Ballistic Fingerprinting

A million and a half public dollars a year for ballistic fingerprinting that results in not a single crime being solved in New York State - what a bargain.

Supporters of this backdoor attempt at national gun registration make the predictible arguments:

Eric Gorovitz of The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence disputed the contention that criminals can easily foil the database with a file given the wide array of markings the computer looks at.

"Even if they did succeed in doing it once in a while, it's still a tool you don't otherwise have," Gorovitz said. "Nobody says, 'People wear gloves. We shouldn't a have a fingerprint database,' It's a preposterous suggestion."

Compelling at first blush, except that Mr. Gorovitz presumably doesn't support a state-run central database of all law-abiding citizens' fingerprints taken at birth. We only fingerprint criminals. But guns, of course, are different. And anyone who owns one is suspect, so we should collect as much information about them as possible. No matter what it costs.