ABSTRACT
The term ballistics is often used improperly and interchangeably with firearms identification. Ballistics is the study of projectile motion while firearms identification deals with the examination and comparison of weapons and ammunition components. Obviously, determining whether a bullet or cartridge case was fired from a particular weapon has nothing to do with projectile motion per se. Ballistics is certainly one aspect of shooting incident reconstruction that must be dealt with, particularly in cases involving long range shots and bullet trajectories in flight. Questions about bullet behavior upon target impact are also ballistics issues as are questions regarding weapon failures such as those resulting from excess internal pressures.
