Oklahoma City, March 17—Crime could be immediately reduced 50 per cent if ballistics registrations were compulsory, for al machine guns and other weapons sold by manufacturers, C. M. Reber, fingerprint and ballistics expert of the state crime bureau said today.

Fingerprints of the purchasers also should be taken, he recommended.

“There is a growing tendency on the part of criminals to plead guilty in the face of ballistics evidence,’ Reber said. “Recently I had two pleas of guilty in murder cases, one after I had been put on the stand as the last state witness, and one before the trial started, when the defense found I was a prosecution witness.

“This tendency has been growing for more than two years.

“Criminals can’t deny their fingerprints; and they are learning they can’t get around ballistics evidence properly assembled.

“Every firearm factory should be required to fire and photograph, a bullet and empty cartridge from every gun before it is sold. The photograph should be numbered with the weapon’s serial number, and held by the company.

“Then each gun sold should be registered like a car so officers would know where every weapon was located. With a state ballistics of each gun should be filed with a general agency. Such tests have been made on every peace officer’s machine gun in Oklahoma and are held here.

“Officers then would be able to extract a bullet from a murdered man’s body, and easily run down the criminal. If no one were killed empty cartridges at the scene of the gun battle or bank robbery, by their individual marking would lead to the criminal. There would be no escape.”

Reber said he regarded fingerprints and ballistics as equal sciences.

Bob Brady, notorious desperado recently slain after escaping from the Kansas penitentiary, he said, had the centers of his fingers burned with acid to erase his prints, and also had his face lifted to remove a twist to his mouth, caused by a gunshot wound.

“His prints still showed on the sides enough to identify him” Reber said. “Filing the prints off, or sandpapering them, as has been tried won’t do any good. They grow back.

“That is why I advocate universal fingerprinting and ballistic registration.

“Many people now buried unjustly in potter’s field would be identified and criminals could not escape.”

Pointing to the importance of fingerprints, Reber said Paul Martin, member of the notorious Kimes brothers gang, was arrested in Helen, Mont., as ‘J. W. Bullard, for rum running across the Canadian border.”

Fingerprints identified him, Martin was returned to Okmulgee and pleaded guilty to bank robbery, accepting a 12 year sentence without a fight.

“France was the first country to realize that no two men ever born had the same fingerprints,” he said. “It is a physiological miracle, but a fact. If the public realized the importance of fingerprints in establishing identify, most people would want to be fingerprinted as a precaution in case of accidents.”

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