Audio forensic examinations may involve recordings containing gunshot sounds. Forensic questions may include determining the number of shots, what firearms were involved, the position and orientation of the firearms, and similar queries of importance to the investigation. A common question is whether a sequence of shots are attributable to a single gun fired repeatedly, or if the sounds could possibly come from two or more different guns fired in succession. This paper describes a controlled experiment comparing ten repeated shots from several common handguns and rifles. Differences between shots are observed, apparently attributable to subtle differences between ammunition cartridges. The shot-to-shot differences are also compared at different azimuths, and between different firearms. Practical examples and applications are presented.

Author: Maher, Robert C.
Affiliation: Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, USA
AES Conference: 2019 AES International Conference on Audio Forensics (June 2019)
Paper Number: 8
Publication Date: June 8, 2019

Click to purchase paper as a non-member or you can login as an AES member to see more options.

No AES members have commented on this paper yet.

Subscribe to this discussion

To be notified of new comments on this paper you can subscribe to this RSS feed. Forum users should login to see additional options.

Start a discussion!

If you would like to start a discussion about this paper and are an AES member then you can login here:
Username:
Password:

If you are not yet an AES member and have something important to say about this paper then we urge you to join the AES today and make your voice heard. You can join online today by clicking here.