Kevin at The Smallest Minority notes that the police investigating the West Virginia "sniper" have three bullets from three different crimes, yet cannot conclude if they were fired from the same rifle. He grabs a money quote from the Daily Press:

"All three balls had the same characteristics," Kanawha County Sheriff Dave Tucker said after getting ballistics results from a State Police crime lab. "But we can't say for sure it's the same gun."

What does this say about ballistic fingerprinting? I thought the miracle science was supposed to be able to identify guns by the markings on bullets left behind at the crime scene. Here we have three bullets, and all the ballistics experts can say is that the "characteristics" are similar.

Of course, the news media tries to say a lot more. The reporting from the media, as expected, is down right shitty. Check out the first line of the article.

Bullets that killed three victims this week outside Kanawha County convenience stores were fired from the same caliber and class of weapon...

They offer that up as a statement of fact, yet present nothing in the article to back it up. Actually, their article leads me to believe that police have no clue what caliber of rifle is being used. First there was the use of the term "characteristics" which the media probably read to mean 'caliber'. Then there was a mention that the bullets were all from a "small caliber" firearm. But then, there was this lovely passage from the 18th paragraph, with directly contradicts what they said in the first sentence.

[Kanawha County Chief Deputy Phil Morris] said police have not determined what caliber or type of rifle was used.

Well if the Chief Deputy doesn't know what caliber or type of rifle was used, just how does the news media draw the conclusion that the calibers were the same? Perhaps Chief Morris ought to check with the Daily Press, and find out who their unnamed sources are.