Cynthia Tucker's column on ballistic finger printing brought in a lot of letters to the AJC.

Most of these NRA hacks, who probably used their crayons to write their letters, kept harping on one thing: the ballistic fingerprint of a gun can be easily changed. They kept repeating that any criminal that wasn't an idiot could easily alter the barrel of the gun so that the fingerprint was different and thus avoid detection. Well guess what? If these intelligent criminals would wear gloves, they would not be caught by regular fingerprints methods. This is a simple and obvious solution to a well-known criminal investigative technique. Yet every year, in every state, countless criminals are put away due to their normal fingerprints. Criminals are not smart.

Now if Chartlon Heston were going to rob a bank, if he could remember where one was, he may know, to run a file through the barrel. He might also know to alter the mechanisms that leave marks on the casings. I don't think most criminals would, or would not take the time to mess with it. All most criminals know about guns are point and shoot.

All these gunslingers who wrote and called Cynthia Tucker an idiot should probably go research a little bit. They might then become aware of all the stupid things criminals do, and how they get caught by basic police procedure. It might be time better sent than by sitting around stroking their barrel.

Again, any tool to catch criminals is a good one. Any new one would merely be added to the pile of investigative techniques now being used. You would still have the right to own guns, but they would just have to be test fired at the factory and the results entered into a database. Nobody would ever look at the data unless it was drawn as a match. If you are not illegally shooting anyone or anything, or selling the gun up the iron pipeline to the northern states, what is the problem?

I liked Cynthia's column and would easily support political candidates who had the balls to make similar stands.

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