Forensic Firearms Identification

Forensic Firearms Identification

Case

The crime lab has received a fired bullet and a discharged cartridge case from the scene of a shooting. This evidence is submitted to the crime lab for examination. Several weeks later, the police confiscated a semi-automatic pistol from a suspect in the shooting.

Discussion and Analysis

Science is ordered knowledge system whose accuracy is verified and constantly points during practice. The progress of science is to move the discovery of cause-effect links and essential connections relatively simple to formulate laws of being and thinking deeper and more basic. The dialectic of scientific knowledge, new discoveries and theories do not override previous results, do not deny the objective truth merely point out the limits of your application and specify its place in the general system of scientific knowledge(Innes et al, 2006). Scientific methods open new portals for research for the firearms examiners and with the help of these methods, examiners examine the evidences compiling different dimensions of science, broadly known as applied science.

Applied science is the application of scientific knowledge of one or more specialized areas of science to solve practical problems. This approach of applied science is applied in the fields of engineering and these practical areas of knowledge are vital to the development of technology. Their use in industrial areas is generally referred to as research and development. Applied sciences include scientific directions that aim at a problem, or a product, service or technology development. The study draws on social questions for answers or solutions. Examiners follow these steps to scrutinize facts and opinions relating to firearms examinations (Killias et al, 2001).

The scientific method is a research process that consists of several stages:

The observation of the phenomenon

Formulation of hypotheses

Experimental design

Analysis of the results and conclusions

There has been a great evolution in the science of firearm identification over the past 165 years of history. In the period between 1835 and 1899, there were cases involving firearm and these were investigated by simple observation, physical matching, and experiments while in earlier part of 1900-1930, the science of firearm identification was recognized by several judicial systems in several countries and research was conducted extremely reliant on scientific field(James et al, 1999). In the middle of the century i.e. from 1930-1970, the science began to grow and evolve with the formation of Federal Bureau of Identification Laboratory and initiation of operations by the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory. Followed by this, ...