SHOT THROUGH THE HEART, PART II: Gunshot Residue
long arms, who knows?) If the paper lights up like a Christmas trees, it was fairly close. If there's only a few sporadic dots, the gun was probably two or three feet away at least. If there's no dots at all, the gun was probably at least three feet away. If you get the actual gun and the actual ammunition used, a series of test firings can zero in the distance with impressive accuracy.
I'm a big fan of this test, I admit. It doesn't require a lot of training and in five minutes you can tell that if the killer said they struggled and the gun went off, and there's no nitrites, then it's more like that he shot the guy from across the room. If the wife says she shot him by accident, seeing only a shadowy figure fifteen feet down the hallway and there's a tight grouping of orange dots around the bullet hole, then, well, she's got some 'splainin' to do.
The copyright of the article SHOT THROUGH THE HEART, PART II: Gunshot Residue in Forensic Science is owned by Elizabeth Becka Lansky. Permission to republish SHOT THROUGH THE HEART, PART II: Gunshot Residue in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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