne Jacobs EducatioNation Teacher, Teacher The Irascible Professor OTHERS KIND ENOUGH TO BLOGROLL ME Adding to the Noise America's North Shore Journal Anthroblogogy Atomic Nerds Baboon Pirates Bad Dogs and Such The Bastidge Blognomicon Charming, Just Charming Chublogga! Classical Values Common Sense and Wonder Combs Spouts Off Conservative Scalawag The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns damnum absque injuria David Drake Digital Retrograde The Dougout The Emigre with a Digital Cluebat Empire of Dirt Ether Mind The Fabulous Mint 400 The Freeholder Heinleinblog Impearls Interested-Participant Isaac Schrödinger Josh's Weblog Keith Devens Kill Righty Libertopia The Liberty Zone The Liberty Papers Living in the Surreal World Mike's Eyes Miss O'Hara The Mind of Mog The Ministry of Minor Perfidy MonkeyWatch Adam Lawson NashvilleFiles Near the Salty City PervasiveLight Pierre Legrand's Pink Flamingo Bar Practical Penumbra The Passing Parade Right As Usual Rough Diamond Rules for Rulers Sharp as a Marble She Who Will Be Obeyed! The Speculist Sperari Striderweb A Trainwreck in Maxwell Upbeat Cynicism (Ian Hamet) The Warren Warthog's Rants Wasted Electrons Wheels within Wheels Wicked Thoughts  
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Friday, January 14, 2005 Why Ballistic Fingerprinting Doesn't (and Won't) Work ...aside from the fact that calling it "gun DNA" doesn't make it so. Well, the news of Maryland's Integrated Ballistics Identification System database being a failure has made the rounds of the blogosphere. Kim commented on Wedneday, so did Say Uncle (with an Instalanche). Triggerfinger, Keith Devens, and No Quarters, did too. The Geek with a .45 gives a link to the actual report in a PDF file (graphic, rather than text file, though,) and Irons in the Fire commented on that. I've been pretty busy, but I had a chance to read the report yesterday, and it's an interesting expansion on the other reports I've read. There are two from California's ballistic imaging feasibility study, and the original Maryland study. All of these reports reference New York's system, but I have yet to find a study of that system specifically. The general consensus of all of the blog pieces was a sarcastic "big freaking surprise!" which is understandable given our stated biases. The response from the gun I am fairly green, could you explain why the idea would not work.Several respondents made a valiant effort to explain the problems inherent in the system, but a couple of paragraphs is insufficient. Like most controversial topics, there's a whole lot of "there" there, and no simple two- or even ten-sentence response is enough. Sometimes I forget that a lot of people don't have the basic information I've accumulated over the last ten years. (Generally not, though, which is one reason my posts - like this one - tend to the Den Bestian in length.) So here, in some detail, is a dissertation on just some of the problems with the concept of "ballistic fingerprinting" as a crime-fighting tool.
