How can we find the owner of a licensed gun?

Question

If a short is fired from a licensed gun ,how can we find the owner of that particular gun just by using the bullet he fired?actually how cops do it ?

Answer 1

cops can only tell the make of gun, the rest is TV rubbish

Answer 2

Short answer, It can't be done that way. That is TV/Hollywood rubbish. If a fired bullet is recovered (say from a corpse), and the authorities possess the suspected gun (say it was dropped at the scene), the groove pattern can be matched to the suspected gun or not matched. If the pattern matches then the dropped gun's serial number can be traced to the 'registered' owner IF the serial number hasn't been filed completely away. The key is that they have to have the gun to begin with in order to match the fired bullet.

Also, if a spent cartridge is found and the authorities possess a spent cartridge from the suspected gun (say the owner conveniently provided it), then the gun can be traced by the firing pin indention. Again, they must have something to work with such as the suspected weapon or a fired cartridge from the suspected weapon. As far as I know NO case has EVER been solved this way. But at least in theory: If someone is murdered with say a .38 Special , and the suspect just happens to leave a spent casing from his .38 at the scene, then the police can ask everyone who just happens to own a .38 Special to kindly provide a spent cartridge from his .38 (Ha, ha!), so that the murder weapon can be found by matching the firing pin impression. I guess it hasn't occurred to anyone that the murderer 'might' just be smart enough to leave a spent casing at the murder scene from a different gun NOT registered to him!

H

Answer 3

You cannot, unless you turn the bullet over to the police. They can have their ballistics expert look at it, but unless it has been used in the commission of a crime, it's quite unlikely that there will be a good comparison bullet on hand.

Most ballistics experts can tell you from studying the markings on a bullet who the manufacturer of the gun is, and possibly the model, as well. That's because all makers have different land and groove patterns (those are the patterns inside the barrels of firearms which help a bullet spin so it flies true and doesn't tumble). The land and groove patterns are distinctive for most makers in the US, and for a fair number of makers outside the US, as well. The actual gun, however, can only be identified by having the gun on hand, and putting rounds through it, and then comparing the bullets to other bullets. Each gun barrel has small imperfections which will show up as being completely distinctive--even if you bought ten S&W .357 Magnums, while the land and groove pattern would tell you that it was, in fact, an S&W, and the bullet itself would tell you it was a .357, every single gun would leave slightly different markings on all bullets that went through the barrel.

Ballistics is a pretty interesting field, and a lot is revealed by looking at bullets, but it's pretty much impossible to tell which gun something came from unless you have another bullet which you know for sure came from a specific gun, or unless you have the gun. There has been talk about test firing all weapons before they are sold, but as far as I know, it hasn't gone into practice, so the fact that the weapon is registered isn't going to help you much.

If someone has committed a crime, the best thing for you to do is simply hand the bullet over to your local police department. They can look at it in their lab, and take it from there.

Best of luck.

Answer 4

That is not how it works.Lets just say there was a murder and the police found empty shell casings at the sceen maybee they mite be able to pull a partial fingerprint off the casing but they can also take it to a lab and look at the way it is scrached up from it being shot out of a gun.Then If they found a suspect and he had the murder weapon they could try to run tests to try to match it together.Now with the bullet.When the bullet goes through the barrel it puts marks on it from the rifleing and they take it to the lab and do it the same way.
In your situation unless it was a murder I dont tink cops will waste all that lab time.And also there isnt a data base that has everyone in Americas ballistic info in it yet.They have to get a suspect first.
I dont know what the exact situation was but lets just say that Joe Snuffy lived two streets down form you and you know that Joe has a 9mm handgun and someone is killed in your neighborhood that Joe had a prob with.The police would go find Joe and run tests on his 9mm.That is how this system works.

Answer 5

Do you think that a gun has to be fired from the factory? What do they do with those bullets? The FBI has a huge online database of images of all the bullets and the serial numbers that fired the bullets. This is stuff that everyone doesn't know.

Answer 6

You can't you have to have the gun to match to the bullet. If you just have a bullet and no gun your screwed. They can normaly only tell what caliber the they mite be looking for.

UNless its an hk or a glock because they have polygonl rifling in there guns. Then they will know it came from those guns.. but then you have to figure out who owned one.

If they have the gun they can tell by the striagtions on the bullet from the barrel.

thats it.

Spanky

Spanky

Answer 7

In short, you can't. There is no central database of all guns or samples of the markings on bullets they have fired, nor should there be. At best police can match bullet samples to each other or to a firearm that they have in their possession.

Answer 8

There would have to be a similar bullet on file for comparison. If you have the weapon you can fire a bullet and compare but unless the weapon has been used in a previous crime there is not going to be any record of the bullet on file.

Answer 9

A bullet is unique to the firearm that fired it. The barrell of a firearm leaves details in the bullet ( like fingerprints) that match it to the weapon. In order to prove it came froma certain firearm, you would have to have that firearm and the fired bullett. Then, they fire the weapon and compare the just fired bullet to the one recovered.

Answer 10

About all you'd be able to find out is the caliber and perhaps the make and model by the grooves on the bullet itself. But, that's about it.