Examination of Firearms and Forensics in Europe and aCross Territories: Final Report

The purpose of this project was to assess the nature and prevalence of GEC across Europe, and to examine the potential for reduction through policing, legislation, and the use of ballistic information sharing. More specifically, the questions addressed by this project are: 1) What is the nature, prevalence and impact of gun crime in Europe? 2) What are the challenges of implementing policies to prevent and mitigate the impact of gun crime? 3) What are the emerging threats to current and future gun crime policy? 4) How can gun crime be effectively policed, and what are the challenges for police organisations? 5) How is ballistics intelligence currently used in Baltic and EU countries? 6) Does ballistic intelligence provide evidence, beyond that provided by the INTERPOL Ballistic Information Network (IBIN) that crime guns do travel across EU borders? 7) Can ballistic intelligence facilitate cross-border co-operation and communication about GEC and lead to greater crime linkage detection and solution?