3-D Printed 'Ghost Guns' Pose New Challenges for Crime-Scene Investigators

 

Wilke, Carolyn. “3-D Printed 'Ghost Guns' Pose New Challenges for Crime-Scene Investigators.” Science News, 23 Sept. 2019, www.sciencenews.org/article/3d-printed-guns-plastic-ballistics-crime.

 

Ever since it was launched in 1999, the National Integrated Information Network (NIBIN) has been able to match over 110,000 pieces of evidence from guns. Ballistic evidence is crucial to forensic scientists and detectives who try to catch criminals. Firearms leave markings on the bullets and cartridges when they are fired making it easy for organizations like NIBIN to find who shot the weapon. In a 2017 shooting of 2 people in a Phoenix apartment, after only 2 days, NIBIN was able to not only catch the killer from the firearms but was also able to link that firearm to a series of other shootings from the previous 3 weeks in which eight people were killed. However, recently, 3D printed guns have risen in popularity and have made it increasingly harder for NIBIN to identify the weapon. Right now, 3D printers are very expensive and are not yet fast enough to produce guns efficiently, however, the fear is that as they become more available, it will make it harder for crime investigators to find suspects. 

This article is very relevant to current forensic science because it is about the struggle that scientists will face when 3D printed guns become more widely used. Because people will soon be able to make their own guns with a 3D printer, more guns will be unregistered and made off the grid. If a plastic gun were used in a crime, it would be very hard to track down the gun since plastic guns don’t have serial numbers like every other firearm and they can be dissolved in solvents. Overall, the problem is that plastic guns can override most security measures like background checks and metal detectors. In order to prepare for more 3D printed guns being used, forensic scientists are beginning to study them more by making and firing them to figure out how they work. Through their studies, scientists have found that compared to typical metal guns, plastic guns don’t have spiral ridges so they don’t leave marks on bullets that help detect the gun, they don’t leave chemical residues, they’re texture makes fingerprints almost unrecoverable, however, they did fund that DNA may be easier to find because of the textured plastic. 

I really enjoyed reading this article because I liked how detailed it was and how in-depth the explanations were so it was easy to understand. For example, I really like how the author provided a table in the middle of the article that provided a direct comparison of metal and plastic guns and their properties so it was very clear and easy to understand. In addition, I really enjoyed the pictures that were provided in the article as they also contributed to how easy the article was to understand. I think the only thing that could have made this article better is if they provided more examples of when plastic guns have been used just like they talked about how metal guns were used in crimes. Overall, I think I learned a lot from this article because I didn’t really know that plastic guns were a possibility and that they were so different from regular guns that they would pose more challenges in criminal investigations. 

posted for R. Baror