What about a pointed stick?
Exactly. A shoe store. A fish store. Socks 'n Feathers R Us.
Sorry, OP. You asked for it.
“We” might have had threads before, but perhaps you’d be so good as to provide a cite regarding “two pile” gun dealing. I have attended many gun shows over the years and even had an FFL of my own for about 10 years, and I have never seen this.
Don’t do it, dougie. Despite your clever attempt at misdirection (I don’t have this in mind myself) the police will be on you in no time.
That didn’t really cite “two-pile” dealing as much as it highlighted that some dealers were sloppy in their paperwork. It would seem that the US government itself might be an excellent source of murder weapons, as they “lose” lots and lots of guns.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/12/AR2007021200629.html
http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/02/18/government.guns/index.html
That’s a lot of guns unaccounted for…
Thats ingredients in the flybait, the pure powder is white.
Shut up!
Eh. When I was in the Army, there was a lot of paranoia about losing 3-round burst M-16s. I was like “uh, $800 and a drivers license gets you this same rifle, brand new, with a nicer rail system, with everything but the 3 round burst that sucks anyway…”
I never had to use my rifle in combat, but the 3 round burst is awful on the range - it turns the weapon from something that can reliably hit a stationary man-sized target at 300 meters, and have an ok chance if you fire several rounds and are in a good position at 500 meters, to something that can barely hit a full size military truck at 200 meters.
So if I wanted a “murder weapon” in a hurry, I’d just go to the local store and buy one.
They say the government doesn’t keep a registry, so if you used cash withdrawn months before…not sure if you could get caught from the purchase. I mean, sure, murder is moderately hard* to get away with - there’s countless forms of evidence, etc, I’m just wondering if the authorities could trace the purchase of the specific firearm used to commit it. I know they can match that firearm if they actually find it, but if it was completely destroyed after the crime was committed, then how…
*Now, don’t be committing murders, but, apparently, like 40% of murders are never solved. That’s an awful lot. TV always makes it seem like the authorities can solve a murder from the paint chip and a hair left at the crime scene, but it appears that almost half the time they fail totally.
Ethylene glycol seems popular, and you can get it anywhere.
…I’d rather hand you a pack of TUMS after realizing that you had to read all this.
How hard would it be to imagine someone reading this page & saying, “OMFG… what is WRONG with these people!?”
On a similar note, I was once in a play where the murderer extracted pure nicotine from tobacco, and used it to poison her victims. If the victim was known to be a smoker, the presence of nicotine in the blood wouldn’t look suspicious.
At least, according to the play. I imagine that the amount of nicotine would still stand out, and I don’t know how easy it is to extract.
Who needs to imagine? I am judging all of you right now.
Also, ISTM the easiest way to kill someone would be to crush up a bunch of short-release opioids and mix them into food.
A recent study of gangs in Chicago found that most guns owned by violent offenders had been acquired via family or friends, and that purchases from dealers were rare.
The bolded section really confused me for a bit, as “roofies” is a slang term for the drug Rohypnol and not a slang term for anything surreptitiously slipped to someone.
But in general, yes, some police departments seem fairly quick to identify a death as overdose and move on with little investigation. Suicides have also been this way, and thus both fake overdose and fake suicide have been used as covers for homicide.
In terms of investigating, I suppose you could talk to friends and family about the history of drug use/abuse (not a high-tech method, but it would work well). Also, you could do a hair drug test (which could prove that the decedent hadn’t done heroin in the previous six months or so, for instance), in addition to all the usual autopsy stuff. Once you decide to investigate, there are probably a lot of methods to help determine the probability of accidental OD vs. homicide, but the biggest step is deciding to investigate in a serious manner instead of just brushing it off as “another junkie OD,” which is exactly why it’s a good plot device.
Right, it gives the maverick detective a chance to go against the orthodoxy, and also a chance for him to be relatively easily vindicated once the test results do eventually grudgingly come in.
All murders don’t get the same amount of attention. Even though all that snazzy CSI stuff is available, every murder investigation doesn’t use it. All that you can be sure will happen is that the cops will question people known to be associated with the victim in some way, if such people can be identified. They’ll take some photos too. The rest of that stuff? Not available in every jurisdiction and there are budgetary limits and work backlogs even in the ones that have it.
Toxic gases can be liberated by combining standard household chemicals. I don’t think it would be hard to get a nitrogen canister, and the USA has more carbon monoxide generators per capita than almost any other country.
Pity the would-be poisoner :dubious:, since forensic science has gotten a lot better at detecting “undetectable” poisons (such as succinylcholine), and controls are tighter on toxic substances due to terrorism concerns.
Also, common household products are considerably less useful than formerly as tools of killers. Ethylene glycol antifreeze is being replaced by the much less toxic propylene glycol. And try as you might, I doubt you’ll ve able to find arsenical flypaper (used in two prominent murders around the turn of the 20th century, and featured in a classic Dashiell Hammitt detective story).
[ol]
[li]Vacation at Grand Canyon.[/li][li]Take a day hike along the rim.[/li][li]Oops, they tripped.[/li][/ol]
Priceless!