Ever since some ACLU types tried to ban hollow points in the early ‘70s, the clueless have been shouting about “malicious intent” to cause “additional pain and suffering” with “more lethal” ammo. We’ve explained several reasons why it’s used. There’s one more, and it surprises folks until they look at what the courts call “the totality of the circumstances.”
One sharp-eyed, sharp-thinking reader, Alonzo Gomez, has already found it. In the last segment, he commented, “…just wanted to add this: stopping who needs to be stopped as fast as possible is not only in the interest of the shooter and any possible bystanders or victims, but also in the shootee’s. While the antis are so busy finding terminal ballistics discussions distasteful and irrelevant to their approach (‘don’t have a gun’), they seem to miss that one effective bullet, as abhorrent as the term ‘effective’ may be to them, is preferable to 12 ineffective ones in the target’s body. Hollow points are actually more humane. Unless they prefer that we load with icepick projectiles so they can better nail us in the courtroom for overkill?”
Alonzo nailed it. If you look at the big picture, the guy shot fewer times is probably easier for emergency medical personnel to save, making the expanding bullet literally less lethal. Now, the points of less over-penetration, reduced ricochet, and faster stops are pretty much incontrovertible. This last point is more debatable, because there are so many variables as to where even one bullet can land. But it’s a strong argument for our side, certainly strong enough to serve as an antidote to the poison of the BS “dum-dum bullets are indicia of malice” argument.
Thanks for taking the time to read this short series. Life has taught me that if you can’t explain why you’re doing what you’re doing, it’s nature’s way of telling you that you probably shouldn’t be doing it. The above explanations have served me well for forty years, and for the best of all reasons: they’re absolutely true.
It’s just Mas, Doc. 🙂 No problem in court with aftermarket springs that I can see, but for function make sure it’s the right spring weight for the gun and the load. Wolff makes an excellent quality product, but can’t be responsible if someone installs too heavy a spring for the load they’re using and function problems result. Recommended spring for the given gun & load, tested to make sure there’s no cycling problem, should be fine.
It’s just Mas, Doc. 🙂 No problem in court with aftermarket springs that I can see, but for function make sure it’s the right spring weight for the gun and the load. Wolff makes an excellent quality product, but can’t be responsible if someone installs too heavy a spring for the load they’re using and function problems result. Recommended spring for the given gun & load, tested to make sure there’s no cycling problem, should be fine.
Thank you again Mas for the info and your time. Now I get to go out and test fire and practice more. Not a bad gig.
Thank you again Mas for the info and your time. Now I get to go out and test fire and practice more. Not a bad gig.
I read this series with interest. The argument starts out promising, but I don’t think it works. At all.
1. The Overpenetration/Ricochet Argument: The problem with saying that expanding bullets reduce the risk of harm to bystanders by reducing overpenetration and ricochets, is that expanding bullets tend to have additional features that *increase* the likelihood of overpenetration or ricochet. This is especially true of bullets preferred by police.
In particular, +P loads and loads with a jacketed penetrator. You can’t claim to have selected a JHP to reduce overpenetration when you selected a JHP +P, or a bullet that also has a penetrator core. And these are *exactly* the bullets that are preferred by duty officers, and by much of the “self-defense” community. Not ordinary JHP, but JHP +P or with something extra.
The usual argument is that to be effective a round has to have at least 12″ of penetration.
As for richochets — is there any empirical evidence at all that expanding JHP’s reduce ricochets? There are other expanding bullets that should reduce ricochets, but it seems to me that a JHP is a lot more likely to send more little bits of metal or cement off in random directions. (In the NYC incident, as I recall the configuration of that corner, there are no concrete columns in locations to create the ricochet effect you suspect.)
On the other side of the coin, bullets that actually *do* reduce overpenetration/ricochets tend be *disfavored*. Examples are bullets with polymer tips to force rapid expansion. Ballistics tests show that they expand much shallower than JHP rounds. But if you look at the discussion boards, the “community” tends to reject these rounds because of supposedly insufficient penetration. And police tend to use JHP/JHP+P, apparently for the same reason.
(Personally, I load Hornady Critical Duty or Barnes TAC-XPD in my self-defense gun, because they’ve been shown to expand more quickly and genuinely do reduce the risk of overpenetration. My belief is that a bullet that makes a large but very shallow hole is more likely to stop someone, and less likely to kill them.)
