A Worldwide Study of Bullets Fired From 10 Consecutively Rifled 9MM RUGER Pistol Barrels—Analysis of Examiner Error Rate

This technical note is an update on a continuing study, first designed and initiated by Brundage et al. over twenty years ago , which seeks to test the community of forensic firearms examiners’ ability to associate fired bullets with the barrels through which they passed. To date, 697 participants h...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of forensic sciences Vol. 64; no. 2; pp. 551 - 557
Main Authors Hamby, James E., Brundage, David J., Petraco, Nicholas D. K., Thorpe, James W.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.03.2019
Subjects
Ammunition
ballistics imaging instrumentation
Barrels
Bayesian analysis
Bayesian statistics
consecutively rifled barrels
criteria for identification
Daubert
Error analysis
error rates
Firearms
firearms identification
fired bullets
forensic science
Forensic sciences
IBIS
Projectiles
SciClops
scientific research
Shootings
Small arms
subclass characteristics
Test sets
IBIS
criteria for identification
scientific research
forensic science
subclass characteristics
SciClops
fired bullets
Daubert
Bayesian statistics
error rates
ballistics imaging instrumentation
consecutively rifled barrels
firearms identification
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Summary:This technical note is an update on a continuing study, first designed and initiated by Brundage et al. over twenty years ago , which seeks to test the community of forensic firearms examiners’ ability to associate fired bullets with the barrels through which they passed. To date, 697 participants have utilized over 240 test sets consisting of bullets fired through 10 consecutively rifled RUGER P‐85 pistol barrels. Here, we report on the results of the ongoing “10‐barrel test” up until the point in time of writing this manuscript. To analyze the totality of data thus far collected, a Bayesian approach was selected. Posterior average examiner error rates are assigned assuming only vague prior information. Given the data found over the course of this diverse decades‐long study, our most conservative value for average examiner error rate has a posterior mean of 0.053% with a 95% probability interval of [1.1 × 10−5%, 0.16%].
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ISSN:0022-1198
1556-4029
DOI:10.1111/1556-4029.13916