Do the powder manufacturers insert a tag in the podwer for ID purposes?

[El Rojo]

A person I work with has made the claim that all paint and gun powder manufacturers place an extremely small tagant into their products so the manufacturers of the powders or paint can be indentified by microscope. She is a big forensics freak and she has taken a couple of classes. I told her, "I don't think so." One, why do the powder manufacturers care whether someone can tell whether it is their powder or not? Two, why would they endure the extra cost? Three, why hasn't it been more widely known to us shooters?

What I think she is getting confused is that the different properties of IMR vs. Winchester vs. Accurate Arms and on and on enable a forensics scientist to be able to identify the different powers. They can probably even do this from burnt and used powder. Hower, I just don't see the powder companies doing this for ID purposes. I don't think the shooting public would tolerate it. I mean I don't personally care. Big deal, someone knows what kind of powder was used. Usually there is much bigger evidence to convinct people of a crime than powder residue leading to a powder manufacturer and lo and behold, the guy has some Unique in his garage!!!

I think I might even shoot off an e-mail to a few of the manufacturers.

 

[Leatherneck]

Rojo,
IIRC, a number of years ago there was a proposal to mandate taggants in powder. For the chirren, of course. As I recall, it died none too soon as being impractical, expensive and inneffective.
TC

 

[Bogie]

You can generally run it through a mass spec - the different companies use different formulations.

 

[dZ]

http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb105-21.html

From the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 to the Palmer Raids of 1919 to the McCarthy era to the present, proponents of restrictions on civil liberties have made exaggerated claims about various threats posed by American political dissidents and the necessity of a federal "crackdown.'' Indeed, proponents of a crackdown have often claimed that anyone who is skeptical of their exaggerated assertions must be sympathetic to the enemies of America.



Taggants

The main terrorism legislation threat to the Second Amendment is the Clinton administration's "taggants'' proposal, under which literally millions of Americans would be classified as felons. A taggant is a chemical marker that can be placed in explosives. Even after the explosive is detonated, the taggant can identify the factory the explosive came from and perhaps the batch.

Whatever the possible value of taggants for commercial high explosives, taggants can be of no use for crimes involving black powder and smokeless powder. Those consumer products are sold in one- or five-pound bags. Smokeless powder and black powder are used in the home manufacture of ammunition (hand loading) by literally millions of families in the United States. Since one batch of factory powder may eventually be sold to tens of thousands of consumers, there is no realistic possibility that a taggant could lead to the solution of a crime. Instead, taggants legislation would create millions of crimes, since the Clinton proposal would criminalize the possession of black powder or smokeless powder without taggants, making the existing supplies of the millions of hand loaders a federal felony.

Taggants for gunpowder would have forensic value only if all powder purchases were registered and if each individual one-pound box of powder had its own individual taggant, a very expensive proposition. Even then, a person could obtain untagged powder by purchasing ammunition, disassembling it, and removing the powder. Thus all ammunition purchases would have to be registered.

A study from the Office of Technology Assessment suggests that taggants could destabilize smokeless powder and black powder. Although Switzerland is frequently cited as a model for the use of taggants, that country does not require taggants in smokeless powder and black powder.

Finally, according to the Office of Technology Assessment, taggants are easy to remove from gunpowder by sifting, or by viewing the powder under black light and picking the taggants out with tweezers. Other taggants can be removed with a magnet. In short, taggants in gunpowder are a stalking-horse for ammunition registration, with no real crime-fighting value.

 

[C.R.Sam]

dz...
Well done.

Sam

 

[ENC]

They all said it before I could.

The main thing is that a GCMS, which is the best tool in Forensic and toxicology labs today for discerning chemical prescence, can probably, as Bogie mentioned, tell different powders apart from each other.