2. “Stopping the Threat”: Is there *any* empirical evidence at all that using expanding bullets increases stopping power? I’ve looked, and I haven’t found a single thing. I would think that at this point, more than a century in, if HP bullets actually had greater stopping power (other than by increasing the likelihood of a kill) there would be some evidence other than anecdotal stories.
3. “Fewer Shots”: The problem with this argument is that it doesn’t seem that people actually are firing less when they use expanding bullets. Police routinely keep firing long after the suspect (as often as not, the victim) is down. There’s plenty of video of it on youtube. And individuals are trained to use “double taps” or the “mozambique drill.”
If the training is “fire more than once in your initial volley before you stop and wait a second to see if you’ve actually stopped the person” then using expanding bullets isn’t reducing the number of shots, isn’t safer for the shootee, and isn’t safer for bystanders. It just increases the likelihood of a kill.
***
I searched for your comments on this subject because of your work for the NACDL, an organization I greatly admire. As an attorney, I have to say, however, that I find the justifications to be extraordinarily weak.
You mention the risk of an uninformed prosecutor/lawyer accusing someone of malice. It seems to me that a prosecutor or civil lawyer making that argument would be spot-on; the better defense would be that the accused mistakenly believed, because of misinformation, that his choice of ammunition was safer.
I read this series with interest. The argument starts out promising, but I don’t think it works. At all.
1. The Overpenetration/Ricochet Argument: The problem with saying that expanding bullets reduce the risk of harm to bystanders by reducing overpenetration and ricochets, is that expanding bullets tend to have additional features that *increase* the likelihood of overpenetration or ricochet. This is especially true of bullets preferred by police.
In particular, +P loads and loads with a jacketed penetrator. You can’t claim to have selected a JHP to reduce overpenetration when you selected a JHP +P, or a bullet that also has a penetrator core. And these are *exactly* the bullets that are preferred by duty officers, and by much of the “self-defense” community. Not ordinary JHP, but JHP +P or with something extra.
The usual argument is that to be effective a round has to have at least 12″ of penetration.
As for richochets — is there any empirical evidence at all that expanding JHP’s reduce ricochets? There are other expanding bullets that should reduce ricochets, but it seems to me that a JHP is a lot more likely to send more little bits of metal or cement off in random directions. (In the NYC incident, as I recall the configuration of that corner, there are no concrete columns in locations to create the ricochet effect you suspect.)
On the other side of the coin, bullets that actually *do* reduce overpenetration/ricochets tend be *disfavored*. Examples are bullets with polymer tips to force rapid expansion. Ballistics tests show that they expand much shallower than JHP rounds. But if you look at the discussion boards, the “community” tends to reject these rounds because of supposedly insufficient penetration. And police tend to use JHP/JHP+P, apparently for the same reason.
(Personally, I load Hornady Critical Duty or Barnes TAC-XPD in my self-defense gun, because they’ve been shown to expand more quickly and genuinely do reduce the risk of overpenetration. My belief is that a bullet that makes a large but very shallow hole is more likely to stop someone, and less likely to kill them.)
2. “Stopping the Threat”: Is there *any* empirical evidence at all that using expanding bullets increases stopping power? I’ve looked, and I haven’t found a single thing. I would think that at this point, more than a century in, if HP bullets actually had greater stopping power (other than by increasing the likelihood of a kill) there would be some evidence other than anecdotal stories.
3. “Fewer Shots”: The problem with this argument is that it doesn’t seem that people actually are firing less when they use expanding bullets. Police routinely keep firing long after the suspect (as often as not, the victim) is down. There’s plenty of video of it on youtube. And individuals are trained to use “double taps” or the “mozambique drill.”
If the training is “fire more than once in your initial volley before you stop and wait a second to see if you’ve actually stopped the person” then using expanding bullets isn’t reducing the number of shots, isn’t safer for the shootee, and isn’t safer for bystanders. It just increases the likelihood of a kill.
***
I searched for your comments on this subject because of your work for the NACDL, an organization I greatly admire. As an attorney, I have to say, however, that I find the justifications to be extraordinarily weak.
