Gun violence does not stop at a city line. A single shooter can open fire in one jurisdiction, stash the weapon in another, and be arrested in a third. Yet, even as criminals and crime guns move freely, investigative efforts often remain stuck within municipal borders. Critical evidence gets siloed. Leads go cold. Victims wait for answers that already exist, just not in the right hands.
Regional Crime Gun Protocols (RCGPs) were created to change that. They provide a structured, disciplined way for police departments, forensic laboratories, and prosecutors across multiple jurisdictions to operate as one system, processing evidence the same way, using the same timeline, and sharing intelligence without delay.
The goal is simple: prevent solvable crimes from becoming cold cases just because information stops at the county line.
Why Regional Protocols Matter
Every crime gun holds a story.
Inside the weapon are ballistic markings, biological residue, and microscopic signatures unique to the firearm. Outside are serial numbers, manufacturer data, fingerprints, and traces of where the crime gun has traveled and who may have touched it. When agencies collect this information but fail to share it, the story remains incomplete. A clue in one jurisdiction may be the missing piece of a homicide investigation in another.
Regional protocols turn isolated evidence into connected intelligence. When firearms, recovered cartridge casings, and ballistic images are immediately processed through IBIS (Integrated Ballistic Identification System), entered into NIBIN (the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network), and traced through ATF eTrace, data stops belonging to one department, it becomes a regional asset.
What Is a Regional Crime Gun Protocol?
A Regional Crime Gun Protocol is a formal agreement among agencies in a crime-affected region to follow the same defined procedures for handling crime guns and ballistic evidence.[i] It is built on the presumptive approach, the belief that every recovered firearm and cartridge case contains intelligence until proven otherwise.
The protocol has two central objectives:
This requires balancing three elements equally - people, process, and technology.
People, Process, and Technology Working Together
The first pillar is people. Chiefs, sheriffs, lab directors, detectives, and prosecutors must agree to act not as isolated agencies, but as a regional team with shared expectations and mutual responsibility. Without leadership buy-in, protocols remain words on paper.
The second pillar is process. Protocols establish clear standard operating procedures: crime guns must be test-fired immediately upon recovery; fired cartridge cases must be entered into NIBIN; every crime gun must be traced through eTrace; and investigative leads must be communicated rapidly to all affected departments. These steps create accountability and make intelligence flow faster than bureaucracy.
The third pillar is technology. Tools like IBIS and eTrace automate comparisons, connect the dots between cases, and allow agencies to see patterns no single jurisdiction could detect on its own. Technology does not replace investigators; it multiplies their capacity.
What Happens Without a Protocol
The human cost of working in silos is not hypothetical. In 1996, 68-year-old Hazel Love was murdered in McCalla, Alabama. Shell casings from the crime scene were entered into NIBIN, but no matching crime gun was found. Four years later, a police department in a neighboring town seized a gun from a felon. It sat in their property room, untested.
Not until 2002, six years after Hazel Love’s death, was the gun finally test-fired and entered into NIBIN. The match was immediate. Two suspects were arrested and linked not only to her murder, but to additional violent crimes in the region.
The evidence existed. The technology existed. What didn’t exist was a shared protocol to move information from one jurisdiction to the next.
What Happens with a Protocol
With a functioning Regional Crime Gun Protocol, a simple traffic stop can solve a homicide. A crime gun recovered at 9 a.m. can be test-fired by noon, entered into NIBIN by early afternoon, and linked to a drive-by shooting in another city before the end of the shift. Detectives receive leads while the suspect is still in custody. Families receive answers in days, not decades.
RCGPs don’t just solve crimes; they expose crime patterns. When forensic intelligence, such as ballistic data, DNA, latent fingerprints, and trace evidence, is combined with historical crime gun trace data, crime demographics, and other relevant intelligence sources, agencies can uncover serial shooters, retaliatory patterns, trafficking networks, and supply routes. Intelligence shifts from being reactive to truly proactive.
Over time, the protocol becomes institutional. It survives leadership changes, budget cuts, and political shifts because it is no longer a pilot project or a special initiative. It becomes the way things are done.
The Bottom Line
Regional Crime Gun Protocols are not paperwork; they are promises. They promise that no crime gun will sit untouched on a shelf while a family waits for justice. They promise that agencies will share actionable information, not just sympathy. They promise that gun violence will be met with a unified and sustained regional response, not a patchwork of disconnected efforts.
In the end, this is not just about technology or policy. It is about ensuring that every crime gun’s story is heard, fully, accurately, and across every jurisdiction it touches.
Because when crime is regional, justice must be too.
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[1] An RCGP as defined in Pete Gagliardi’s work, The 13 Critical Tasks: An Inside-Out Approach to Solving More Gun Crime, are "A set of predefined and consistent actions taken by police and forensic personnel that are designed to generate maximum actionable intelligence from firearms and ballistic evidence encountered during criminal investigations conducted within those geographical areas in which armed criminals are most likely to be crossing multiple police jurisdictions"