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SmittyMHS

Maryland scraps bullet ID program

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The MDSP asked that it be scrapped over 5 years ago. They said it wasn't solving any crimes and could put the money maintaining this to good use elsewhere. Shows how responsive politicians are and how they like to keep pouring money into things that don't work which support their agenda.

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"Obviously, I'm disappointed," former Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening, whose administration pushed for the database, told the Baltimore Sun. "It's a little unfortunate, in that logic and common sense suggest that it would be a good crime-fighting tool."

 

Some backers say the program could have worked if authorities had stuck with it, claiming that handguns used in crimes are typically as old as 20 years or more.

 

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In other words, "We are dumb and incompetent, but dont want to admit". Seriously ?

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New York is dropping their bullet sales program cannot justify it, now Maryland dropping their variation of it.  Do we guess what bills show up in NJ in 2017?

 

We need to change the state motto:

 

New Jersey The Garden State.

 

to something a little more realistic.

 

New Jersey The _________  State.  Fill in the blank.

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I never understood what they hoped to do but catch very stupid criminals with this.  Why not just buy an aftermarket barrel and change the extractor and firing pin and then their database would have been totally worthless anyway.

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Aren't most guns used in committing a crime either stolen or bought illegally? So if they did match a shell casing to a gun, chances are it was stolen or bought through that loop hole they keep talking about. If you shoot someone and keep the gun...well you deserve to be caught. 

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I never understood what they hoped to do but catch very stupid criminals with this.  Why not just buy an aftermarket barrel and change the extractor and firing pin and then their database would have been totally worthless anyway.

 

They hoped to place onerous burdens on something they don't understand. That's it. It played well with people educated by hollywood logic, so that got it bumped up in line a bit. 

 

The toolmarks experts told them way back when, as did the IT types, that it was useless. Toolmarks change over time, and they were told that. your odds of getting anything other than no match, or a torrent of useless junk you don't have time to check visually are zero.

 

Toolmarks aren't useful for solving crimes, they are useful for making someone look guilty in a prosecution. Heck fingerprints are better, and if you do the math on how they are used in investigations and prosecutions these days, evidence has been admitted with as little as 7 matching points. the industry standard is 12, and with that bar set,  real world tests of analysts by IAI had more than half of test subjects fail to match the provided latents to the provided samples, and 30% misidentified (i.e. said it matched when it didn't). Statistical studies for using fingerprints for biometrics have found some pretty bad tendencies for false correspondence of minutiae. About 1 in 170, and the dataset wasn't that big. Collaborative testing services evaluates fingerprint labs with perfect sample tests (i.e. think comparing your FOID print against good booking prints of arrested people), their misidentification rate for labs that respond ranges from 3%-20%. 

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