eli5: How can the police find the gun just by having the bullet that’s been shot from it?
In: Engineering
They can’t. Just having the bullet tells you almost nothing useful. However, they can use that with other information to locate a gun. Perhaps that gun has been used to commit a crime before, and it was sold at auction; there will be a record of that. So the ballistics from the previous crime and the auction data could provide a starting point. Or perhaps you don’t just have the bullet, you have it embedded in a wall; tracing that damage back through other points, like a broken window, could lead to where the shot was fired from; perhaps the shooter abandoned the gun there or close by. Or perhaps the bullet itself is unusual; for example, it may be a .40S&W with a jacket swaged from 9MM brass. That’s almost certainly the product of a handloader, so they might start asking around about people who do custom handloading, or who have purchased bullet swaging equipment. That could lead them to who made the round, which could lead them to who bought and fired it.
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