TRAP FOR BANDITS

Taranaki Daily News, 20 February 1932, Page 8

TRAP FOR BANDITS

“GUN-PRINTING” SYSTEM. identification of bullets. The increasing number of gun crimes in Australia has caused the police to search for more scientific aids to detection. In New South Wales, according to one police authority, there are hundreds of unregistered firearms—concealable weapons —many of which are held by men of the criminal class. For months now an agitation has been proceeding for the tightening up of the laws relating to the carriage of revolvers and other smaller weapons, but the Government has failed to do anything, despite frequent warnings and appeals •by the Commissioner of Police. Every day for more than six weeks one newspaper has called upon the chief secretary, Mr. Gosling, to act, but he has maintained silence. Because the “gun-printing” of bullets and cartridges is a comparatively new art the New South Wales police have not yet put it into general operation, but opportunity to keep abreast of the latest in the science of crime detection is being availed of. The outstanding instance of the value of science was in the case of Browne and Kennedy, who murdered Constable Gutteridge, in Essex, England, in 1928. When arrested a Webley revolver was found in (Browne’s garage, and it was definitely proved with the aid of “gun-printing” that the bullets found in the constable’s (body were fired from the Webley. According to a police official in Sydney the “gun-printing”’is now as infallible as the finger-print system. The fact at the back of the identification of a bullet mark is that no two natural or manmade objects are ever precisely the same. To the naked eye they might appear to be,’ but a microscope shows the differences. In no two rifle barrels are the riflings the same, for they have been cut by tools whose edges change slightly with every use. The markings on the breech shield of a revolver, , against which the cartridge rests, and against which it is forced with tremendous power when fired, cannot be precisely the same in any two weapons. They are made by hand, with the use of a file, and the human hand can never twice do precisely the same work. A bullet or shell always bears marks which may be called the equivalent of finger-prints, distinctive of and peculiar to the barrel of the weapon from which they were fired. The scratches round the firing pinhole of the breech shield of a revolver are imprinted on the base of every cartridge fired from it. A cartridge bearing that imprint can have been fired from that gun only. With the “gun-print” system, before a man is granted a license a. bullet could be fired from the gun, microscopically examined, its peculiar markings noted and placed on record.