Scenario: One Tuesday afternoon at approximately 2:00 pm, a woman called 911 to report that when she went outside to check her mailbox and she noticed what appeared to be a lifeless body in the circular drive of her neighbor’s house. The woman didn’t want to identify herself because she said that she didn’t want to get involved. The lady told the dispatcher that her neighbor was about 25 years old and she was not married. She said her neighbor was very attractive, but she never saw any men over at her neighbor’s house. The lady continued by telling the dispatcher that she thought that she had heard a gun shot blast about an hour before and when she went to her window to look out to see what was going on, she saw an unfamiliar man in a red Mercedes SL 500 at the end of her neighbor’s driveway with what appeared to be a beer bottle in his hand. She said the man was only there for about a minute and then he drove away. She said she thought nothing of him being there because the street is always very busy with cars and she always saw unfamiliar people.

When the Detectives arrived at the crime scene, they knocked on the door of the house, but they did not get an answer. About that time, when the investigators began their initial investigation, it appeared that the victim had been shot in the frontal lobe of her head. They also noticed some spent cartridge casings on the ground in the area where the victim was found.

At approximately 6:00 pm on that same day, the Investigators received a report that a man driving a red Mercedes SL500 had been stopped for a broken tail light and he seemed very nervous. While performing a general search of the vehicle, the officer conducting the stop of the man in the red Mercedes noticed a .357 semiautomatic Magnum on the back seat in plain view. The officer retrieved the weapon as possible evidence that could have been used on the victim in the earlier crime scene.

Could this be the weapon that was used to shoot the victim in the head? How can it be determined if a particular weapon fired a particular bullet or projectile? Are all guns the same or can they be separated into different categories?

This audio will answer these questions and many more questions about the different types of firearms and how they can be individualized as firing a particular bullet through the striation marks left by lands and groove in a weapon with a rifled barrel. You will learn what ballistics is and how it can be used to determine the angle and directionality that a projectile struck an object. This audio will also describe the differences between pistols, revolvers, and rifles as well as explain the terms single action, double action, semiautomatic, and automatic when they are used to describe the function of a weapon. An excellent criminal case will be discussed to show how distance determination can be used to determine if a suspect is being truthful in their explanation of what happened in the shooting.

So take good aim at the boxes below and click on the appropriate box to begin your audio and start learning all of the exciting information about Firearm Analysis. Don’t worry about having to use a silencer when clicking on the boxes; this knowledge was prepared while the information was in “safety mode”.