First, let's see what the gun When a gun is fired, identifying marks are made on the bullets and cartridge casings. Those marks, called ballistic fingerprints, are as unique as human fingerprints - no two firearms leave the same marks. The marks are also reproducible - every time a gun is fired it leaves identical marks. The uniqueness and reproducible qualities of ballistic fingerprints can provide a critical tool to law enforcement for solving gun crimes by rapidly identifying the specific weapon that was used in a crime.That's the basic idea they're selling. The VPC says, surprisingly, nothing that I can find concerning ballistic fingerprinting - possibly because they outspokenly agitate for a handgun ban and may see ballistic fingerprinting as a step backward. The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence has a web page on the topic, and a full report on the wonders of ballistic fingerprinting. Interestingly, both the Brady Campaign and the CSGV hang a lot of weight on how ballistic fingerprinting could have aided in the capture of Muhammed and Malvo in the D.C. Sniper killings. The CSGV says this: In October 2002, the world watched helplessly as the Washington, D.C., area experienced a sudden rash of gun violence. Seven shootings, six of which were fatal, occurred in just two days in various D.C.-area suburbs. Investigators recovered bullets from some of the shootings and examined them under a microscope. Unique, microscopic markings indicated that the bullets had been fired from the same gun. A sniper was on the loose.The Brady Center says much the same: In the Maryland sniper shootings, police rapidly matched bullet fragments from each victim to prove that the same gun was used in all of the shootings. The technology to match bullets to firearms is known as "ballistic fingerprinting." It worked and provided police with important crime leads. But what was missing, what police desperately needed, was a nationwide database of the ballistic fingerprint of every gun before it is sold so that police could determine not just that the bullets came from the same gun, but which specific gun - manufacturer, model, serial number - the bullets were fired from. That would have helped police trace the sniper after the very first victim.Of course, it's all the NRA's fault that there's no such database: Because of opposition from the gun lobby and the National Rifle Association (NRA), efforts to expand ballistic fingerprinting to include all new guns have been blocked in Congress and state legislatures. Ballistic fingerprinting technology is proven and reliable. What is lacking is the political will for politicians to stand up to the gun lobby and establish a comprehensive ballistics database that would help law enforcement solve more gun crimes and catch more gun criminals.Here's the problem, though. What they say (and this is overwhelmingly true for these groups) is only partly (in this case, minimally) true. There's a whole lot of information they neglect, gloss over, bury, and avoid. Let's look at what the current ballistic fingerprint (I'm going to abbreviate it BF from now on) databases are attempting. In Maryland's and New York's, all new handguns sold in these states must be provided from the manufacturer with one or two fired cartridge cases. When the gun is sold, those cases are forwarded to the proper ballistics lab along with the serial number, make and model of the handgun. Supposedly no direct information about the purchaser is included, but you can imagine how long that would actually last. The NRA's primary objection to BF is that it's backdoor gun registration. Anyway, the cartridge cases are then entered into the BF database by being digitally imaged by a trained ballistics technician, and those images are linked to the make, model, caliber and serial number of the firearm. Then, if any spent casings are found at a crime scene, that recorded information will be available for comparison with the evidence collected. The BF database will be searched by a sophisticated program looking for a match. What does the software look for? Well, as the Brady Center explained, it looks for those "unique markings" - markings "as unique as human fingerprints." The only problem is, they're not. The first feasibility study done for the California legislature explained: As bullets and cartridge cases are expelled from a firearm, microscopic markings are left on the bullets and the cartridge cases from the firing pin, ejector, barrel and other internal mechanisms of the firearm. These marks are unique to each firearm and are substantially reproduced each time the firearm is fired. The size, shape and location of these marks can be used to establish a smaller pool of firearms that share characteristics for comparison purposes. The individual nature of these marks can be used to conclusively identify a specific firearm as having fired a particular bullet or cartridge case. Ballistics imaging is often referred to as “ballistic fingerprinting” or “ballistic DNA.” Unlike DNA, which cannot be altered, some markings made by firearms may change over time with normal wear and tear of a firearm. Some preliminary studies suggest that some firearms marks may change rapidly during a “break-in” period of unknown length. Others state that marks on cartridge cases do not