You mention the risk of an uninformed prosecutor/lawyer accusing someone of malice. It seems to me that a prosecutor or civil lawyer making that argument would be spot-on; the better defense would be that the accused mistakenly believed, because of misinformation, that his choice of ammunition was safer.
“A”, welcome to the blog. Disagreement is also welcome here. In the spirit of that disagreement, I have to say that your comments don’t work. At all.
Do some more homework, and you’ll find that faster (“+P,” “+P+”) bullets of the same construction tend to open faster, and therefore if anything stop sooner at lesser penetration depths. Ricochet potential in JHP vis-a-vis ball can be seen in something as simple as watching a pistol match where the targets are bowling pins. And if hollow points weren’t working better on the street, why have they become the universal choice of police, even under the commands of the police chiefs most sensitive to “political correctness” issues?
You also seem to misunderstand the issue of volume of fire. I’m talking about how many solid hits it takes to end a fight; you seem to be talking about number of shots fired.
You say, “Police routinely keep firing long after the suspect (as often as not, the victim) is down.” I’d like to see you support that. Frankly, it sounds like cop-bashing trollery disguised as a discussion of terminal ballistics.
You wrote, “If the training is “fire more than once in your initial volley before you stop and wait a second to see if you’ve actually stopped the person” then using expanding bullets isn’t reducing the number of shots, isn’t safer for the shootee, and isn’t safer for bystanders. It just increases the likelihood of a kill.”
Good Lord, “A”…if you know anything about guns, you know that your criminal antagonist can be firing at a rate of 4 to 5 shots per second…and you want the good guys to fire one shot, pause and “wait a second” (4 or 5 more shots from the opponent) to see if they need to shoot some more to save innocent lives? Uh…you might want to re-think the math on that.
“A”, welcome to the blog. Disagreement is also welcome here. In the spirit of that disagreement, I have to say that your comments don’t work. At all.
Do some more homework, and you’ll find that faster (“+P,” “+P+”) bullets of the same construction tend to open faster, and therefore if anything stop sooner at lesser penetration depths. Ricochet potential in JHP vis-a-vis ball can be seen in something as simple as watching a pistol match where the targets are bowling pins. And if hollow points weren’t working better on the street, why have they become the universal choice of police, even under the commands of the police chiefs most sensitive to “political correctness” issues?
You also seem to misunderstand the issue of volume of fire. I’m talking about how many solid hits it takes to end a fight; you seem to be talking about number of shots fired.
You say, “Police routinely keep firing long after the suspect (as often as not, the victim) is down.” I’d like to see you support that. Frankly, it sounds like cop-bashing trollery disguised as a discussion of terminal ballistics.
You wrote, “If the training is “fire more than once in your initial volley before you stop and wait a second to see if you’ve actually stopped the person” then using expanding bullets isn’t reducing the number of shots, isn’t safer for the shootee, and isn’t safer for bystanders. It just increases the likelihood of a kill.”
Good Lord, “A”…if you know anything about guns, you know that your criminal antagonist can be firing at a rate of 4 to 5 shots per second…and you want the good guys to fire one shot, pause and “wait a second” (4 or 5 more shots from the opponent) to see if they need to shoot some more to save innocent lives? Uh…you might want to re-think the math on that.
First off, you haven’t responded to, and haven’t been able to defend, the majority of your argument. You don’t claim there’s any empirical evidence that expanding bullets actually do have greater stopping power. You don’t deny that bullets shown to reduce the risk of overpenetration are *disfavored*. You don’t claim that there’s any evidence that expanding rounds actually reduce the risk of ricochets.
Regarding +P bullet expansion: I think what you’re referring to is that an expanding bullet has to hit with a certain amount of energy to expand. That’s true, of course, but I don’t see any evidence (and I looked) that it has any practical application to handguns. I don’t see any empirical evidence that, with the calibers commonly used as defense ammunition, at distances within the effective range of a handgun, a high quality regular-power expanding bullet is less likely to expand than +P or +P+ rounds. (Rifles, longer ranges, or weaker calibers are a different story.)
Anyway that’s rather beside the point. The two goals (a) more penetration, and (b) less penetration (avoiding overpenetration), are necessarily opposites.
You haven’t disagreed with that. Nor have you disagreed that many people, especially police, who prefer expanding rounds also prefer rounds with greater penetration. Someone who picks a round because it offers greater penetration cannot claim that when he picked that round he actually did so to reduce the risk of overpenetration.
