On Thursday morning, Gov. Ned Lamont announced new access for local police departments to national forensic gun network.

The Connecticut Department of Emergency Services has expanded access to the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN) for direct use by the state's local police departments.

The NIBIN allows departments to share ballistic evidence in real time.

For instance, creating a "fingerprint" for guns used in violent crimes and leading to new leads for investigators. Law enforcement says this is a major step forward in solving crimes.

"We've done this using NIBN which provides a correlation and what the correlation does is link guns to crime scenes and crime scene to other crime scene that were unrelated or unknown previously," said ATF Special Agent Jim Ferguson.

The move will allow local police to access the system directly instead of having to rely on state police to upload and access the system.