change, but that marks on bullets, especially lead bullets, do.So, right off the bat you can see that the "uniqueness" isn't so unique. Fingerprints, short of physical damage to the pad of a person's finger, don't change, but the markings produced on a cartridge case can - and from simple wear. Further, those changes may occur rapidly during the early use of the firearm, yet the baseline cartridge cases provided to the ballistics lab are one of if not the very first rounds fired from the gun. But there are other problems as well. The technical evaluation portion explains: When a cartridge is fired in a firearm, force of ignition will cause the firearm to leave various identifying marks on the cartridge case. These marks can be class, sub-class or individual characteristics. Class characteristics are features that indicate a restricted group source and result from design factors. Sub-class characteristics are features made during the course of manufacturing that further restrict the group source. On a fired cartridge case, sub-class characteristics can be mistaken for individual characteristics. Individual characteristics are those marks that serve to uniquely identify the cartridge case to only one gun. These marks can be made on different parts of the cartridge case by various parts of the firearm.That's important to remember: the software that is going to search through the BF database is pretty much limited to firing pin impressions, breech face marks, and ejector marks. BUT, there are problems with even these marks: The detail of these breech face impressions is dependent on cartridge chamber pressure and the type of breech face manufacture/condition. Lower pressure cartridges are not expected to consistently produce decent breech face impressions. Dirt or lead build up on the breech face can reduce the detail of breech face impressions.No wear and tear involved, this is dependent strictly on the pressure generated by the ammo being fired and/or by how dirty the gun is. The cartridge cases provided to the ballistics lab are fired from a brand-new, pristinely clean gun. But what if the gun is dirty? And you can bet the ammunition used by a perp won't be the same ammo used by the factory to provide the baseline cases. Another variable in the production of breech face marks is the type of ammunition used. The detail left on a cartridge case is also dependent on the cartridge chamber pressure, bullet weight and the hardness of the primer. On some occasions, these can vary to such an extent that an examiner will not be able to identify test 1 to test 2 when different ammunition is used in the same gun. One of the cardinal rules in firearm examination is to test fire the gun with similiar ammunition as the evidence ammunition if at all possible.But when you're comparing to the baseline cartridge cases provided by the gun manufacturer, you don't have that option. If a trained forensic ballistics technician can't ID a case, what chance does a piece of software have? To give some idea of the variability, the report included this image of breechface marks on different manufacturer's ammunition fired from the same gun:
Here's the thing the gun The difference, once again, is that the gun is already in police hands, and that gun provides multiple cases from similar ammunition to that found at the crime scene. With Maryland's and New York's IBIS systems, what they're trying to do is exactly backwards. All the ballistics technician has is one or more crime scene cases, and all he has to compare those cases to is an electronic database of two cases from each new handgun sold. The chance that the crime scene ammunition is of the same manufacture as the baseline is slim, and the same loading? Infinitesimal. For example, in 9mm alone, one of the most "popular" calibers used by criminals, Federal offers eleven different loads. Winchester offers twelve. Remington offers fourteen. Then there's CCI/Speer, Fiocci, Wolf, Black Hills, and many others, not to mention military surplus, commercial reloads, and even handloads. Even if you have ammunition from the same manufacturer, different loads will leave different marks, as the report noted: "The detail left on a cartridge case is also dependent on the cartridge chamber pressure, bullet weight and the hardness of the primer." Here's an example of two 7.65 (.32 Auto) Sellier & Bellot cases from the same gun using two different lots of the same load:
In addition, the cases from the suspect gun are being checked against a relatively small database of known crime scene evidence, not against a vast database of cases from every new handgun sold into circulation: (S)ome firearms will reproduce (marks) well with sufficient detail, while some firearms will vary in their reproducibility depending on the cartridges used. Firing pins can be relatively smooth and nondescript. In such cases, these smooth firing pin marks can serve primarily as a class characteristic indicator. Even when they have gross features such as in the Bryco, these could be class or sub-class characteristics. An exception is the Glock firearm with its characteristic firing pin drag and aperture marks. This is one of the reasons that cartridge case examinations frequently involve the examination and comparison of other unique marks such as chamber marks, ejection port marks, ejector marks, and rimfire anvil marks. The impressions are not only dependent on the hardness of the primer, but also on how well the primer seats in the local cartridge case. In smaller databases these issues may not be significant, but with a large database using newly manufactured firearms, these differences can prove significant.