Calif. attorney general says firearm 'fingerprinting' premature

By DON THOMPSON
Associated Press Writer

SACRAMENTO (AP) The technology doesn't yet exist to enable California to track the ballistic ``fingerprints'' of every firearm made and sold in the state, Attorney General Bill Lockyer said Wednesday in a report based on studies at the center of the national gun control debate.

Similar to DNA comparison technology of a decade ago, however, the potential is so great that the federal government should make developing such technology a priority, Lockyer concluded in a report to lawmakers.

His conclusions are based on two related California studies that found it currently is impractical to catalog the unique identifying marks from every firearm in California. Instead, the report by Lockyer's Department of Justice said the state should monitor the progress of more limited new handgun tracking systems in Maryland and New York.

A universal ballistics database ``has the potential to be a great crime-solving tool,'' Lockyer said in releasing the report. ``However, our analysis concludes that today's technology is not yet adequate to handle the volume associated with adding all new guns to the database and still provide useful information for investigators.''

Opponents of a national database have used the California studies to counter congressional proposals for a nationwide ballistics database spurred by last fall's sniper spree on the East Coast. Proponents, meanwhile, had hoped a California law would help spur similar databases in other states and, ultimately, nationally.

But Wednesday's report says a nationwide tracking database ultimately will make more sense. The federal government has the money and experience, the report says, and to work properly the database needs to track guns in every state.

Proponents and opponents have looked to California as an example because it sells and produces the most guns of any state, more than 100,000 a year. Maryland's $1.8 million system, by contrast, recorded 12,400 handguns in its database last year, while New York's $2.4 million system recorded 20,973.

``California should not back away from providing that leadership role,'' said Luis Tolley, Western director of The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

National Rifle Association spokesman Andrew Arulanandam noted, as does the California report, that neither New York's nor Maryland's system has solved a crime to date. ``If you use those two states as a template ... the facts and figures aren't on the side of this program,'' he said.

Technology one day soon will make tracking that many firearms realistic, and new methods may make matching bullets from crime scenes to firearms in the database cheaper and easier, the report predicts.

``The task is to make sure that happens sooner rather than later to help police solve crimes,'' said Tolley. ``We think (ballistic) 'fingerprinting' could provide the same dramatic increases in crime-fighting that DNA did.''

State Sen. Jack Scott, D-Altadena, has introduced a bill proposing that California collect the data for later use as the technology improves. He said he will keep pushing his bill even as he joined Lockyer in calling for a national effort.

``It may take time and money to perfect the technology, just as it did with manual fingerprinting and DNA analysis,'' Scott said. ``But I am confident that it is just a question of time and political will before a database is established.''

The report released Wednesday was, by law, supposed to be sent to legislators in June 2001, but Lockyer delayed its release after his Justice Department concluded such a system was impractical. He asked the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to offer a rebuttal to the state's draft study, and delayed the report again for an independent review by a European expert.

The ATF disputed much of the California report, concluding that even with current technology, ``large-scale ballistic comparison goes from an impossibility to a valuable investigative tool.'' Ballistics comparisons already are widely used to match bullets to specific firearms, or to link bullets found at different crime scenes to the same weapon as was the case in the East Coast sniper shootings.

But Belgian ballistics expert Jan De Kinder supported the earlier state study and disputed the ATF's rebuttal that such a system can already work on a California-size scale.

On the Net:

Read the report and studies: www.ag.ca.gov

Coalition to Stop Gun Violence: http://www.gunfree.org/

National Rifle Association: http://www.nra.org/

Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence: http://www.bradycampaign.org/

National Shooting Sports Foundation: http://www.nssf.org/

Read SB35 at www.sen.ca.gov

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)