Ballistic Data to Help Prevent Gun Crimes

Ballistic Data to Help Prevent Gun Crimes

ballistic data

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US Officials with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have recently been pushing local and state law enforcement agencies to adopt a technology that advocates say can help solve and prevent future gun crimes.

The US NIBIN Program automates ballistics evaluations and provides actionable investigative leads in a timely manner. It is the only interstate automated ballistic imaging network in operation in the United States and is available to most major population centers.

ATF officials from Washington, D.C. have pointed to NIBIN’s ability to connect shootings across city, county and state lines, some of which originally appeared unrelated. The technology is only as effective as the number of crime labs and police departments that participate.

In California, however, it has met opposition, and some say the political impasse could be costing lives and allowing solvable cases to go cold.

For NIBIN to work effectively, law enforcement agencies must have access to large amounts of ballistics data. It requires technicians to perform ballistics testing on every shell casing, bullet, and gun recovered at every crime scene, and enter those ballistic images into NIBIN. As images of shell casings are entered into the database, the system searches for matches of shell casings left behind at other crime scenes. That allows law enforcement to connect different shootings to the same firearm and generate investigative leads for detectives before cases go cold. ATF officials say by proactively using the database, police can prevent future gun crimes by taking known shooters off the street, as reported by nbcbayarea.com.

A bill authored by California Assemblyman Evan Low in 2018 would have mandated all guns and shell casings recovered at California crime scenes to be entered into NIBIN. But the bill never made it out of the Appropriations Committee as it faced stiff resistance from California’s Attorney General’s Office and some local law enforcement agencies. Among the reasons cited for opposition: cost, competing technology already on the market, and a resistance to any mandates on how local and state agencies run their crime labs.