Still doesn’t identify who discharged the weapon.

Irene

So, then, are the people posting here who own guns basically denigrating the microstamping technology as useless?  

Are they saying that they have a problem with evolving forensic scientific methods such as microstamping that are not only simple and effective, but cost effective?

Microstamping offers the opportunity for police to generatic leads when a weapon is not recovered at a crime scene.  And a peer-reviewed independent study from the U.S. Department of Justice and the National Academy of Science confirmed that it not only works, but that it really is an important tool for law enforement.

www.marketwatch.com/story/new-study-prov...

Doesn’t this technology presume the shooter is the registered owner of gun? Otherwise, how does this technology help identify who committed the crime?

And doesn’t this technology put the registered owner in the uncomfortable position of having to prove he/she did not discharge the weapon?

Irene.

This technology would be useful but neither universally applicable nor conclusive proof in court.

As opposed to matching gun and bullet after the fact, which is what traditional ballistics testing does, this would allow law enforcement to identify a specific gun without having the gun.

So in Stardove's case, the gun would trace to her, the police would show up.  She might at first be a suspect, but she would also be able to give the police other leads- for example, the names of the people she suspected might have taken the gun. They would then have to track down those leads. Nothing conclusive yet, but these leads often turn up other leads- the police now have more names to check out.

This is how most police work happens.  Sifting through leads and a lot of footwork, not some Abby in the crime lab magically turning up conclusive evidence.  The more leads the better chance of solving the thing.

There is no national firearms registration in the U.S.  But, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, there are nearly 300 million firearms in circulation in the U.S. The NRA gives approximately this same figure.

Of all these guns, perhaps 200 million are registered.

wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_registered_f...

Of these, 100 million would be handguns.

These figures make the U.S. the most armed country, with 90 guns per hundred people.

www.reuters.com/article/2007/08/28/us-wo...

It's hard to find exact figures for firearms in America, but if two thirds of the guns in circulation are indeed registered with some office somewhere, then I would think that microstamping would certainly be worth using when one of those guns is used in a crime.