You ask “if hollow points weren’t working better . . . why have they become the universal choice of police”? Police as government employees at the lowest level of the public service hierarchy; they have no role in policy-making and do not generally (of course there are exceptions) have the training or ability to evaluate statistics, understand terminal ballistics, or make policy judgments. I care about *evidence.* I don’t care about the collective view of police on ammunition any more than I care about their collective view on proper interrogation techniques, Miranda rights, the proper interpretation of the 4th amendment, or what should be the speed limit on Rt. 95.
I care about genuine empirical evidence. I take it from your response that there is no empirical evidence that expanding handgun rounds “stop the threat” more quickly.
I asked about this as a serious question because while its dogma that expanding bullets have greater stopping power, in selecting my own rounds I wanted to look at some data, and I was surprised that there isn’t *any*. I have a suspicion that the dogma is wrong and, apart from hits to the central nervous system, a center-of-mass shot from a handgun “stops the threat” when the person who was shot either loses consciousness from lack of blood or becomes focused on their injury rather than on attacking. Comparing an expanding bullet with a non-expanding bullet whose diameter is the same as the first bullet’s post-expansion, it doesn’t seem to me that the former will cause either effect more quickly than the latter, but we *do* know that the former is more likely to kill.
You ask me to support the claim that cops routinely keep firing after a suspect (or victim) is down. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagious_shooting. Its debatable whether “contagious shooting” is really what’s going on, but there’s no serious question that cops do shoot too much. As for whether they hit “bad guys” more often than “good guys” — Do you have any reliable evidence to the contrary? I’m not aware of any police department that keeps such statistics, effectively investigates shootings by its officers, or even keep statistics on the total number of shootings.
(A little googling produced an estimate of 2400 people fatally shot by police per year vs 40-150 police fatally shot per year. That doesn’t distinguish shootings of ‘bad guys’ from ‘good guys,’ but does refute any claim that police in this country need more firepower…)
You point to a distinction between how many “solid hits it takes to end a fight” and “number of shots fired.” You say you were talking about the former and I was talking about the latter. Not true. Part of your argument is that expanding bullets mean less shots fired which means less chance of hitting bystanders. In any event the distinction is irrelevant to the discussion.
You say that “your criminal antagonist can be firing at a rate of 4 to 5 shots per second…and [I] want the good guys to fire one shot, pause and ‘wait a second’ (4 or 5 more shots from the opponent) to see if they need to shoot some more to save innocent lives?”
This is where we have a bunch of fundamental moral disagreements about what makes someone a ‘good guy’ or a ‘criminal antagonist,’ and when the one changes into the other.
Putting those aside, your response misses the point, and effectively concedes that your blog posts on this topic were wrong. You argued in the posts that if expanding bullets are more likely to stop the threat, then people will fire fewer shots, and also hit the ‘bad guy’ fewer times, which is safer for the ‘bad guy’ and bystanders. This was one of your central points, one you said was crucial.
I pointed out that if people are trained to fire y times before checking whether the other guy has “stopped,” then increased stopping power isn’t going to reduce the number of shots they fire (by much anyway). They’re going to fire y times regardless of whether the first bullet stopped the threat. I didn’t say they *should* or *shouldn’t* be trained to do that. I said that *if* they are trained to do that, then the power of an individual round doesn’t matter (much) because they’re still going to fire at least y times.
(Of course in theory it could affect the number of volleys, but that effect would seem to be minimal. We know from FBI statistics that the first shot kills 90-98% of the time. We also know that police fire until their magazines are empty, and that people acting in self defense often fire multiple rounds in the first volley.)
So – I’m not sure if there’s anything left of your original argument this point?
First off, you haven’t responded to, and haven’t been able to defend, the majority of your argument. You don’t claim there’s any empirical evidence that expanding bullets actually do have greater stopping power. You don’t deny that bullets shown to reduce the risk of overpenetration are *disfavored*. You don’t claim that there’s any evidence that expanding rounds actually reduce the risk of ricochets.
