Crime Scene Training

Ballistics: The Use and Study of Firearms

Author: Jack Claridge
Reprinted With Permission From ExploreForensics

Most of us will have heard the term Ballistics at some time or other - more often than not when we have been watching fictionalized accounts of police work on television or in the cinema.
What is Ballistics?

Ballistics is the area of Forensic Science that deals with firearms; how they are used, why they are used and why they are used frequently in the practice of murder.

What many people do not realize is that when a person is shot the wound and the condition of the victim can tell a lot about the nature of the weapon that has been used. Indeed if the weapon has been left at the scene of the crime - which sometimes happens when the perpetrator panics - the weapon itself can go a long way to providing valuable information as to the kind of person who has committed the offence.

Identifying a Weapon
Most guns have their own unique identifying features and even if the gun has not been left at the crime scene many degrees of information can be determined from the bullet, the nature of the wound and any residue that is left around it.
Bullets contain a mixture of gunpowder and cordite and these leave burn marks on the skin of the individual either wounded or killed, they also leave a fine residue on the fingers and hands of the individual firing the gun. These burn marks can signify closeness of the victim to the perpetrator, kind of weapon and also if the weapon has had any modifications made to it. Some weapons have been disarmed by having the firing pins and mechanisms removed but there are individuals who can 'reactivate' these weapons for use again.

Also, each weapon's barrel contains small ligatures and grooves, which, when a bullet is fired from them, make marks on the shell casing, which can be used as a means of identifying the make and model of gun if these shell casings are found at the scene.

It is also worth noting that an automatic - or semi automatic weapon - will expel shell casings as the weapon fires a round whereas a revolver will fire the round but retain the shell casing within the barrel.

Investigating
The field of ballistics is able to identify rifling patterns, marks made by using suppressors (silencers), shell casings, powder burn and many other different areas relating to the use of firearms and the evidence they leave behind.

Indeed most ballistics experts will be able to tell you the particular weapon simply by the sound of it being fired. They will also be able to carry out distance and depth tests which include firing rounds of ammunition into water, sand and other substances to determine how close a person would have to be to receive a life threatening wound from a gun.

Ballistics is a very important part of the world of Forensic Science and much of its evidence is used in criminal proceedings. In some cases the use of ballistics research can prove a link between many different crimes carried out over a lengthy period of time. This is also an important function of the ballistics team as many weapons are passed and sold on between criminals during their life cycle.

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Criminal Profiling and Its Use in Crime Solving

Reprinted with permission – ExploreForensics

In the last decade the use of criminal profiling as a means to help detect and capture criminals has become more common place during many a criminal investigation. Indeed criminal profiling has also been recognised as one of the most useful techniques in offender profiling - a technique used to help define the behaviour of an offender before they reach the height of their criminal career.

How Does Criminal Profiling Work?

Criminal profiling works on the principle that each and every criminal - regardless of the level or severity of their crime - will work to a certain set of values. These values - or signatures - are as individual as your own handwritten signature and once identified can be used to help law enforcement make a positive identification. Profiling also takes in victimology.

What is victimology?

Victimology is the study of the victims in a number of crimes perpetrated by the same criminal. The idea of victimology is to identify similarities between each of the victims of a particular crime so that the profiler may be able to identify a definite pattern in the criminal's approach to his (or indeed her) crimes.

Victimology looks at age, lifestyle, similarities in hair colour and eye colour, whether the victims have met or worked together in the past, or if they share a common interest. All of this information can be used to help the profiler build up an accurate picture of the offender.

The Homicidal Triad

Profilers are also interested in what is referred to as the Homicidal Triad, three defining factors that may have bearing on am offender's adulthood from events that have taken place in their childhood. This triad - or series of three events - normally takes the form of:

• Bed Wetting
• Animal Cruelty
• An Interest in Starting Fires

This triad of events which does often occur in a criminal's childhood - especially if their crime is murder - is indicative of their desire to be in control and to experience an emotional or sexual release as the result of inflicting pain on others. Their desire to test this on animals before moving on to human beings is also well documented.

Predicting a Criminal's Next Move

Profiling is also used as a means of attempting to - and in most cases succeeding - to predict the next move of a criminal who may be on what is commonly referred to as a 'spree'. Offenders who are engaged in crime sprees often devolve from a lucid state of mind into a pathological state of frenzied criminality which can often result in assault or even murder. A profiler will try - where possible with the evidence already in hand - to predict what the offender may attempt to do next and may also try to communicate with them via the media.

It should be said however that the normal everyday existence of a criminal profiler is nowhere nearly as exciting as the lives of those portrayed on television. Profilers often spend a lot of their time working in conjunction with companies and large organisations offering psychological evaluations of their staff and this is most apparent among the variety of law enforcement agencies who are required to undergo evaluations on a regular basis.

Reproduced courtesy of: Explore Forensics Website