(Underlining in the original, other emphasis mine.) I won't go into the technical specifics of this problem. If you want to know, read the report, Appendix A, but the concept shouldn't be hard to grasp. Instead of searching for a nail in a haystack, you're looking for a needle in a hay field. And with a million new handguns entering the market each year, that field just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Not to mention the 60+ million handguns already in circulation that aren't in the database. Not as simple as the Brady Bunch makes it sound, is it? But wait! There's MORE! The initial feasibility report spawned a later independent study report that expanded on the issues brought up. You see, the BATF was quite hurt by some of the statements made and took exception to the naysayers in California's Department of Justice, so a follow-on study was done to answer the items the BATF objected to. That report was written by Dr. Jan De Kinder, Ballistics Section Head of the National Institute for Forensic Science, in the Department of Justice for Belgium. (I guess they really wanted an unbiased observer.) Dr. De Kinder was a little less enthusiastic about how "unique" those markings were, as he stated in his introduction: A ballistic imaging database system is based on the following premise: When a gun is fired, it may leave distinguishing marks on the fired bullet and cartridge case. A searchable database with images of such marks from all guns sold could be a valuable investigative tool. Such a database would permit linking of evidence bullets or cartridge cases back to the gun that fired them. Evidence found at a shooting incident would be scanned and compared to all entries in the database. Ideally, the system would provide investigators with the serial number of the firearm. The serial number can lead the investigators to the registered owner. The database could be called a “ballistic fingerprinting” database. If created, California’s ballistic fingerprinting database would quickly grow to be very large. More than 100,000 fired cartridges from new pistols would be added to it annually.Not as definitive as the Brady Center at all. Dr. De Kinder also explains how successful the initial tests were: The AB1717 Evaluation was designed to test the performance of the IBIS™ system for the anticipated large database of new firearms. The experiment used 792 Smith & Wesson model 4006 semi-automatic pistols for this purpose. Each pistol was test fired using at least two cartridges of Federal brand ammunition and other ammunition. One of the test fired Federal cartridge cases for each of the pistols was registered into the database.The supporters of a BF database insist that the "unique fingerprint" will work to allow an automated system to identify the serial number of a gun used in a crime, but in controlled laboratory experiments it does not. And bear in mind, the ammunition tested was all from the same lot of Federal .40S&W caliber cartridges. The sample database had only 792 firearms all of the same make and model. This is the most ideal condition. Read the entire report if you're interested. (And if you've slogged this far down this dissertation, you must be interested!) Now, I've discussed the problems involved in the BF database concerning only the ammunition used and normal wear, but what about alterations to the firearm, whether intentional or innocent? Dr. De Kinder stated: Whereas the BATF sees altering a firearm as a non-issue, it is a real problem: Any reduction in the potential of 'hits' such as caused by alteration to a firearm is of concern when evaluating the usefulness from a technical point of view of a 'gun sales database'.It certainly would be if a BF database were known to be in use. Remember, the marks an automated system compares are the breechface, firing pin, and ejector marks. Does this bring anything to your attention? It should. Those marks are pretty much limited to semi-automatic handguns. Revolvers don't leave ejector marks. In fact, unless a perp reloads his revolver and drops the empty brass, a revolver doesn't leave cases at a crime scene at all - but revolvers are included in the database. So if you limit yourself to semi-auto handguns, how hard is it to change those marks? Not hard at all. Take a Dremel tool and polish the breechface. Install a new firing pin. Grind just a little bit on the ejector with a stone or a file. If you want to get really creative, buy a new slide from Brownell's or from Numrich. After all, the part of the gun that carries the serial number is the frame. The slide is just another part. But it's the part that leaves the marks. If you're a professional criminal, why not? Or just use an older gun that won't be in the database. There's millions of them. And that brings up another question: How old are guns used in crime? The gun A) The gun used was a rifle and not a handgun. (TWO million new rifles enter circulation annually, as opposed to only ONE million