While the method, which uses an electron microscope to examine atoms in metal, still requires refining, NIST materials scientists Ryan White and Robert Keller say it should be capable of restoring a full serial number, even in such difficult cases as the Mossberg shotgun, in about an hour.įederal law requires gun manufacturers to stamp, etch or otherwise imprint a unique serial number on every firearm they produce. Using a technique called electron backscatter diffraction, or EBSD, researchers at the Boulder, Colo., campus of the National Institute of Standards and Technology have been developing a novel way to bring back to life numbers that have been completely sanded away. “Only two of the seven serial number characters could be restored” by his usual acid-etching techniques, Klees said, which meant police had to do a time-consuming search of gun-theft reports and interviews with victims to establish the weapon’s ownership.Īn alternative process under development since 2013 may fix this problem in the future. So the police sent the shotgun to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ National Laboratory in Beltsville, where Gregory Klees, the lab’s go-to guy when it comes to the forensic science of un-erasing serial numbers, knew he had a challenge on his hands.
The gun’s serial number, a forensic science staple for tracing guns, had been ground away.
Several months ago, undercover police in Western Maryland bought a Mossberg shotgun, Model 500A, from a local drug dealer.
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