Detection of Gunshot Residue Particles from the Hands of a Shooter

The identification of gunshot residue (GSR) is a topic of great interest to the police officer and prosecutor and a problem for the criminalist. The police officer and prosecutor want a test that will demonstrate the existence of GSR on a subject's hands. The difficulty for the criminalist is in associating the quantitative amounts of the GSR-indicating elements (barium, antimony, and lead) exclusively with GSR. In this paper a technique is described that tries to identify as GSR the individual particles which are part of the components of the smoke emanating from the discharge of a firearm.