AFTE Store - Demographic Survey of 173 Firearms Examiners Participating in the FBI Error Rate Study

Concurrent with their participation in the FBI decision analysis study of qualified forensic firearms examiners, 173 participants completed a questionnaire about their laboratory and its policies, their training and experience, the way they carry out comparisons, the equipment they use, whether they use the CMS (consecutive matching striae) method to complement pattern matching, and how they document and report their decisions. Nearly all laboratories recognize the validity of an Inconclusive decision, but for a small fraction of laboratories, the conclusion defaults to Elimination when there is insufficient agreement to support Identification.