What stood out to me the most in this case was how distinct connections could be made to almost every weapon that was found. When a 29 year old man was killed on October 10, 2003, one of the surviving victims was convinced her attackers were African-American. Several expended cartridges were recovered from a drunk driving Mao Hin on November 9 and were entered into IBIS, showing that the cartridge cases were linked to a series of crimes committed with a still unrecovered weapon, a 9mm Berretta pistol dubbed ¨The Bottle Cap Gun¨. The Bottle Cap Gun had only been previously linked to Asian Gang related crimes, disproving the victim’s theory of her assailants ethnicity. I had no idea how powerful the evidence provided from ballistics could be. I knew ballistics played a huge role in forensics, but I now realize how critical it is to solving crimes and the amount of specific information it can reveal. For example, police recovered a .45 semi-auto Springfield Armory pistol after hearing nearby gang shootings on September 9, 2001. A search in the NIBIN database linked the pistol to a nearby drive-by that had occurred just prior to the incident, along with nine other shootings dating back to 1999. Ballistics can provide information we never knew existed.