Shooter (starring mark wahlberg) question

[commando552]

Originally Posted by SPEMack618

Unless the Ram-Dyne guys also had an inside man in the New Orleans PD crime lab. Highly plausible given the fact that they had a SAC on the payroll in the novel.

If they had, then why bother firing the correct caliber bullet at all if you are just going to fake the ballistics report anyway.

[SPEMack618]

Plausible deniability I suppose. And makes the case against Gunny Swagger that much more airtight.

[commando552]

If you had someone in the lab to game the results, you would just shoot them with a regular .308 and lie abut the ballistics though, there would be no need for the patching bollocks. In this situation using a patched bullet gains you nothing. The only possible reason you might do it would to be to create inconclusive ballistics that would not match any gun, but like I say you would be able to tell the bullet had been wrapped in a patch so hence not from the suspects gun.

I haven't read the book so I might be missing the point, what was the actual stated reason he did the patching, to make the bullet untraceable or what? A much better way of framing someone would be to use a highly expanding or frangible round so that no ballistics could be done on the bullet itself, and simply leave some shot brass from the person you want to frame's rifle. Ballistics examiners would be very lucky to get an individual match on a gun from the bullet anyway (normally they can only get it down to the make and model if that), but the markings on the used brass are much more likely to give a definite match, so this is where the "framing" should focus.

[SPEMack618]

Yeah, the point was the bullet that was patched and then fired by the bad fellow in the book was originally fired by Gunny Swagger and then refired at the Arch-Bishop.