Regarding +P bullet expansion: I think what you’re referring to is that an expanding bullet has to hit with a certain amount of energy to expand. That’s true, of course, but I don’t see any evidence (and I looked) that it has any practical application to handguns. I don’t see any empirical evidence that, with the calibers commonly used as defense ammunition, at distances within the effective range of a handgun, a high quality regular-power expanding bullet is less likely to expand than +P or +P+ rounds. (Rifles, longer ranges, or weaker calibers are a different story.)
Anyway that’s rather beside the point. The two goals (a) more penetration, and (b) less penetration (avoiding overpenetration), are necessarily opposites.
You haven’t disagreed with that. Nor have you disagreed that many people, especially police, who prefer expanding rounds also prefer rounds with greater penetration. Someone who picks a round because it offers greater penetration cannot claim that when he picked that round he actually did so to reduce the risk of overpenetration.
You ask “if hollow points weren’t working better . . . why have they become the universal choice of police”? Police as government employees at the lowest level of the public service hierarchy; they have no role in policy-making and do not generally (of course there are exceptions) have the training or ability to evaluate statistics, understand terminal ballistics, or make policy judgments. I care about *evidence.* I don’t care about the collective view of police on ammunition any more than I care about their collective view on proper interrogation techniques, Miranda rights, the proper interpretation of the 4th amendment, or what should be the speed limit on Rt. 95.
I care about genuine empirical evidence. I take it from your response that there is no empirical evidence that expanding handgun rounds “stop the threat” more quickly.
I asked about this as a serious question because while its dogma that expanding bullets have greater stopping power, in selecting my own rounds I wanted to look at some data, and I was surprised that there isn’t *any*. I have a suspicion that the dogma is wrong and, apart from hits to the central nervous system, a center-of-mass shot from a handgun “stops the threat” when the person who was shot either loses consciousness from lack of blood or becomes focused on their injury rather than on attacking. Comparing an expanding bullet with a non-expanding bullet whose diameter is the same as the first bullet’s post-expansion, it doesn’t seem to me that the former will cause either effect more quickly than the latter, but we *do* know that the former is more likely to kill.
You ask me to support the claim that cops routinely keep firing after a suspect (or victim) is down. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagious_shooting. Its debatable whether “contagious shooting” is really what’s going on, but there’s no serious question that cops do shoot too much. As for whether they hit “bad guys” more often than “good guys” — Do you have any reliable evidence to the contrary? I’m not aware of any police department that keeps such statistics, effectively investigates shootings by its officers, or even keep statistics on the total number of shootings.
(A little googling produced an estimate of 2400 people fatally shot by police per year vs 40-150 police fatally shot per year. That doesn’t distinguish shootings of ‘bad guys’ from ‘good guys,’ but does refute any claim that police in this country need more firepower…)
You point to a distinction between how many “solid hits it takes to end a fight” and “number of shots fired.” You say you were talking about the former and I was talking about the latter. Not true. Part of your argument is that expanding bullets mean less shots fired which means less chance of hitting bystanders. In any event the distinction is irrelevant to the discussion.
You say that “your criminal antagonist can be firing at a rate of 4 to 5 shots per second…and [I] want the good guys to fire one shot, pause and ‘wait a second’ (4 or 5 more shots from the opponent) to see if they need to shoot some more to save innocent lives?”
This is where we have a bunch of fundamental moral disagreements about what makes someone a ‘good guy’ or a ‘criminal antagonist,’ and when the one changes into the other.
Putting those aside, your response misses the point, and effectively concedes that your blog posts on this topic were wrong. You argued in the posts that if expanding bullets are more likely to stop the threat, then people will fire fewer shots, and also hit the ‘bad guy’ fewer times, which is safer for the ‘bad guy’ and bystanders. This was one of your central points, one you said was crucial.
I pointed out that if people are trained to fire y times before checking whether the other guy has “stopped,” then increased stopping power isn’t going to reduce the number of shots they fire (by much anyway). They’re going to fire y times regardless of whether the first bullet stopped the threat. I didn’t say they *should* or *shouldn’t* be trained to do that. I said that *if* they are trained to do that, then the power of an individual round doesn’t matter (much) because they’re still going to fire at least y times.
(Of course in theory it could affect the number of volleys, but that effect would seem to be minimal. We know from FBI statistics that the first shot kills 90-98% of the time. We also know that police fire until their magazines are empty, and that people acting in self defense often fire multiple rounds in the first volley.)
