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Examiners test fire weapons and examine the bullets and cartridge case components for signatures that help in investigations.
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‘Each Kind’

The reference firearms collection dates back to 1933 and contains more than 7,000 types of firearms. “We try to have one example of every type of firearm—make, model, finish, serial number configuration, you name it,” says John Webb, a firearms examiner. “We want to have an example of each kind. So when a firearm comes in for disposition, if anything about that firearm is different from what we already have in the collection, we’ll add it to the collection.”

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