Effect of mounting a sound suppressor on distribution and total amount of inorganic gunshot residue on targets
Matteo Donghi, Alessandro Girella, Debora Pellegrino, Federica Maraschi, Antonella Profumo, Chiara Milanese, Daniele Merli

TL;DR
This paper investigates how using a sound suppressor affects the spread and amount of gunshot residue on targets.
Contribution
The study introduces a novel analytical approach using XRF and ICP-OES to assess the impact of suppressors on gunshot residue distribution.
Findings
A suppressor gathers the particle cone reaching the target up to 20 cm away.
Suppressors do not significantly reduce concentrations of Pb, Ba, Sb, and Cu in gunshot residue.
Homemade suppressors may enrich gunshot residue in Fe, indicating suppressor use.
Abstract
Sound suppressors critically modify barrel overall length and ballistic performances of hosting guns and are therefore expected to influence the patterns of the plumes of gunshot residues (GSR) reaching the targets. Despite the forensic interest, in recent years, a single paper was published on the variations induced by the use of a suppressor in the spatial distribution of visible soot clouds on close targets and in the number of a few selected classes of GSR particles detected by scanning electron microscopy. A different approach, based on x‐ray fluorescence (XRF) and inductively coupled plasma‐optical emission (ICP‐OES) spectroscopies, that points to most of the metallic elements ejected from the barrel, is suggested here. The confirmed effect of a sound suppressor up to a distance of 20 cm is to gather the cone of particles reaching the target. Despite this pattern modification, the…
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Taxonomy
TopicsNuclear Physics and Applications · X-ray Spectroscopy and Fluorescence Analysis · Ion-surface interactions and analysis