So – I’m not sure if there’s anything left of your original argument this point?
A, since you haven’t properly framed an argument, no one but you thinks you’ve demolished anyone else’s argument. So far, you:
— would have us believe you’ve been unable to find penetration depth studies in your research, when it’s all over the internet.
— you tell us you don’t care about the conclusions of the primary institution that has studied the effects of hollow points in the real world, American law enforcement.
— you conflate all shootings, focusing on high volume ones, with the bullet effectiveness argument, and obviously can’t tell “contagious shootings” from synchronous shootings.
Adds up to trollery when seen from this end, A. Believe what you want. I’ll stay in the real world, thanks.
A, since you haven’t properly framed an argument, no one but you thinks you’ve demolished anyone else’s argument. So far, you:
— would have us believe you’ve been unable to find penetration depth studies in your research, when it’s all over the internet.
— you tell us you don’t care about the conclusions of the primary institution that has studied the effects of hollow points in the real world, American law enforcement.
— you conflate all shootings, focusing on high volume ones, with the bullet effectiveness argument, and obviously can’t tell “contagious shootings” from synchronous shootings.
Adds up to trollery when seen from this end, A. Believe what you want. I’ll stay in the real world, thanks.
Well, this certainly took an abrupt and unexpected turn! Just when I thought that Mas had (as usual) laid out an unassailable set of points based on, oh, just about everything I had ever read and experienced on the subject.
Mas, by the way and not that he needs any defending, is probably the most careful person I know to speak on the use of firearms. While I’ll admit I’m no lawyer, I have yet to catch him contradicting himself in any of his writings. I’ve looked, and the man is extraordinarily consistent and well informed, on top of having the gift of crystal clarity.
Now I believe that much of A’s argument hinges on the bonded (often +P) hollow points routinely found in police duty loads that many of us favor. Their goal being increased barrier penetration, they SUPERFICIALLY seem to go counter to our concern about overpenetration in people.
I think that the problem in A’s thinking is betrayed by his repeated use of the term “kill”, assuming that he is not merely trolling/baiting.
Once you have internalized that deadly force, while inherently carrying the risk of killing (never a goal in itself), is about STOPPING people, misconceptions like A’s about penetration or volume of fire vanish. The protocols for load selection that most LEAs (and ourselves) follow are the FBI’s, after all. They issued the definitive (to this day anyway) report back in ’89 and have done the (ongoing) research, as usual, so we don’t have to.
Police officers, just like many of us, do need the assurance that their rounds will go through auto glass and other obstacles to do their job – stop as quickly as possible in the interest of personal and public safety. 12″ is the BARE MINIMUM, by the way, and the FBI clearly indicated that enough penetration was “critical”. The endless arguments, the various studies, and the ammo R&D all come from the lofty (yep, I said it) goal of getting the job done while limiting the risk of overdoing it.
As for the amount of rounds expanded, I don’t know what most do these days, but I personally dropped long ago any training regimen involving a predetermined number of shots. I prefer to train to shoot until the threat is neutralized, which can and will take an unpredictable amount of rounds or even a transition between targets (from center mass to the head, for example). The assessment (is it working?) is done during the sequence, not after each shot, as that would be suicidal.
And I’ve pretty much banned the term “kill” from my vocabulary in order to have the right mindset. When someone says they shoot to kill, or states that hollow points are more effective at killing, it just screams lack of research and training to me. We’re in this to find the best tool and tactics for the job, that of stopping threats to life, not to take it. I know it’s a hard one to wrap one’s head around, but those who make a living arguing those things in court have no excuse for not making the effort.
I know it sounds like a co-pout, but at this point in time I think it’s reasonable to advise someone to do their own homework when so much has already been said on a subject and they still struggle with some basics while trying to sound authoritative.
Well, this certainly took an abrupt and unexpected turn! Just when I thought that Mas had (as usual) laid out an unassailable set of points based on, oh, just about everything I had ever read and experienced on the subject.
Mas, by the way and not that he needs any defending, is probably the most careful person I know to speak on the use of firearms. While I’ll admit I’m no lawyer, I have yet to catch him contradicting himself in any of his writings. I’ve looked, and the man is extraordinarily consistent and well informed, on top of having the gift of crystal clarity.
