With old timers, there are hard habits to break.. Years ago i worked with his guy, had been on the job since the late 1930's. One day he was writing a report with a pencil about 1/2 inch long. I handed him a new pencil and said, 'try this'.. he said....' i came on the job with this pencil, and intend to retire with it'. He retired in 1974. Musta been one fine pencil....

I went to Kosovo as an international police officer in 2002. Took about 12 black pens with me. Found out that since this was a UN mission, they wanted everything signed in blue ink.

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John 3:16
WAR EAGLE!

There's no good reason for that.
There are numerous ways to tag the evidence and retain the chain of custody without ruining any property.

I looked up Jack Ruby's gun the other day and everybody that handled it scratched their name and the date into it somewhere.

I was a Chief Yeoman back then and it was actually black OR blue/black ink. In 21 years as a Yeoman I never did find blue/black ink.

Not guilty of this one. We always used a sealed bag with pertinent info written on the outside. Sorta similar: I've got a dealer friend who recently came across a drop dead mint 4" nickel mod 25 in .45 Colt....except that the previous owner had used an electric pencil to engrave his driver license number under the cylinder on the left side and on the plate on the right side. It appears unfired. I offered to buy it (for a reasonable discount) but he decided to keep it as a shooter.

There is absolutely no more reason to mark up a gun than there is any other type of evidence. Every other type of evidentiary material can be adequately maintained through the chain of evidence by bagging, sealing and initialing the evidence bag. The theory that this practice started with the few firearms types which did not have serial numbers is a pile of ****.

Why would anyone think there was a special situation with firearms, which mostly have serial numbers, and any other type of property that does not? This is inane. Can you explain how you could identify the contents of a rape kit, a balloon of heroin, a baggy of marijuana? This is simply a way of destroying the guns value by permanently marking it as having by inference been used in a crime in some way.

In all my years I cannot recall ever marking a gun, piece of jewelry, or any other high value item unless it could be done where it didn;t affect the value. The backs or bottoms of appliances, TVs, or similar items would be written on.

Donuts don't have bones!

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War Eagle! '10 BCS & '13 SEC

Defacing is bad enough... what I would like to see is more states follow NC and pass more "save the gun" laws. No more arbitrary/mandatory destruction of buyback, seized etc. guns by LE and other governmental agencies. A lot of junk gets collected and destroyed but also a lot of valuable classics that should be kept in circulation. Not to mention there's not a whole lot of states and cities that don't need the revenue from auctioning them off like other seized property.