Firearms & Ammunition
Legal Classification
Firearms and ammunition seized by the Police might be subject to examination in order to establish their legal classification, and if such items are assessed by the Prosecution as being subject to the provisions of the Firearms Act 1968, and subsequent amendments, our experts can undertake our own examination of these items.
Such examinations include:
- Legal classification of all aspects of firearms and ammunition.
- Modification of firearms or ammunition.
- Kinetic energy measurements for air pistols and air rifles to establish if they exceed the legal limit at which a firearms certificate is required. We have had some successful Court cases in this issue where the kinetic energy was above but very close to the legal limit, but the inherent statistical errors in such measurements had not been properly assessed.
- Measurement of the voltage produced by a stun gun or tazer gun.
Firearms Discharge Residue
An individual suspected of having recently discharged a firearm, or have had a discharged firearm in their possession, might have swabs taken from hands / face, or alternatively their clothing might be seized to ascertain whether or not trace residues resulting from such a discharge were evident.
A report dealing with such an examination might be prepared by the Prosecution.
Our experts can deal with all of the above aspects of Forensic evidence , and if any of these are to be relied upon by the Prosecution in support of allegations against a defendant(s), we can conduct a thorough, robust and critical evaluation of every aspect of the forensic evidence including undertaking our own examination of the items and scientific case records, checking the continuity of items / evidence, in-house laboratory procedures and techniques, and of course the reliability, validity and conclusions of the forensic evidence that is to used in Court by the Prosecution.
This almost invariably requires our experts to attend at the Forensic Laboratory utilised by the Police to conduct our own examination of exhibits and thoroughly evaluate the scientific case records / analytical results.