Now I believe that much of A’s argument hinges on the bonded (often +P) hollow points routinely found in police duty loads that many of us favor. Their goal being increased barrier penetration, they SUPERFICIALLY seem to go counter to our concern about overpenetration in people.
I think that the problem in A’s thinking is betrayed by his repeated use of the term “kill”, assuming that he is not merely trolling/baiting.
Once you have internalized that deadly force, while inherently carrying the risk of killing (never a goal in itself), is about STOPPING people, misconceptions like A’s about penetration or volume of fire vanish. The protocols for load selection that most LEAs (and ourselves) follow are the FBI’s, after all. They issued the definitive (to this day anyway) report back in ’89 and have done the (ongoing) research, as usual, so we don’t have to.
Police officers, just like many of us, do need the assurance that their rounds will go through auto glass and other obstacles to do their job – stop as quickly as possible in the interest of personal and public safety. 12″ is the BARE MINIMUM, by the way, and the FBI clearly indicated that enough penetration was “critical”. The endless arguments, the various studies, and the ammo R&D all come from the lofty (yep, I said it) goal of getting the job done while limiting the risk of overdoing it.
As for the amount of rounds expanded, I don’t know what most do these days, but I personally dropped long ago any training regimen involving a predetermined number of shots. I prefer to train to shoot until the threat is neutralized, which can and will take an unpredictable amount of rounds or even a transition between targets (from center mass to the head, for example). The assessment (is it working?) is done during the sequence, not after each shot, as that would be suicidal.
And I’ve pretty much banned the term “kill” from my vocabulary in order to have the right mindset. When someone says they shoot to kill, or states that hollow points are more effective at killing, it just screams lack of research and training to me. We’re in this to find the best tool and tactics for the job, that of stopping threats to life, not to take it. I know it’s a hard one to wrap one’s head around, but those who make a living arguing those things in court have no excuse for not making the effort.
I know it sounds like a co-pout, but at this point in time I think it’s reasonable to advise someone to do their own homework when so much has already been said on a subject and they still struggle with some basics while trying to sound authoritative.
Mas. First off allow me to thank-you for all your writings and teachings related to firearms and self-defense as well as your services as an expert witness. As a gunsmith, former law enforcement officer, firearms instructor, and retired United States Marine, I have a ravenous appetite for dealing with weapons and firearms in particular. Among my rather extensive weapons library, I own copies of all of your books. Secondly please don’t get too frustrated with “A”. I’ve encountered many folks like him. It’s like talking to someone about “dark matter” or an “event horizon” and having them deny ones conclusions because in their “extensive” research in the field of astrophysics they’ve never heard of those concepts. To explain to their satisfaction requires a “taking by the hand” and an encyclopedic tutorial of the subject matter, which obviously a forum such as this is not the correct setting for. Your conclusions are substantiated by a plethora of previously researched data, that contrary to some is readily available, if you take the time to look. Additionally having been the “recipient” of gunfire wounds and having “doled out” some, I can attest personally to most of your conclusions. As for “A”…hang in there buddy! Knowledge is not that elusive a thing…wisdom on the other hand, might take a bit longer to come by.
Mas. First off allow me to thank-you for all your writings and teachings related to firearms and self-defense as well as your services as an expert witness. As a gunsmith, former law enforcement officer, firearms instructor, and retired United States Marine, I have a ravenous appetite for dealing with weapons and firearms in particular. Among my rather extensive weapons library, I own copies of all of your books. Secondly please don’t get too frustrated with “A”. I’ve encountered many folks like him. It’s like talking to someone about “dark matter” or an “event horizon” and having them deny ones conclusions because in their “extensive” research in the field of astrophysics they’ve never heard of those concepts. To explain to their satisfaction requires a “taking by the hand” and an encyclopedic tutorial of the subject matter, which obviously a forum such as this is not the correct setting for. Your conclusions are substantiated by a plethora of previously researched data, that contrary to some is readily available, if you take the time to look. Additionally having been the “recipient” of gunfire wounds and having “doled out” some, I can attest personally to most of your conclusions. As for “A”…hang in there buddy! Knowledge is not that elusive a thing…wisdom on the other hand, might take a bit longer to come by.
A left off his last name and the first 2 letters of his first.
A left off his last name and the first 2 letters of his first.