I've never really thought about this before, but it just came up in a Breaking Bad episode -- and I realise this will sound stupid to any American, but I really don't know: What advantage does it give a criminal to use a weapon if the serial number has been removed? If the cops have the gun, a forensic will be able to tell if it's the gun that fired a certain shot anyway, right? At least no worse for the missing number. If they haven't got your gun, perhaps it will be harder to identify. But if they look at it and find no number, it's a felony anyway, right? So you're counting on them not looking at the gun. And since you're buying the gun illegally, it's not as if they'd have a record with the serial number and your name to go by. In what scenario does the removed number help you?
Gun control act of 1968, the purpose was to control the sales of guns through FLL. This was when the gun was first sold it could be recorded to who bought it and where it was sold.
When you buy a gun that serial number is recorder - who bought it. When you sell your gun that serial number goes on the receipt/paperwork, so if that that gun turns up in a crime, you are off the hook. Without serial numbers nobody can trace a gun to the owner. Thus unless you are caught with the gun in your possession or with your fingerprints, there's no proof you used that gun in any crime or ever possessed that gun in any way shape or form. Anyone dumb enough to hang on to a gun after they kill somebody is too stupid to live.
A couple of things, FBI testing of barrel markings is not exactly fool proof. As for film g off the serial numbers, yeah the idea is that it allows the government to track which store sold what gun to who. However that falls apart if the gun gets sold over and over and/or the gun is stolen. Besides you can file the serial numbers down, but thanks to the miracle of modern science you can still determine the serial number of the firearm
Plus, Serial numbers are put in more than one place on most guns, I think one of the poly-frame guns has a SN inside the mag well and under the slide rails
Ok, so this protects the seller and not the buyer? In the scene that made me ask this question, our protagonist is buying a gun. The seller tells him that the number is filed off, and he'll want that if he intends to kill someone; but if he only wants the gun for defence, he'd be better off buying a gun legally. A legal gun, he says, will have the advantages of being much cheaper, and he'll be allowed to be seen with it, but the disadvantage is that it's got a readable serial number. I still don't get it. If he's buying the gun illegally anyway, there won't be a legal record of him buying the gun whether it has a number or not. The only thing I can come up with is that if the gun is found after a crime, the number might allow the police to trace the gun to its last documented owner, very slightly increasing the chances of tracing it to the illegal gun dealer, very slightly increasing the chances of tracing it to our protagonist. Is that it? Seems minuscule compared to the danger of being found with a clearly illegal gun any time before he commits the crime.
Eh, I think they deliberately put a liberal sprinkling of stupid bullshit into crime shows, or else criminals would get better at crime.
Crime shows are generally bullshit in their entirety, from police work, to forensics, to courtroom procedure, and beyond. I find it easier to enjoy crime shows that recognize this and run with it rather than crime shows that take themselves seriously.
Just my opinion, but I would say it is because it is a stolen gun that the thief wanted to resell as untraceable. The way firearms laws work, the Government doesn't know what guns I have, but I do. And I should be able to make the police and my insurance company know. So if my place were burglarized and someone stole my guns, I could provide photos of them and their serial numbers so that they could be recovered. Or at least if they were used in a crime it would give police an insight into where the guns used in the crime came from. So if I'm the guy who's burglarized a place and come away with guns, I'd file off the serial numbers in an effort to make it more difficult for someone to say "those were stolen from David Jones' house on April 1, 1999."
None. The only reason to remove a serial number from a gun is to render it untraceable. This is of little importance to the criminal using the gun. After all, what he's going to do with the gun is probably a bigger offense than merely possessing a stolen gun. And, indeed, possessing a gun with an obliterated serial number is a crime in and of itself. If I were committing a crime and needed to obtain a illicit gun, it would not matter to me one way or the other whether the serial number was in place. (Obliterating the serial number might be of some use to the person who STEALS the gun in the first place, if, say, someone was killed in the commission of that crime. Better to be punished for possessing a gun with an obliterated serial number than to be connected to a murder!)
Fingerprints are the real deal-breaker. Anybody not wearing gloves while handling a gun and commits a crime has gone full retard.
Stop watching TV. Fingerprints on the curved grip of a firearm are sketchy at best. Secondly, if I send a fingerprint card to the FBI today, their current backlog is 2-3 years if the prints are on file at all. The State is only slightly better at 18 months.
If people didn't take forensic crime/courtroom t.v. shows seriously those shows could be a lot of fun. As it is, the shows of the genre that aren't over-the-top silly are just plain depressing.