how "sturdy"(?) are fingerprints?

[Alpo]

Used to be, in cop shows, they would pick up the murder weapon by sticking a pencil in the trigger guard, or if the hole was big enough, in the muzzle. I assumed this was for two reasons - to not disturb the fingerprints that were already on the gun and to not place their fingerprints on the gun.

 

In current cop shows they are all wearing rubber gloves, and they just casually pick up the gun and drop it in a plastic bag.

 

The rubber glove prevents them from leaving their prints on it, but would the handling smudge any of the bad guy's prints?

 

In very old cop shows they would drape they're handkerchief over the gun before picking it up, which seemed, to me, like a very good way to smudge the prints.

[Happy Jack, SASS #20451]

Not addressing your question but when we first moved to the wilderness (same place for last 30+years) we were working so hard with our hands to make a place to live that my wife's fingerprints were so worn off that when she went to the sheriff's office to get a fingerprint card for her CCP her prints were just plain with a small part at the edge. She had to wait almost a year while her fingers rested before they could fingerprint her.