Mxxxxx Bxxxxxx, a former police officer with over 30 years of dealing with gun crime, draws our attention to this report in the New Scientist ....
Pollen and grit are the components of a new coating for gun cartridges that UK researchers hope will help to identify criminals that use firearms. Under their scheme, batches of cartridges would be labelled with unique "nanotags", invisible to naked eye, designed to attach themselves to hands, gloves and clothing of anyone that handles a cartridge. Some of the tags would remain on the spent cartridge casing.
The tags could perform a similar, but more authoritative role to the specks of unintended explosives residue sometimes used to tie people to guns or crimes. The nanotags are made from pollen, and a mix of grains of crystal oxides such as zirconia, silica and titanium oxide. Using varying combinations of crystal and pollen grains, it is possible to make large numbers of unique tags.
"We decided to work with pollens because they have a unique structure, resistant to temperature and easily recognisable," said Paul Sermon from the University of Surrey, who has led the research. "It's also easily dispersed and carried around in clothes, skin, etc."
Pollen grains vary between plant species and are easily identified under a microscope. Chemical techniques could reveal which oxides were mixed with the pollen, and in which proportions to work out which batch of cartridges they originate from.
"The most challenging part of the project was nanoengineering a coating robust enough to withstand the high temperatures of firing and that would still release the tags when touched," he added.
Sermon says that the tags are designed to be compatible with current cartridge manufacturing processes and could be implemented within 12 months of companies or government supporting their introduction.
In addition to the tags, the researchers are working on a way to have gun cartridges retain skin cells from anyone that handle them, for later DNA-based forensic analysis. Micro-scale grit can effectively trap cells and protect DNA from the heat of firing. Today, cartridges are smooth and rarely retain DNA or fingerprints.
The team is also looking to apply that technique to knives so they retain DNA more reliably.
The tags were developed by researchers from Brighton, Brunel, Cranfield, Surrey and York Universities, with commercial collaborators including UK defence firm BAE Systems.
Sounds good, doesn't it? But Mxxxx Bxxxxxx, with his years of experience in the police, knows better. He wrote …
"Brilliant; except that it wouldn't work. Implemented within 12 months! Some research, or common sense, is required here. The centre fire cartridge has been around since 1861, there are countless millions out there that could not be tagged despite 'implementation within 12 months'. If all existing stocks were required to be destroyed then criminals would just retain a decent stock. Cost of compensation - who pays? Some cartridges are rare and unique in collections; yes, there is a British Cartridge Collectors Club and they are not going to be happy about valuable collections being destroyed.
Most ammunition is not manufactured in Britain but imported from almost every Country under the sun. Who is going to make them comply? Are we going to ban importation? Are we going to open every box of imported ammunition and treat it? Is each cartridge going to be treated individually? If not, then batch treating would be pointless as they would be sold off to many different people making it a complete waste of time as so many different people would test positive.
What about people who reload their own? A lot of people pick up spent cases and reload them as they use the cases to make specialist loads or to reform the case to fit obsolete firearms.
Only legal gun owners could be made to comply and the use of legal firearms in crime is negligible. Look what happened when the Government banned handguns, only the law-abiding complied; mainly because they were the only one with registered handguns whose whereabouts were known; cost of compensation was just under £100,000,000 and handgun crime has just about tripled since. A great success!
Ever thought why cartridges are currently smooth and don't have a roughened surface? That's is so they will eject from the gun and not get jammed in the chamber."
Shame, really, because it's an appealing idea. Imagine, gun criminals could choose their own favourite flowers. Arab terrorists could enjoy bullets scented with fragrant begonia socotrana from the Yemen, Yardies might choose the Lobster Claw Heliconia to remind them of Jamaica, and Cosa Nostra hitmen might favour Orange Blossom, though there are hidden pitfalls …
Marco: "Eh, Luigi, whatta you smell?"
Luigi: "Eh, Marco, I smella da bullet. He smell of da orange blossom. Here, you-a try!"
Marco (sniffs): "Eh, whatt-a you pull? You make-a da fool of Marco? Dis-a no orange blossom! Dis da mandarin!"
Luigi: "Eh, Marco, why you make-a da big deal? Orange is orange, capice?"
Marco: "Ignorant pig, why-a you not know mandarin imported into Sicilia by Arabs in-a da fifteenth century? Is-a not indigenous, capice?"
Luigi: "Ah, shaddup-a your face!"
And imagine the new dimension it would bring to crime detection, with far-reaching effects on detective fiction …
"Aha, Watson!" cried Holmes, "the game's afoot! The pollen on this cartridge comes from one of the rarest orchids on earth. It grows only on the precipitous cliffs of a remote valley in Patagonia. You see what this means?"
"You mean …?" said Watson incredulously.
"It means …" said Holmes, "that the deadly bullet can only have been fired by …"
"Wait!" cried Watson. "I know! By a remote Patagonian mountaineer!"
Holmes put his pipe down on the table and looked out of the window for a long moment.
"You know, Watson," he said between clenched teeth, "you're no fun any more."
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