By Jordan Pinjuv
Staff writer
The recent sniper attacks in Washington, D.C. and surrounding areas have prompted debates about law enforcement practices in this country. While the attacks raised questions about how police handle important phone calls to how our immigration policies are working, the major debate has been over new gun regulations.
Ballistic fingerprinting is the newest idea in gun control legislation. Every handgun or rifle — but incidentally, not shotgun — leaves a unique “fingerprint” on a bullet once it’s fired.
Hypothetically, this fingerprint could be compared to others and help to solve a crime. In order to be viable, the system would have to include a comprehensive list of gun fingerprints to be compared to the bullet found at the crime scene. This would necessitate national gun registration, an idea that is ill-advised for many reasons. With the national gun registration and all gun fingerprints on record, the gun could then be easily traced back to the owner, and the crime is solved.
Gun registration, however, often escapes criminals who buy or steal their guns on the black market. Also, the fingerprints a gun leaves behind change microscopically with each discharge of the gun and they can be purposely changed by the criminal by scratching the inside of the barrel of the gun. Ballistic fingerprinting will only take important resources from already under-funded and under-manned police programs.
The effects of ballistic fingerprinting can be seen in Maryland where the program has been in place for a year. Thus far, equipment and manpower to operate the system cost about $5,000 per gun sold, a burden Maryland taxpayers must shoulder. To date, not one crime has been solved as a result. While it is true that a crime may eventually be solved, the cost will far outweigh the benefits, especially if the money could have been redirected to hire more detectives to solve the crimes.
Gun control groups have an ulterior motive in supporting this program. They have long sought to have guns registered and licensed, which ballistic fingerprinting would call for, to be even slightly effective. Advocates of registration argue that cars require license and registration, why shouldn’t guns? Not a bad argument, except that guns aren’t cars. Gun registration and licensing are a bad idea because criminals wouldn’t bother, only law-abiding non-homicidal people would make the effort to register their guns. Having a government list of law-abiding people who own guns serves only one purpose: It aids in confiscating those guns.
Confiscation, of course, is the ultimate goal of gun control advocacy groups. Registration and licensing are merely the first step in that direction. This was the case in England and Australia. Some might see confiscation as good on its own terms, but this disarming of law-abiding citizens does not lead to a reduction in crime.
In England, handguns were banned in 1996. In the next four years, gun crime rose by 40 percent, according to the American Enterprise Institution. Similar effects have been seen in Australia after laws were passed in 1996 that banned many guns. Other countries have experienced the effects of strict gun control laws as well. According to AEI, Russia and Brazil, for example, have homicide rates higher than the United States. In the United States, despite the fact that it is illegal to buy, transport or acquire a handgun in Washington, D.C., the city has one of the highest per capita murder rates in the nation, according to frontpagemag.com.
In addition, the right to bear arms is protected by the Second Amendment, which court cases and historical research affirm. There have been many claims to the contrary, which are being discredited, most recently in the case of professor Michael Bellesiles of Emory University. His book, “Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture,” asserted that the amendment protected only a collective right to gun ownership. He won the 2001 Bancroft Prize for excellent writing in American history. Just last week he resigned because his research was determined to be based on premises that did not exist. The recent research supports that the Second Amendment promises an individual right to bear arms, a right that should not be taken lightly.
November 07, 2002