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 confiscation, er, control, um, SAFETY groups was a bit more muted. JoinTogether didn’t make a peep, as far as I could tell. No press release from the Brady Campaign. Ditto for the Violence Policy Center. But one thing that struck me, as immersed in this topic as I am, was this comment at Say Uncle:
I am fairly green, could you explain why the idea would not work.
I can see their problem of the guns not being indexed, but would it would seem that that could be solved by indexing all the guns.
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.
Much, much, MUCH more here (including supporting links throughout), of which you should read the all. Taken altogether, it’s as thorough and comprehensive a debunking—with pictures, yet—of the “ballistic fingerprinting” hokum as you’re ever gonna see. Now, about those “drug-sniffing dogs…“
In a nutshell, then: Everything we’ve been told for lo, these many, many years by FederalGovCo and anti-2A, anti-freedom shitlibs (BIRM) is a goddamned lie.
- Entries
“Doctors at Johns Hopkins: What does Michael Bloomberg’s dick taste like?”
Worth the read just to get to the last line.
They will keep trying to take the guns which is what all of these things are. It is our weapons that keep us free. As soon as they get them freedom would come to a complete end.
Note, the Smallest Minority report is from 2005 and just as accurate today as then.