Author: Kevin

Also via Keepandbeararms.com,

State police speak against expanding gun database

Ballistics system has flaws, crime lab director says

No, really?

After finding substantial problems with the state’s ballistic fingerprinting database, Maryland State Police have recommended that it not be expanded.

A 40-page report by the director of the agency’s crime lab concludes, among other things, that the ballistic samples on file are often not from the type of guns used by criminals, and that the state system is not linked to the national database.

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To date, the database — which has cost $2.1 million over the past three years — has generated four matches, and in each case, police already had the gun they were trying to trace, according to the report.

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Among the problems identified in the report: Some casings submitted by manufacturer Glock have not been reliable; the casings submitted by gun manufacturers are not usually from the type of guns linked to crime scenes; and the state’s database cannot be linked with the national database.

“Not reliable” how, exactly?

Yet Johns Hopkins thinks ballistic fingerprinting is the best thing since sliced bread.

In direct opposition to the findings of a California Dept. of Justice study that predicted precisely what the Maryland report confirms:

The RBID “beta” sites in New York and Maryland currently contain only handgun information. In 2002, there were approximately 12,400 handguns sold in Maryland that were subject to the ballistics imaging requirements. New York ballistically imaged 20,973 handguns in 2002. To date, New York and Maryland have made no matches, or “hits,” with these programs.

Attachment A of this report states:

Automated computer matching systems do not provide conclusive results. Rather, a list of potential candidates are presented that must be manually reviewed. When applying this technology to the concept of mass sampling of manufactured firearms, a huge inventory of potential candidates will be generated for manual review. This study indicates that this number of candidate cases will be so large as to be impractical and will likely create complications so great that they cannot be effectively addressed.

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There are several issues associated with an automated imaging concept that have to be considered. These relate to issues that impact the efficacy of the use of ballistics imaging when applied to large numbers of commercially produced firearms. These are:

1. Current imaging systems require trained personnel, ideally a firearms examiner, for entry, searching and verification. The use of technicians typically results in higher numbers of false positives that need to be microscopically compared.

2. Current systems may not be as efficient for rimfire firearms and are limited to auto loading weapons. Proposed systems will not practically accommodate revolvers, rim fires, certain shotguns and rifles. A large proportion of firearms sold in CA may never make entry into the system.

3. It is unknown at this time whether or not the algorithm can successfully ID a cartridge case fired after typical break-in and wear have occurred back to the #1 casing fired at the time of manufacture. Performance Test #7 (See page 8-11) showed that even in a limited database, the ranking of subsequently fired casings could drop enough to fall from a candidate list for consideration. Typically quoted existing research/papers regarding persistence of fired marks on fired cartridge cases were written based on manual comparison by qualified firearms examiners, not automated correlation techniques.

4. All potential “hits” selected for further inspection by computer correlation must be confirmed by “hands on” microscopic examination by a qualified firearms examiner.

5. Firearms that generate markings on cartridge casings can change with use and can also be readily altered by the user. They are not permanently defined identifiers like fingerprints or DNA. Hence, images captured when the firearm is produced may not have a fixed relationship to fired cartridge casings subsequently recovered.

6. Cartridge casings from different manufacturers of ammunition may be marked differently by a single firearm such that they may not correlate favorably.

7. As progressively larger numbers of similarly produced firearms are entered into the database, images with similar signatures should be expected that would make it more difficult to find a link. Therefore, this increase in database size does not necessarily translate to more hits.

8. Fired cartridge casings are much easier to enter, correlate, and review than fired bullets.

9. Not all firearms generate markings on cartridge casings that can be identified back to the firearm.If you’re interested, read the whole report and all the appendices.

So, Maryland has spent $2,100,000 on their automated system, and it’s identified four (4) cases – for guns they already had on hand. It hasn’t identified a single firearm they didn’t have to immediately compare to.

Wow. That’s effective use of taxpayer money, isn’t it?

How many police officer salaries does that represent?

Oh well, I guess they can confiscate some more boats and cash and property to cover the costs.

And I HATE government confiscation of property.

See this story about a man who just received a Presidential pardon. You can bet your ass he didn’t get his boat or his rifle back.

Dentist Convicted Of Transporting Automatic Weapon

A man who pleaded guilty to transporting an automatic weapon in 1987 was pardoned by President George W. Bush, the Justice Department announced Thursday.

Fort Lauderdale dentist Bruce Louis Bartos, 60, said he pleaded guilty to the charge of transporting an automatic weapon on his 45-foot fishing boat because he had two children in college, had just lost his wife to cancer and did not want to go to trial.

And lose everything he had, and probably go to jail. That’s the big stick the government hangs over the heads of nominally law-abiding citizens who just didn’t know the law or failed to cross some “t” or dot some “i”. Ayn Rand got it dead to rights:

There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one “makes” them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted — and you create a nation of law-breakers — and then you cash in on the guilt.

