Myth: Hollow Point Bullets are Overkill

I was in Atlantic City, NJ for business when there was a shooting in an adjacent hotel on the strip. In the news reports that followed, it was reported that the assailant "used illegal hollow-point ammunition" in the shooting. I thought that they must have assumed hollow points are illegal and reported incorrectly (like that never happens?!), so I looked it up. To my surprise I discovered that hollow point ammo is in fact illegal in New Jersey!

Hollow point ammunition is engineered to be more lethal than standard Ball ammo or Full Metal Jacket (FMJ) rounds. They are designed to expand upon entering the body in order to disrupt more tissue as it travels through it. Because of this "extra" lethality, anti-gun people think that shooting someone with hollow point ammunition is "overkill" and that the ammo should be illegal. In the great state of New Jersey it IS illegal to possess hollow-point ammunition for this exact reasoning. The legislature decided that banning hollow point ammo would make the state more safe. However, this is another example of how many things about firearms are counter-intuitive for anti-gun thinkers who then over-react with legislation before they understand all of the facts.

Every gun owner who carries a firearm for self defense will tell you that it is irresponsible to carry any ammo other than hollow points! Why? Because hollow point bullets prevent "Over Penetration". Regular ball or FMJ ammo does NOT expand and deform as it passes through the body, therefore it is inefficient at transferring its kinetic energy into the body. The result is that the regular bullet maintains enough energy to pass completely through the body. Once the bullet leaves the body it is free to hit another person; either directly or by ricochet! This is called "Over Penetration". By contrast, the fact that the hollow point bullet expands means that it transfers its energy very efficiently into the body; not only to damage more tissue, but also to come to a STOP inside the body to prevent harm to others not intended for the bullet. Even in the event that a hollow point does pass through the bad guy, its velocity will usually be decreased so much that it will no longer be lethal to any innocent person it might hit. So, hollow point bullets may be more deadly to the intended target, but they are safer for bystanders. In fact, this is why most police departments REQUIRE their officers to carry hollow point ammo in their guns!

The goal in shooting a person in self defense is to stop the attack, not kill the attacker. But, since hollow point bullets prevent over-penetration, they should always be carried in a self defense firearm. Preventing over-penetration makes self-defense guns safer. Laws restricting hollow point ammo are irresponsible and put the community at unnecessary risk.

"Gun Stuff" can be counter-intuitive

I believe that part of the reason that anti-gun folks think pro-gun people are "crazy" is because what anti-gun people see as common sense we pro-gunners see as non-sense. Part of the problem might be that a lot of ideas that pertain to guns may be a little counter intuitive at the surface; especially to those people that have already made-up their minds that guns are evil. I will try to show how things can be counter-intuitive by addressing individual counter-intuitive subjects in separate blog posts. Here is a list of subjects that I will add to over time:

1. Only cops should have guns
2. Hollow-point bullets are overkill
3. A Gun Ban would make America safer
4. Whats the big deal about a "waiting period" for gun purchases?
5. More people with guns increases crime

Is the Second Amendment obsolete?

Many anti gun people are saying that the Second Amendment IS obsolete and should be abolished. They see the Second Amendment as a relic guarantee for ancient Americans of the 1700's to maintain the ability to take up arms against their new fledgling government if it were to breakdown and become tyrannical. But now, in the age of tanks and fighter aircraft, taking up arms against the government is impossible. They would also argue that in this day and age there would never be a need to take up arms against the government anyway.

Would the founding fathers think that we have achieved a civilization threshold where the citizens no long "need" to retain the right to bear arms? Would they think that the Second Amendment has served its purpose and was now a right that does more harm than good? Would they believe that since we no longer live in fear of a tyrannical government we should abolish the right to bear arms?

I doubt it. Our forefathers had forethought. They did not think in JUST the present. Sure, we don't have to fear a dictatorship, but just because we elect our officials and therefore can wage revolutionary war via the ballot box does not mean that our government can’t be tyrannical. We have traded our 1 tyrant dictatorship under the rule of King George of England in 1776 for a 537 member elected republic that we live in today. But it is not impossible for that to turn into a government of 537 tyrants. Maybe its impossible to happen overnight, but not over time.

Just because we live in a America with lots of freedoms NOW does NOT mean that will be true in the future. It SEEMS impossible that America could be anything but free. But what if, over time, our liberties are eroded bit by bit, year by year, so minutely that we don't even notice it? What if our liberties are slowly eroded over GENERATIONS of time? What if we allow freedoms that we may not think are necessary now to be taken away by the government and those freedoms become VITAL in the future? We should not be so hasty to throw away freedoms we have no matter how we feel about them now because once we give up a freedom, it’s gone forever. A freedom perceived as unnecessary and given up today could be a VITAL freedom STOLEN from our generations' children of the future.

Besides all this, the anti-gun people are wrong to assume that the right to bear arms was solely to take up arms against the government. Sure, it was A reason, but not the ONLY reason. Self protection was also a concern for the drafters of the Constitution. The forefathers knew that the people of this nation cannot rely on the government to protect them from the criminal element. So, in this respect alone the Second Amendment is definitely NOT obsolete.