Description
Collect, identify, classify, and analyze firearms, ammunition, and toolmark evidence for criminal investigations. Perform operability testing, test-firing, microscopic comparisons, trajectory analysis, and distance determinations to link weapons, bullets, and cartridge cases. Testify as an expert on firearms evidence and crime laboratory techniques. Serve as a specialist in ballistics and toolmarks, including serial number restoration and use of NIBIN/IBIS.
- • Testify in court on firearms and toolmark methods, findings, and conclusions.
- • Interpret microscopic comparison results to identify or eliminate source firearms.
- • Operate and maintain comparison microscopes, ballistic recovery tanks, and chronographs.
- • Prepare chemical etchants and reagents for serial number restoration and residue tests.
- • Collect, render safe, package, and preserve firearms and ammunition with proper chain of custody.
- • Conduct operability and safety testing of submitted firearms.
- • Test-fire firearms to obtain known standards for comparison and pattern testing.
- • Reconstruct shootings using trajectory, impact, and cartridge ejection analyses.
- • Analyze gunshot residue patterns and bullet paths to determine firing distance and direction.
- • Attend autopsies or evidence recoveries to collect and document bullets and fragments.
- • Examine firearms for alterations, defects, and legal classification; restore obliterated serial numbers.
- • Confer with investigators, prosecutors, and medical examiners regarding evidence interpretation.
- • Compare bullets, cartridge cases, and toolmarks using comparison microscopy and IBIS.
- • Document examinations with detailed notes, photographs, and scaled diagrams.
- • Prepare clear, technically accurate reports of procedures, results, and conclusions.
- • Capture and submit digital images to NIBIN/IBIS and evaluate correlation results.
- • Maintain reference collections of ammunition, firearms, and test standards.
- • Train officers and laboratory staff on firearms evidence handling and shooting-scene documentation.
- • Conduct muzzle-to-target distance determinations via test patterns on appropriate media.
- • Measure and diagram shooting scenes to support trajectory analysis and reconstructions.
- • Perform quality control, calibration, and maintenance on ballistic instrumentation.
- • Ensure compliance with safety protocols for handling loaded or unknown-status firearms.
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O*NET occupational data (work activities, skills, knowledge).
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Last reviewed: Jan 2026
