WHY WE USE EXPANDING BULLETS FOR SELF-DEFENSE

PART I

This past Monday I was at a state bar association headquarters, leading a panel discussion they were filming on gun modifications and gun-and-ammo choices as they relate to shooting cases.  On the same day, half a world away, South African athlete Oscar Pistorius was on trial for murder in the death of his girlfriend. It turned out that the ammunition in the death weapon in South Africa was jacketed hollow point, and the prosecution was making a huge deal about its deadly effects, implying that using it was indicia of malice in and of itself.  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/prosecutor-in-pistorius-trial-says-autopsy-testimony-is-graphic-should-not-be-broadcast/article17391312/.  Oddly enough, at the bar association CLE (continuing legal education) film we discussed the same thing.

The ammo was reportedly Ranger, a Winchester brand which in this country is generally sold as “law enforcement only,” though outside of San Francisco I don’t know of any laws actually banning its use by private citizens.  (Interestingly, the images they showed on CNN looked more like Federal HST.  I watched the talking heads babble on about how the bullet spread itself out into petals that spun like a fan.  Slice and dice…it could have been a Cuisinart commercial.

The panel they were filming on our end was made up entirely of people carrying Glock pistols with Winchester Ranger ammunition.  The police chief who used to command LAPD Metro and SWAT had 124 grain Ranger +P in his 9mm Glock 17. The Sergeant/Rangemaster who had shot a guy with such a bullet was wearing the same Glock 21 he had used that night, with 230 grain Ranger .45 ACP.  And I had the same ammo he did, in my RoBar custom Glock 30S.

The BS arguments about “malicious dum-dum bullets” have been going on for more than 40 years in this country.  Yet such expanding bullets are issued to virtually all of American law enforcement, and are the smart thing to put in personal defense and home defense handguns. The reasons are reduced likelihood of overpenetration, reduced likelihood of ricochet, and faster neutralization of threats to the innocent so deadly that they warrant lethal force in the first place. I think those are incontrovertible arguments.  But there’s also a fourth argument, and we’ll get to that before long.

This will kick off a five-part series, so our readers can have the tools to defend their use of appropriate ammunition when that choice is falsely questioned in a court of law.

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