Portable bullet trap

Details Portable bullet trap Portable bullet trap

2001-06-11

2004-05-11

Johnson, Stephen M. (Department: 3641)

Ordnance

Shields

Shape or composition

Reexamination Certificate

active

06732628

ABSTRACT:

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to bullet traps, and more particularly, to a safe, portable and inexpensive bullet trap for arresting and capturing bullets fired from handguns or other small firearms which leaves the bullets in a condition suitable for ballistic fingerprint analysis.
(2) Description of the Prior Art
Bullet traps per se are well known devices which have been used for many years by firearm manufacturers and users (the latter including firing ranges operated by military installations, police departments, rifle and pistol clubs, and the like) who are faced either with the need to proof, function fire and target firearms such as handguns, rifles and shotguns or with the task of simply collecting spent bullets fired on a range. The objectives of such devices have been to provide means located at a relatively short distance from the shooter to catch the lead or other types of bullets (jacketed or unjacketed) and prevent either the ricochet of a whole bullet or a large fragment thereof or the backsplattering of numerous small metal particles, which could return with enough energy to cause injury to the shooter or innocent bystanders and to collect the waste lead, brass and jacket material. The known types of bullets traps have run the gamut from wood boards to sand-filled boxes to metallic funnel and deceleration chamber combinations.
Merely by way of example, a known sand-type bullet trap consists of a quantity of sand in a hardwood box set against a concrete backstop or wall. However, a bullet trap of this class has a number of drawbacks and disadvantages, both in terms of its structural and functional characteristics and in terms of the expenses associated with it. The material requirements for the box are, for example, 640 linear feet per year of 2″.times.8″.times.10′ hardwood, and 45 cubic yards per year of sand. Annual maintenance requires 8 man-hours per week for 50 weeks. Disposal of such a sand/wood trap and accumulated waste requires handling a load of about 15 tons per year, including transportation to a landfill. Assuming 5-6 loads per year, annual expenditures at current costs (including labor) come to about $30,000 plus the cost of the sand and hardwood, for an aggregate total of about $40,000. Moreover, under current environmental laws, lead has been banned from landfills unless it has first been treated to meet new disposal standards, and the separation of lead from the sand and the detoxification treatment thereof (e.g., a thermal oxidation, which has been proposed for this purpose) can easily double or triple the disposal costs.
On the other hand, the mechanical bullet traps of the funnel and deceleration chamber type, which came onto the market about a century or so ago, were specifically designed to deal with some of the problems that were inherent to the sand-filled box types of traps. Some representative relatively simple bullet trap constructions of the funnel and chamber type are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 385,546 (Decumbus 1888); U.S. Pat. No. 694,581 (Reichlin 1902); U.S. Pat. No. 840,610 (Easdale 1907); U.S. Pat. No. 2,013,133 (Caswell 1935); and U.S. Pat. No. 4,126,311 (Wagoner 1978). Somewhat more sophisticated bullet trap constructions are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,772,092 (Nikoden 1956); U.S. Pat. No. 3,737,165 (Pencyla 1973; U.S. Pat. No. 4,512,585 (Baravaglio 1985); and U.S. Pat. No. 4,821,620 (Cartee et al. 1989).
Savage Range Systems (SRS) of Westfield, Mass. markets an innovative line of bullet traps under the mark SNAIL® SYSTEMS. These bullet traps are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,486,008; 5,070,763; 5,113,700 and 5,121,671 to Coburn. The SNAIL® bullet traps address many of the aforementioned shortcomings of earlier bullet traps. The SNAIL® bullet traps are relatively inexpensive to manufacture, can be constructed for transportability and ease of installation, and do not require the provision of thick walls, sand mounds or other back-up structures. The SNAIL® traps are multi-functional, and may be used for proofing, function firing and targeting for both small and high-powered firearms. Generally, these traps include a narrowing passageway that directs a fired bullet into a deceleration chamber. The deceleration chamber has a generally spirally curved circumferential boundary wall that guides the bullet in a circular path along the boundary wall until the bullet eventually decelerates and falls into a collecting vessel. A lubricating fluid may be included in the deceleration chamber.
However, none of the above-mentioned bullet traps are suitable for ballistic testing of a firearm. Ballistic testing of firearms is an established forensic technique used to match a specific bullet to a particular firearm. The ballistic markings created on a bullet by a particular firearm are unique. Therefore, law enforcement personnel can accurately match a bullet from a crime scene with a particular firearm. This requires a suspected firearm to be test fired and a test bullet recovered which has been left substantially intact after firing. The markings on the test bullet can then be compared to the markings on a bullet from a crime scene to determine if the bullets were fired from the same firearm. Any additional scratches or marks imparted on a test bullet by the bullet-capture and recovery process may compromise or invalidate the bullet's “signature” or “fingerprint.” Accordingly, a method is needed to trap a bullet from a firearm in a way that does not alter or obliterate the ballistic markings on the bullet.
In addition, the above-mentioned bullet traps almost always damage or even fragment the trapped bullets during the trapping process, and are therefore ineffective for forensic ballistics testing. Instead, forensic laboratories have historically test-fired firearms for ballistics testing into a drum, tank, or vessel containing water. A large volume of water is necessary to decelerate a fired bullet sufficiently to arrest the bullet without significant damage to the ballistic markings on the bullet. However, such water traps have certain limitations. Recovery of a fired bullet from such a vessel can be difficult and often messy. In addition, the lead-contaminated water must be disposed of in an environmentally safe manner. The water-filled vessels are typically large and heavy, and difficult to transport. Thus, such bullet traps cannot be easily transported directly to crime scenes for on-the-spot ballistic testing of suspected firearms.
Furthermore, several state legislatures have recently enacted or are presently considering laws that require newly sold handguns to be test-fired before they are sold in order to collect a spent bullet and/or shell casing from each such handgun. Under a typical so-called “ballistic fingerprinting” law, the characteristic markings or “ballistic fingerprints” on the spent bullets and/or shell casings from newly sold handguns are to be entered into a database which is accessible to law enforcement. In this way, proponents of such laws anticipate that law enforcement can more quickly and efficiently correlate evidence from a crime scene with a particular handgun and handgun owner. As a result, such laws heighten the need for a safe, inexpensive, portable, and easy-to-use bullet trap for collecting an undamaged sample bullet from handguns and other small firearms.
Thus, there remains a need for a new and improved bullet trap which is sufficiently lightweight so as to be portable while, at the same time, leaves trapped bullets substantially intact.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention is directed to a bullet trap for arresting and trapping a fired bullet. The bullet trap includes a primary enclosure having a shooting port and a plurality of discrete, resilient bullet trap media in the enclosure. In the preferred embodiment, the media are generally spherical and have a durometer less than or equal to about 100. The media is operable to arrest and capture a fired bullet in a sufficiently small enclosure so as to be por

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