[Vaquero]

I have a huge supply of lead and molds.......

[driftdiver]

Just something to raise the cost of ammunition. I’m sure there’s a dozen ways of defeating this if someone wants too.

It would probably also lead to increased use of revolvers by criminals, so they don’t leave the casing behind.

Final note - i thought they banned guns in England. That would mean there is no more gun crime, right?

[Big Mack]

1. The crime has already been committed before you can get a DNA sample from a bullet or shell casing.
2. Someone has everyone in the world's DNA? Should be easy to find the perp from the DNA.
3.Myself, I'd just buy a box of latex gloves at wal mart for $3 before I touch any of the ammo.

The UK is far worse than the usa for not punishing criminals. The only one's this would hurt are the honest gun owners. “Gun Control is not about guns or crime control.”

[Myrddin]

Once you have fired thousands of rounds...many reloaded from brass off the range floor...this is a totally useless exercise. It would only find the most naive individual firing brand new factory ammo from a completely clean firearm. Use of revolvers to retain the brass, gloves to prevent contact between skin and cartridges/firearm will completely defeat this approach. There is also the matter of discerning the difference between who loaded the gun and who fired the gun. Frankly, it's just another solution in search of a problem. A worthless technology (like microstamping) that will only gain traction if mandated by the government. There is no market demand for it.

[jonascord]

Can I point out that making a cartridge case abrasive enough to remove skin cells will make it a wee bit difficult to eject, let alone draw and form? But, when did the Brit police show any smarts, since 1950?

[ZULU]

“A new bullet-tagging technology being developed in the UK could give forensic teams a robust new tool in the fight against gun crime.”

Translation:

A new impediment to legitimate gun owners has been devised by hoplophobic researchers in the anti-gun Kingdom of Britain.

[Joe Brower]

"The tags, which measure 30 microns in diameter, are applied to gun cartridges by being embedded in cartridge coatings made from polylactic acid, sucrose ester and tetrahydrofuran. They then attach themselves to the hands or gloves of anyone handling the cartridge and are said to be very difficult to wash off."

More gun-controller sci-fi fantasy. Not to mention the cost.

For the FreeRepublic "banglist", please click HERE .

[calex59]

Surgical gloves and throw them away later. Don’t want to do that? Then load your own and make your own bullets, lead and molds are common. In a country where owning a gun is against the law but still relatively easy to obtain why do they think someone couldn’t get ammo that was free of this stuff one way or another? This will catch zero criminals in my opinion and is just another idiotic sop to the gun grabbers.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

So if you handle lots and lots and lots of cartridges the chances of them finding a matche with the crime bullet would be slim.

[Blood of Tyrants]

There may also be scope to apply them in other fields, such as knife crime, in future.

While it may be difficult to remove this stuff from a box of bullets, give me half an hour and I'll find a chemical that will take it off a knife like water off a duck's back.

[SgtSki]

Aren't these the same guys that created the non nutritive cereal varnish?

[TC Rider]

I wonder how that stuff would hold up after a few hours in my brass tumbler with some ground walnut shells and a tablespoonful of Turtle Wax?

[neverdem]

I'm surprised nobody posted this yet.

[longtermmemmory]

1. this was mentioned in a science digest or some such press release magazine.

2. this is being pushed by the company selling the technology. IOW there is no market for their product so they want to force the public to buy a product nobody wants.

[TigersEye]

They then attach themselves to the hands or gloves of anyone handling the cartridge and are said to be very difficult to wash off.

What if I load my gun with gloves months before I use it?

[jdege]

The precise composition of this coating can be varied subtly from one batch of cartridges to another, enabling a firm connection to be made between a particular fired cartridge and its user.

Didn't the FBI used to think that the precise composition of every batch of lead varied subtly from every other, and that could be used to enable a firm connection to be made between a specific bullet and the manufacturer's lot of which it was a part? Until, of course, someone tried to validate their "science", and discovered that the composition of lead varied subtly within each ingot, and there was significant overlap between ingots, such that there was as great a difference between different bullets that were part of the same lot as there were between lots.

[Redcloak]

The tags, which measure 30 microns in diameter, are applied to gun cartridges by being embedded in cartridge coatings made from polylactic acid, sucrose ester and tetrahydrofuran. They then attach themselves to the hands or gloves of anyone handling the cartridge and are said to be very difficult to wash off.

A portion of the tag remains on the cartridge even after it has been fired, which could make it possible to establish a definitive forensic link between a cartridge fired during a crime and whoever handled it.

The problem (more so in the US than in the UK) is that since firearms are ubiquitous, the tags themselves would soon become ubiquitous as well. Tags would show up at crime scenes even when no firearms were involved. They would be tracked over every square inch of a city like Los Angeles or New York. The technology would thus be rendered useless by the resulting low signal-to-noise ratio.