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Ballistics

Firearms evidence and identification has become a crucial part in investigation and solving crimes. It has led to thousands of successful investigations that otherwise would not have been. You see it in the news and on TV shows like CSI. Although CSI is far from true forensic science, the concept is still there. What is firearms evidence? How is it examined? This paper will look at the history of firearms identification and examine the two previous questions.
To talk about firearms identification we must first understand where it comes from. We must learn about the history. With the more and more crimes being committed with firearms there was obviously a need for the development of firearms identification in criminalistics. The first murder solved using ballistics was successful in 1835. Henry Goddard examined a bullet and found a very distinctive mark on it that was from the mold that made it. This led him to the discovery of the suspect because the matching gauge was found on his mold (Swanson16-17). " Calvin Goddard a U.S. physician who had served in the army during World War I, is the person considered most responsible for raising firearms identification to a science and for perfecting the bullet-comparison microscope (Swanson 17)." But there also were several other very important contributors including Charles Waite. Waite and Goddard worked together on firearms identification. There was one major contribution from Waite and that was the country's first catalog of firearms.
"Firearms identification is a discipline of Forensic Science that has as its primary concern to determine if a bullet, cartridge case, or other ammunition component was fired from a specific firearm (Muth 241)." Firearm evidence and identification evidence is usually needed in solving crimes such as murder, robbery, and suicide cases. When at the scene of these crimes the evidence is collected and then submitted to the firearms section of a police lab. This evidence usually...

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