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fired casing?
pirate2501
Member Posts: 1,851 ✭✭✭✭✭
Why do some mfgers put a fired casing in the package with a new handgun?
Comments
This fired case is the proofing cartridge. All firearms are suppose to be test fired for functionality and safty.
That is not correct.
CP
So when you buy the gun, the FFL is supposed to send the fired case to the State to keep on file in case they want to match to the gun, later for investigative purposes.
MA, by the way, is NOT one of these States.
MA may have stupid gun control, but I think its savvy enough to know that storing up fired cases from new guns is a gigantic waste of time and money.
It can be extremely difficult to impossible to match a case to a gun under the best circumstances, and with new guns, the marks they'll leave on a case will change with cleaning and repeated firing.
The number of times where spent shells held by the State has meaningfully contributed to a criminal conviction is negligible, amounting to at most a few times total in the history of the multiple states that do this, at a cost of literally millions of dollars:
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/lott200502040751.asp
Bought a High Standard 1911, .45acp two weeks ago. It came with a fired casing in a sealed envelope, serialed numbered to the gun by the tester. It is a .357magnum casing. Go figure.
Send the gun back and demand the correct gun! [;)]
OK, seriously, for a thought experiment, lets say by mistake in a moment of dyslexia the manufacturer accidentally dropped a case from gun #14567 into envelope #14576. Same make, model, and caliber, but wrong gun.
There would be NO WAY the buyer or FFL could possibly know that the factory made this error (well, short of doing their own ballistic testing. . .and even THAT isn't reliable). The factory obviously wouldn't know. Receiving a mismatched case, there would also be no way the State could know this was wrong.
In short, lacking the same sort of (supposedly) meticulous chain-of-evidence documentation that usually accompanies forensic evidence, this whole case-linking thing is largely a charade. You'd think given the literal bankruptcy of the States of CA, NY, and MD, they might reconsider the millions of dollars wasted on this nonsense. . .but no. . .there are important public sector sinecures to be offered up.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080830083308AAxP1EB