A BYTE OUT OF HISTORY
The Bureau Gets its Guns: The Origin of the FBI Firearms Collection
10/27/04
If you've ever taken
the FBI Tour --now closed for extensive
renovations--you know that we have some interesting crime-fighting reference
collections.
Such as: Tire
designs and paint color samples from nearly every car ever made in the
U.S. Extensive stationery, typefaces, and watermarks. And handwriting
specimens from known forgers. All valuable tools for analyzing evidence
and pinpointing criminals.
Perhaps most
well-known of all is our collection of over 5,000 firearms. Just
about every gun of the modern age ... including the eccentric and the
historic, from the handgun John
Dillinger reached for just moments before his death ... to a unique
hollowed-out walking cane that fires small but lethal bullets.
This month,
we celebrate the 71st anniversary of that collection, officially
begun on October 1, 1933.
Why'd the
early Bureau start such an arsenal? As part and parcel of
its growing scientific approach to fighting crime and protecting national
security.
Here's the
story: In November 1932, the Bureau launched its first "Technical
Crime Laboratory" --the precursor of today's FBI Lab. Its
mission? To analyze evidence and investigate crime scenes using the
latest scientific techniques ... and to pioneer new crime-fighting
tools grounded in modern science.
Lab agents
and scientists soon realized that rigorous scientific analysis required
reference points and standards so evidence could be accurately
compared and analyzed. So they began collecting the most common items
used to commit crimes.
Gathering
firearms was a logical step, especially at a time when the Bureau's
war on gangsters was in full swing.
The collection
had an immediate operational value: agents and scientists
used it to identify weapons (even when they were deliberately damaged
by criminals), to link these guns to crime scenes and criminals, and
to match weapons to bullets fired. They even used this firearms storehouse
as a source of spare parts for testing weapons.
And it's stood
the test of time. For the past seven decades, our reference
firearms collection has been a valuable weapon itself--in protecting
the nation. It's solved countless crimes. And it's helped make forensic
science a building block of law enforcement investigations around the
world.
Link: FBI
History