Jewish World Review Oct. 22, 2002 / 16 Mar-Cheshvan 5763

Clarence Page

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Consumer Reports

What the pro-gun lobby and anti-gun lobby have in common


http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | You know politicians have their backs up against the wall when they accuse their opponents of trying to "exploit" an ongoing tragedy for political gain.

That's OK. Politics is supposed to respond to problems, tragedies and crises. Politics is how government moves its sluggish self.

Movement is what the public has been doing in and around the nation's capital, where the biggest debate these days centers on whether you should walk across shopping mall parking lots in a "zig-zag" or a "serpentine" pattern to make a more difficult target.

This is why the sniper shootings have renewed interest in an old idea: a national ballistic database that would make it easier to trace bullets.

When manufacturers test fire each new gun, they would keep an electronic record of the markings that the weapons leave on the bullets or shell casings. That data would be kept with the serial numbers of the guns, so that bullets found in the commission of a crime could be traced back to the gun and the last known owners.

But the National Rifle Association, among others, has opposed the procedure as a waste of money and an infringement on gun owners' rights.

At first, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer echoed the NRA's line. But, within a matter of hours, the White House was taking a softer tone, announcing with much fanfare that Bush was calling on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to "study" the feasibility of ballistic fingerprinting.

Good move. The worst thing the administration could do for itself, politically or morally, is to sound as if it does not care about the gun-violence issues that the sniper raises, especially with a mid-term election coming up.

If that's politics, then, as Chicago's late Mayor Richard J. Daley used to say, good politics is good government -- and vice versa.

Unlike concerns raised by Fleischer, the NRA and others, it is not all that easy to elude "ballistic fingerprinting," judging by various experts and by the success stories reported at the Web site of the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN).

Ballistic imaging technology has proved its usefulness through the imaging network that the federal government has been developing for the past decade. The NIBIN system matches shell casings recovered from crime scenes to determine whether a firearm has been fired in other crimes.

Operated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, NIBIN reports numerous "success stories" of criminals linked to and later convicted of previously unsolved violent crimes through the bullets they fired.

Forensic Technology Inc., the Montreal-based company that created the technology, claims to have picked up the fingerprint of barrels numerous times despite efforts to file or otherwise change a gun barrel's interior or firing pin.

And the Association of Firearms and Tool Mark Examiners, a forensics organization, has fired some weapons more than 5,000 times and still made effective matches between the first and the 5,000th round.

So, "fingerprinting" and "gun DNA" are catchy descriptions, but inaccurate in a way that actually unnecessarily alarms those who care about gun owners' rights. "It is more precise to think of (a) ballistic imaging database as an extension of the ATF's existing serial number tracing system into a bullet-tracing system, too," said Susan Ginsburg, a former Treasury Department official who helped develop the system.

Is this tantamount to gun registration? No. Manufacturers and gun dealers, not the government, already are required to keep sales records. It is only in pursuit of those who commit crimes with a gun that government agents are allowed to cross-check serial numbers with names and addresses in previous gun sales, all of which is a long-accepted practice of crime fighting.

This is why at least one firearms trade organization, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, is backing a bipartisan bill to order a study by the National Academy of Sciences on imaging technology as a crime-fighting tool. Although the organization shares the reservations others have raised about how the system is not foolproof, the NSSF is keeping an open mind. So should we all.

If the pro-gun lobby and anti-gun lobby have anything in common, it is a stated desire to prosecute severely those who commit crimes with guns. Here's an opportunity for the pro-gun lobby to help make new crime-fighting technologies work.

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Up

10/18/02: Take Sharpton seriously? For Prez??
10/15/02: A beauty and the bullies
10/08/02: Time to start 'fingerprinting' bullets
10/08/02: Poet laureate hater fell for Internet hoax
10/04/02: Keeping it real, despite howls from black 'leaders'
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