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My wife is watching a show on Investigation Discovery called Sins And Secrets.
They're talking about a murder in Oakland from 2006.

I nearly fell over laughing when one of their experts said that he examined the spent casings and determined by the strike of the firing pin that it was a 12 guage shotgun that was used.

clarionite wrote:My wife is watching a show on Investigation Discovery called Sins And Secrets.
They're talking about a murder in Oakland from 2006.

I nearly fell over laughing when one of their experts said that he examined the spent casings and determined by the strike of the firing pin that it was a 12 guage shotgun that was used.

My wife is watching the same show, and I guess the expert must have had to go to the firing pin impression because maybe the criminals filed off the identifying markings from the shell.

was it a 12 Ga shell casing as you can buy insert to fire handgun rounds from a 12 Ga flare gun also.

suthdj wrote:was it a 12 Ga shell casing as you can buy insert to fire handgun rounds from a 12 Ga flare gun also.

They were ejected 12 guage slug casings.
Even if they had filed off the markings (which I highly doubt) anyone who knows anything about shotguns could have picked up the shell and told you what guage it was without looking at that end.

10, 12,16, 20, 410... I don't think any of those are hard to figure out. If so, they could measure the diameter of the brass end to get the guage. I'm not sure what the firing pin would tell them about the guage. Later on in the show they matched the fired shell to the exact shotgun via imperfections on the firing pin. That part made sense.

Good thing it was just the little 12 gauge and not the huge 410 gauge.

Not too many bright people on TV anymore.

mojo84 wrote:Good thing it was just the little 12 gauge and not the huge 410 gauge.

I had that coming... .410 bore, commonly (incorrectly) called .410 guage

clarionite wrote:

mojo84 wrote:Good thing it was just the little 12 gauge and not the huge 410 gauge.

I had that coming... .410 bore, commonly (incorrectly) called .410 guage

No you didn't. My apologies for making it seem my comment was directed at you. It wasn't. I was only thinking about the expert on the show saying he looked at the strike of the firing pin to determine it was a 12 gauge shotgun. If that's the case, I doubt he knows much about calibers and gauges.

mojo84 wrote:

clarionite wrote:

mojo84 wrote:Good thing it was just the little 12 gauge and not the huge 410 gauge.

I had that coming... .410 bore, commonly (incorrectly) called .410 guage

No you didn't. My apologies for making it seem my comment was directed at you. It wasn't. I was only thinking about the expert on the show saying he looked at the strike of the firing pin to determine it was a 12 gauge shotgun. If that's the case, I doubt he knows much about calibers and gauges.

We get touchy about little things like Clip vs. Magazine... So I should learn to be more specific when I'm pointing out someone elses faux pas <G>

Speaking of Clip Vs. Magazine, I had never used a stripper clip to load AR15 magazines. I bought some last month at the Saxet gun show. While cleaning my closet, I stumbled upon them this weekend. They're pretty nice for the USGI magazines I've got. But didn't work very well with the Lancer L5 magazines I tried. (too slow and difficult to load) I didn't test them with the PMags, just because I was too lazy to unload some to try.

clarionite wrote:

suthdj wrote:was it a 12 Ga shell casing as you can buy insert to fire handgun rounds from a 12 Ga flare gun also.

They were ejected 12 guage slug casings.
Even if they had filed off the markings (which I highly doubt) anyone who knows anything about shotguns could have picked up the shell and told you what guage it was without looking at that end.

10, 12,16, 20, 410... I don't think any of those are hard to figure out. If so, they could measure the diameter of the brass end to get the guage. I'm not sure what the firing pin would tell them about the guage. Later on in the show they matched the fired shell to the exact shotgun via imperfections on the firing pin. That part made sense.

The .72 caliber shell might just have been a clue.

jimlongley wrote:

clarionite wrote:

suthdj wrote:was it a 12 Ga shell casing as you can buy insert to fire handgun rounds from a 12 Ga flare gun also.

They were ejected 12 guage slug casings.
Even if they had filed off the markings (which I highly doubt) anyone who knows anything about shotguns could have picked up the shell and told you what guage it was without looking at that end.

10, 12,16, 20, 410... I don't think any of those are hard to figure out. If so, they could measure the diameter of the brass end to get the guage. I'm not sure what the firing pin would tell them about the guage. Later on in the show they matched the fired shell to the exact shotgun via imperfections on the firing pin. That part made sense.

The .72 caliber shell might just have been a clue.

Maybe, but I bet without the firing pin strike he would never figure it out that was a key clue!

jmra wrote:Not too many bright people on TV anymore.

There's a control called "Brightness" but it doesn't work.

Hoosier Daddy wrote:

jmra wrote:Not too many bright people on TV anymore.

There's a control called "Brightness" but it doesn't work.

You used the wrong one in this case. You should have used the "sharpness" control.