OK, I finally opened up the little brown envelope?

A few states have special rules that if and when a new gun is sold cartridges fired from that gun will be sent to a lab and kept. That way if you ever shoot anyone and leave your casings behind in theory the crime lab can match it to you.

Because a gun maker doesn't know where the gun will end up being sold, they put those empty cartridges in EVERY gun they send out. If you live in a state where they have to be sent in, the gun dealer sends them in when he sells you the gun.

Note, that to date ZERO crimes have been solved using this information, and what they have found out is that:

1). Those markings on a case aren't nearly as unique as they seem. It was one thing to find 1 match when you had 10 guns to compare it to, but now if you run a case through their system, because they have 100,000+ cases, they are getting 2000-3000 '99.99% perfect match' results.

2). As a gun wears through life, the bits that hit the case and leave these marks change. Sometimes the gun gets fired a lot and the parts wear down and mark differently. Sometimes bits of rust develop on it and it changes those marks it leaves then too. So not only is the system now coming up with thousands of 99.99% matches....it's actually reading cases from guns that are 10-20 years old as only 80% matches.

Recently, some States required the filing of a 'ballistic fingerprint' for pistols.

This included a bullet and a spent case, (for tool marks).

Maybe that's it.

Eddie isn't joking. He is correct. But long shot has given you the extra details. It seems it was never made into law.

That shell has been logged in a database that has never really gotten off the ground. Its so they can track you if you ever commit a crime with that gun.

yah it was to prove that the gun works

yes ,,and the feds have the lead part,,,, with your name on the spent bullet,,, you think i would joke about this,,well it is on you lol,,,,