Survival Digest

Defense

Factory Loads Only For A Defense Gun

This is a great article by Massad Ayoob that appeared in the Guns Magazine April 2005 edition. It goes over some important ammo tips that could save you from some serious court issues. If you reload your own ammo, you should always carry factory loads in your carry gun, as well as your home or store defense gun. It is important that the courts can use similar ammo in testing and as evidence.

Handloads are great for hunting. The best shot I ever made in the game fields, was on an impala at 117 paces–double action–with a Smith & Wesson Model 629 .44 Magnum, loaded with a 320-grain SSK hardcast flatpoint bullet my buddy Bill Grimmett had carefully seated over a maximum safe charge of W296.

Reloads are great for training, too. How many people can afford ample, serious shooting without them? Bless you, Mike Dillon, for opening the world of “mass-produced home loads” to the individual handgunner.

Handloads are great for match shooting, if they’re carefully put together. The majority of national bull’s-eye championships (military sponsored) and police pistol championships (law enforcement agency sponsored) have been won with factory amino purchased by the governmental entity that fielded the shooter. However, most IPSC and Bianchi Cup matches have been won with reloads homebrewed by the winning shooters themselves. That says something about individuality.

However, as an expert witness for the courts in shooting cases over the last quarter century, I’ve learned some good reasons not to use reloads for personal defense. Not in the carry gun, and not in the home or store defense gun. In the limited space of this column, let’s talk about just two of those reasons.

Malice Factor

Attorneys hungry to nail you, whether in criminal or in civil court, need some hook on which to hang their argument that your actions constituted malice against the person who forced you to shoot him. We saw it with anyone who went to court after firing Black Talon ammo in self-defense, during the period when that cartridge was ludicrously demonized by the press and the politicians. We’ve seen it for decades, right up to the present, with the use of hollow-point amino. Appellate lawyer Lisa Steele is right now speaking for multiple individuals who suffered either conviction or enhanced sentences because juries bought lawyers’ arguments that the use of HP ammunition was cruel, unusual, and malicious. A lawyer who knows his stuff–which the original trial lawyers in those cases of Lisa’s apparently didn’t–can defeat the hollowpoint argument easily. The simplest avenue is to show the jury that virtually all cops carry HPs. But that argument isn’t available for handloads.

In one case I was consulted on back in the ’70s, the shooter had used a CCI Speer 200-grain JHP he’d handloaded to equal CCI’s ballistics in a factory loaded .45 ACP cartridge. The state police who investigated, and the prosecutor who brought him to trial for aggravated assault, kept asking why regular bullets weren’t deadly enough for this man. On my recommendation, the defense brought Jim Cirillo in as an expert. He calmly explained the whole thing, including the fact the defendant’s .45 ACP handloads were less powerful than the factory amino issued to the investigating troopers for their .357 Magnums, and the jury acquitted the shooter. Still, it was an attack that could have been prevented if the defendant had simply loaded with CCI’s own factory cartridges, and used his identical handloads for training and practice.

Evidentiary Element

Many defensive shootings take place literally at “powder-burning distance,” with the assailant virtually on top of the armed citizen. Those who take the criminal’s side have been known to argue he was a safe distance away and the accused shot him for no good reason. Well, gunshot residue (GSR) will tell the tale and expose the liars if the distance has been close enough. However, to do that, we on the defense team have to perform testing with what is called “exemplar” ammunition. This is ammo identical to what was fired in the incident in question. We can’t use what was left in the gun, because it’s evidence, and the testing consumes the amino and literally destroys that evidence.

You shot him with a factory round? No problem. We call the factory, get 50 rounds of identical amino of the same lot, do the GSR testing, and determine virtually to the inch the actual distance involved. You shot him with a handload? What guarantee does the court have the ammo you provided is identical to what was fired in the case at bar? You can hear the opposing lawyer now: “Objection! Your Honor, the defendant literally manufactured the evidence!” In a case I was involved in some years ago in New Jersey, the defendant’s use of nonreplicable handloads put him through a multiple-trial ordeal when, if he’d used factory amino, the facts would have been demonstrated at the starting gate and brought a just closure much sooner.

Handloads for defense? You’ve just seen two documentable reasons why I would urge you to use factory ammo for that purpose.

Tags: Ammo, self defense, shooting