Someone needs to watch an episode or two of CSI
someone is ignorant of black powder
And as someone who has shot firearms all my life, I am telling you that CSI is BULLSH*T if they portray "bullet-matching" techniques as applicable to muzzle-loading arms. It is hard enough to get a bullet fragment from a rifle to match the barrel; usually the only recourse is neutron activation or other mass spectrographic technique.
Furthermore: I doubt most people on FR even realize that black powder arms ARE NOT FIREARMS, at least by the FedGov's definition.
If it was a sabot round, how do you ballistically fingerprint it? The rifling marks would be in the discarded sabot. You could match powder residue, but considering there’s probably very few brands of black powder, that may not mean much.
This story may get very interesting.
“Someone needs to watch an episode or two of CSI”
Really bad call using any television show.
On a recent CSI:NY the woman was captured by a thug who punched her down, took her sidearm dropped the magazine and proceeded to taunt her by popping rounds out of the magazine and saying she couldn’t do a thing about it. She picks up the discarded pistol, says most accidents happen because people forget the round in the chamber, and gut-shoots the thug.
He picks up a knife and comes after her as she loads one of the rounds dropped on the floor during the popping rounds out of the magazine incident and stuffs a round in the chamber which is accessible because THE SLIDE IS LOCKED BACK.
Fail.