Bartos said he was unaware at the time that his AR-15 – the civilian version of the M-16 military assault rifle – was illegal without a permit. He used the rifle, along with a handgun and other weapons, for protection from drug dealers and pirates when boating between South Florida and the Bahamas, he said.

“CIVILIAN VERSION” That means SEMI-AUTOMATIC. It’s a big distinction. Just ask the Violence Policy Center.

Now I cannot imagine a more appropriate firearm for defense against piracy – and piracy does occur in those waters. All he had it for was self-defense, but like Mr. Campbell in the post below, he’s the one victimized by the government. Read on.

Bartos agreed to plead guilty and forfeit his boat in return for two years’ probation.

What did the government need with his boat? We’re talking about a paperwork omission. Do they take your house if you fail to register your car?

I’d say the government “cashed in” on Mr. Bartos’s “guilt.” I wonder if a government employee now owns a 45′ fishing boat he got at a really good price.

“I pleaded guilty and lost my boat over a stupid $200 or $300 dollar gun,” he said. “And for $200 I could have had a permit.”

THEY STOLE HIS BOAT OVER A $200 TAX. And that, my friends, is what registration is good for – aside from confiscation of guns, which I’m sure they also did. I doubt he got to keep any of his guns.

Bartos later began to challenge his conviction by filing clemency requests and having character references sent to the Department of Justice on his behalf. He hired a Washington lawyer, and hoped to be among those pardoned before President Bill Clinton left office.

Sorry Mr. Bartos, but you weren’t a big Clinton campaign contributor (or big enough criminal) were you?

When he found out about the pardon Wednesday he became “breathless, speechless.”

I’m a little surprised myself. I expect the Deep Space Nine to make hay over Bush pardoning an “assault weapon smuggler” or some such quite soon.

“Someone in the Justice Department read my file and basically felt that I had really received a raw deal, and that it should never have been handled this way,” Bartos said.

Even though only close friends and advocates knew about his conviction, the pardon came as a great relief.

“It gives me the ability to hold my head up high, like I’m a full fledged citizen of this country,” he said.

You just got reamed by the government of this country, and they had the courtesy to kiss you afterward. That is all.

A U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesman in Miami did not have any comment on the pardon.

No, I bet they didn’t.

Does this restore all his rights? Was it a felony conviction? Could it have resulted in a sentence of more than one year (or was there a sentencing guidline at all?)

Did the pardon come with the keys to his boat?

Enquiring minds want to know.

UPDATE: According to this story:

Bartos said his boat was stopped and searched when he returned from a family trip to Bimini in 1986. On board he had an AR-15, the civilian version of the M-16 military assault rifle, which Bartos said he carried for protection.

The gun was tested at the FBI lab and deemed to be automatic, which is illegal.

Illegal without the $200 “tax”. I should have recognized that just by the reference to the $200 requirement. (Then again, his assertion that it was a $200-300 rifle is in error. Even in 1986 a full-auto AR-15 would have been worth over a thousand dollars. A semi-auto version would be worth more than $500.) I assume that Mr. Bartos’s AR-15 had M-16 parts installed in it, which is a no-no. But I stand by my objection: Taking someone’s hundred-thousand dollar boat over a $200 tax omission is excessive punishment.

Ran across this story this evening, and found this part to be fascinating:

Kenneth Moose, 39, a longtime twin borough resident who now lives in Bridgewater Township, is a former Far Hills police sergeant who, earlier this year, was cleared of charges that he illegally possessed an assault firearm.

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Moose, 39, served for 14 years with the Far Hills Borough before retiring in December 2002.

Moose’s fitness for police duty was called into question in October 2002, when he was arrested for possessing an M-1 Carbine, a World War II-era firearm classified as a prohibited assault weapon under a 1990 New Jersey law. He had received the .30-caliber semi-automatic weapon from a local resident in September 1990, four months after the assault weapons ban was enacted.

Which makes me wonder what happened to the “local resident” who violated the law by possessing the M1 Carbine four months after the ban was enacted.

He was indicted by a Somerset County grand jury on the weapons charge last December, then cleared of charges in May. At that time, Superior Court Judge Edward Coleman, sitting in Somerville, said state statutes did not bar local police officers from privately owning banned weapons.

Question: Did the law specifically exempt police officers? Did it specifically exempt private ownership? If so, WHY? On what grounds? And if not, didn’t the judge just make law from the bench? What makes local police officers a protected class? Can they privately own banned machineguns? Sawed-off shotguns? Suppressed handguns?

Because the charge was the first of its kind to be brought against a police officer under the assault weapons ban, the state Policemen’s Benevolent Association (PBA) sided with Moose in a friend of the court brief.

The Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office has appealed the judge’s dismissal of the charges. A hearing date has not yet been scheduled.

I’d be more than a little interested in the outcome of that hearing.