handguns.) B) The evidence collected at the crime scenes wasn't cartridge cases but projectiles, and the system doesn't track projectiles. Muhammed and Malvo did their shooting from inside a vehicle. The cartridge cases went with them when they escaped the crime scene. C) The condition of the projectiles recovered (mostly jacket fragments and bullet bases) was enough to verify that the same gun was used, and that's about it. I'm pretty sure they did it more through metallurgical analysis than rifling marks. Certainly not enough of the bullets survived to have positively ID'd a firearm out of a huge database of firearms. And, finally, D) The gun was stolen, so even if they could have ID'd the weapon, all it would have told them was what gun shop it came from. (Not exactly the whiz-bang tool it's played up to be, is it?) Dr. De Kinder discussed the firearm age question, known in the business as "time to crime": The time to crime (TTC) is an important parameter that can be used to reduce the size of the ballistic fingerprinting database. If this parameter drops down in a relatively short time period, the firearms which were sold long before the average TTC have a negligible chance of being used in crime. In other words, it allows one to minimize the retention time of the data in the ballistic fingerprinting database without losing a substantial amount of its performance.It would appear, then, that guns fresh off the showroom floor don't end up being used in a crime all that often. So, let's review. I: The system is limited to new handguns.If you didn't know any of this initially, then I can understand why Say Uncle's commenter wondered why the idea didn't work. It seems so simple. It's a fingerprint. It's "Gun DNA." But it's not. Just like the gun SAFETY groups aren't what they say either. And here's the final nail in the coffin, from the last report that inspired all that commentary: The MD-IBIS Program has collected and imported 43,729 cartridge cases into the system as of 9/7/04. It has incurred 208 criminal investigations leading to six (6) "hits" or matches. It should be reiterated at this point that the IBIS system does not make the match. It provides a means of narrowing the field of search. The examination by a competent Firearms Examiner on a known versus questioned basis provides the actual conclusion of a match. The estimated cumulative cost of the MD-IBIS Program to date is $2,567,633. The cost per "hit" value is $427,939, or approximately $60 per gun sold. None of the "hits" has been used in a criminal trial, and five (5) of the six (6) did not work according to the manner in which the system was designed. It actually functioned in reverse. The gun was already present. Although these hits may be interpreted by some as being in line with the Mission of the DSP, the mission accomplishment and cost effectiveness of the Program has not been demonstrated. The MD-IBIS Program has not lead to the solution or expediency of an investigation that could not have been accomplished by other traditional sources."It has simply failed in the Mission and Vision concepts originally established for the Program." So in addition to being useless, it has the extra added bonus of being expensive. The MD-IBIS report also notes that New York's system has been equally successful (i.e., a complete failure) but it's cost New York taxpayers over eight million dollars so far. According to this link, the price is nearly $16 million. It would appear that throwing more money at the problem doesn't help. So the reaction I expect? The philosophy cannot be wrong. Try it again, ONLY HARDER!! All four ballistic database reports are available here: Feasibility of a California Ballistics Identification System AB1717 report - Technical Evaluation: Feasibility of a Ballistics Imaging Database for All New Handgun Sales Maryland State Police Forensics Division IBIS report MD-IBIS Progress Report #2 The OC Shooter's Page on Ballistic Fingerprinting - very comprehensive. See also my earlier piece, Spin, Spin, Spin. (Like this wasn't long enough already...) UPDATE, 1/19: This is probably the most linked and most viewed piece I've written to date. Thanks to everyone who has commented and pointed readers this way (though I'm surprised I haven't seen a single hate-bomb out of the two thousand or so who've read this.) One commenter over at Chicago Boyz made an observation that I would have included in the body of this piece if it weren't already so long: I've long since concluded that the gun controlers don't really expect measures like these to "work", in the sense of lowering crime, or aiding the police. The inconvenience and cost to gun owners is what they're aiming for. In the long run, if they can make gun ownership enough of a hassle, the number of gun owners in the next generation will decline, and perhaps we'll lose enough political clout that they can get the outright ban they really want.To which I replied: Brett Bellmore hit the nail on the head - the purpose is not to build a useful tool for crimefighting, the purpose is to make it more difficult for individuals to aquire and keep firearms. The effort is, and the gun control groups state this implicitly, to reduce the number of guns, because they ALL blame "the number of guns" in circulation for the level of gun violence we have here. | | |
