One avenue of investigation is already closed off to forensic officials
working the Boston Marathon bombing case due to efforts dating back
decades by the National Rifle Association and gun manufacturers.

The FBI said Tuesday that gunpowder, along with pieces of metal and ball
bearings, were packed into at least one pressure cooker and another
device to make the crude bombs that killed three people—including an
8-year-old boy—and wounded more than 170 more during the Boston Marathon
Monday.

But a crucial piece of evidence called a taggant that could be used to
trace the gunpowder used in the bombs to a buyer at a point of sale is
not available to investigators.

“If you had a good taggant this would be a good thing for this kind of
crime. It could help identify the point of manufacturer, and chain of
custody,” Bob Morhard, an explosives consultant and chief executive
officer of Zukovich, Morhard & Wade, LLC., in Pennsylvania, who has
traced explosives and detonators in use in the United States and Saudi
Arabia, told MSNBC.com. “The problem is nobody wants to know what the
material is.”

Explosives manufacturers are required to place tracing elements known as
identification taggants only in plastic explosives but not in gunpowder,
thanks to lobbying efforts by the NRA and large gun manufacturing groups.

NRA officials at the group’s headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia declined
to respond to calls and emails from MSNBC.com requesting comment.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation and the Sporting Arms and
Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute, Inc., share a cross-membership of
dozens of firearms manufacturers based out of their joint offices in
Newtown, Connecticut. Foundation spokesman Bill Brassard, Jr. told
MSNBC.com that no one from either group was available for comment.

“They are concerned about tort liability,” Morhard added to MSNBC.com,
referring to manufacturers worried about being sued over the improper
use of their ammunition or explosives. Worries about the cost of adding
taggants to gunpowder were also raised by the Institute of Makers of
Explosives. NRA officials seem more concerned about government use of
technology to trace either firearms or the gunpowder used to make
ammunition. Fear of government use of tracking technologies is also
echoed online.

“These taggants would allow the police to identify the maker and even
the lot of the ammo by the taggant,” posted blogger dfariswheel online
in January in a closed gun-forum called AR15.com, a longstanding group
named for the same type of military-style, semi-automatic rifle used in
both the Newtown grade school and Aurora movie theater mass shootings.

In the past, the NRA has argued that taggants could affect the
trajectory of bullets and would also be a de facto form of weapons
registration, reported the Los Angeles Times in 1995.

Yet, one of the NRA’s own “Fact Sheets” from the 1990s on the website of
its lobbying wing expresses reservations about taggants but still
indicates that they could work.

“Identification taggants are microscopically color-coded particles that,
if added to explosives or gun powders during their manufacturing, might
facilitate tracing those products after a bombing back to the
manufacturer,” reads the 1999 post “Taggants and Gun Powers” by the
NRA’s Institute of Legislative Action. “Then, through the use of
mandatory distribution records, tracing would continue through
wholesaler and dealer levels to an original purchaser or point of theft.”

The same NRA, however, has twice deployed its lobbyists to block the
mandated use of identification taggants by gunpowder manufacturers.

The first time came more than thirty years ago, after a wave of bombings
in the 1970s mainly by the radical left Weather Underground and Puerto
Rican nationalist groups.

A congressional study in 1980 found: “Identification taggants would
facilitate the investigation of almost all significant criminal bombings
in which commercial explosives were used.”

But the NRA successfully lobbied to have black and smokeless gunpowders
exempted from the explosives required to include taggant markers.
Members of Congress—including then-New York Rep. Charles Schumer– tried
and failed again after the 1993 New York City truck bombing of the World
Trade Center. The Clinton administration renewed the call for
legislation requiring identifying taggants right after the 1995 Oklahoma
City bombing, whose 18th anniversary is Friday.

The NRA backed a National Research Council committee in 1998 to examine
taggant technologies, later claiming the committee found them to be
“unfeasible and of uncertain value.”

In fact, the committee concluded: “Identification taggants and an
associated record-keeping system could be of further assistance in
tracking down bombers in cases where basic forensic techniques fail.”
The committee added that “additional research on these systems is needed
to determine whether they are safe and effective.”

Little or no known public research has been done on the matter since, as
the NRA gained more national influence in the 2000s during the
administration led by President George W. Bush.

“It was explained that taggants would alter the powder in unsafe ways
and that no military or police organization would allow it in their
ammo, and that the unknown and unsafe taggants effects would likely
cause explosive accidents,” continued dfariswheel in his January post on
AR15.com.

Although this online forum is closed to unregistered users, individual
threads are still partially visible via Google, which is how MSNBC.com
reached this thread’s unique URL address.

“That’s really a stretch,” said Morhard. Some taggants are themselves
explosive and others are toxic, even carcinogenic, he added, but the
risks are concentrated among employees storing and inserting the
taggants into explosive products.

http://tinyurl.com/chjwvbl


The NRA is a terrorist organization. It aids and abets terrorists.