New technique lifts fingerprints off cleaned guns

Gozmag ^ | June 23rd

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Ever heard of cotton gloves? What if a gun has been owened by several people before.

[Abathar]

I bet the quality control manager at the Remington factory gets a LOT of calls from police soon...

[TonyInOhio]

They’ve never heard of the polymer-framed Glock?

[Kevmo]

researchers have developed a way to ‘visualise fingerprints’ even after the print itself has been removed by measuring the corrosion of the surface by deposits from the fingerprints
***Then the bad guys will just use corrosive solvents to clean the gun.

[fish hawk]

I always wear rubber gloves before and while shooting at people. LOL

[garyhope]

Gloves, revolvers, rivers, lakes, oceans, mine shafts, saws, hi temp furnaces, disassembly, files, grinders, acid baths, hydraulic presses, the deep six etc.

[doodad]

Exactly. A little benzene should go a long way.

[1rudeboy]

Thankfully, our legal system still must entertain corroborating evidence. Otherwise, you’re correct, some people would be in a world of suck.

[rawhide]

Sudden surge in orders for latex gloves reported.
Manufacturers unsure why?

[Deut28]

Batman can get fingerprints off a shattered round by virtually reconstructing it.

With the help of Morgan Freeman, of course.

[RicocheT]

Thanks for the tip. A crook should put on gloves when opening a new box of ammo and loading his piece. Same deal with the gun, never handle it without gloves or without putting some plastic tape on the parts usually touched. When getting rid of your gat, bath it in muriatic acid before tossing it.

[DoughtyOne]

If gun haters would spend 1/500,000th of the time on criminals they do on guns/gun owners, we would have a crime free nation.

[calex59]

They say clean in the headline but wipe clean in the article. I would think, nay I know, that cleaning a weapon will remove the fingerprints beyond recovery. The same goes with ammo, clean it with solvent and then oil it, all the while wearing gloves, and you will remove fingerprints. If you are dumb enough to fire an auto and leave the shell casing lying about after you have touched it, you deserve to get caught.

If you don't trust solvent then simply polish the ammo with metal cleaner, that will do it. The best bet however is to use gloves with a new box of ammo and let the inspector at the plant that made the ammo take the hit.

[nickcarraway]

All true, but I imagine there are circumstances where a criminal doesn’t have time to do all these things.

[calex59]

A criminal always has time to do these things. They are criminals and they plan their crimes. Even in a crime of passion there are ways to eliminate the fingerprints in a short time if you have failed to do so beforehand. This method, along with the stupidity of stamping shell casings, is not going to result in many criminals nabbed for crimes but will put a lot of innocent people who happened to touch the casings or the gun in the past of cleaning is not carried out on the weapon or ammo. Fingerprinting was valuable when it first came out but has lost a lot of its potency by the simple fact of people wearing gloves. There is always a way around everything.

[gilor]

Acetylene and oxygen does a pretty good job.

[Centurion2000]

Acetylene and oxygen does a pretty good job.

So does 8,000 feet of salt water.

[VaBthang4]

I call BS!

[Tallguy]

Re-openning cold cases? I doubt it. Maybe a high-profile case or 2 with some historical significance. Might help a convict get a new trial. But as to a systematic tool for law enforcement — it proves nothing. The guy that loaded the magazine is not necessarily the guy that fired it. It doesn’t take a Johnny Cochran to beat that evidence.