massad ayoob said:
To Double Naught Spy:
In the same post, sir, you write, "It is interesting where others said they looked at the cases when in reality they could not have looked at them..."
Did it occur to you that perhaps they were professionals whose research skills may have exceeded your own?
I think a review on this board alone of previous postings by both Double Naught and Clark will show that they'll do little with legal reference sources, and I would not waste my time digging up the resource citations for them.
Do I think those that said they read all the articles were professionals whose research skills may have exceeded my own? Given that in one case you provided the WRONG information, then it would be hard for them to find the correct case. Then in the other case, you were overly vague in the citation so it would be more difficult to find the correct information, but no doubt it can be done.
It is hard to say that I will do little with the legal references given that obviously I worked through the references and found your mistake of incorrect citation.
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Of the four cases presented, two were self defense using reloads and two were not. Of the cases that were not self defense, one is simply an example of how factory ammo can be used in a positive legal defense manner (Iowa v. Willems). That is nice information, but isn't a problem of reloads. It does indicate a real benefit to using factory ammo, but because factory ammo has this benefit does not indicate reloads or handloads are bad.
The other case was of a possible suicide/manslaughter issue (NJ v. Bias). The claim is that the husband ended up in trouble because his light load ammo failed to leave GSR, but had the gun been loaded with factory ammo, there would have been GSR. That sounds good, but there was nothing there to substantiate if the wife was shot with light load ammo at close range. Heck, there wasn't even proof the light load ammo existed outside of Bias' claim. Very dubious.
Of the self defense cases, in one the notion of the horribly detrimental handload ammo was shown to be bogus (NH v. Kennedy). It was brought up in court and dealt with accordingly. No doubt the evil overly detrimental handload arguments can be applied to other such claims just as claims of horribly detrimental factory hollowpoint ammo and be dealt with as Ayoob has noted.
In the other case (TN v. Barnes), we have no way of knowing if the handload ammo would have been a problem or not had the investigators not bungled the evidence. We don't know that factory ammo would not have been a problem in the same circumstances. While Ayoob is offering this case as evidence of how handloads can be problematic, you gotta like the fact that he states that he didn't think said loads were a particularly important point.
Ayoob said,
The evidence was messed up in a number of ways in this case, and I do not believe the reloaded ammo (which the prosecution did not recognize to be such until during the trial) was the key problem, but it definitely was part of a problem in reconstructing the case. We were able to do that without GSR evidence, and Mr. Barnes won an acquittal. In this case, I believe the use of factory ammo, combined with proper handling and preserving of the evidence by the initial investigators, would have made the defense much easier and might well have prevented the case from ever being lodged against him.
Factory ammo isn't going to be helpful if the investigators screw up the evidence and present the screwy evidence as factual when it is not factual.
Neither of the two self defense cases seems to indicate any great problem with using handloads.
Of course if I am wrong, I am sure Ayoob will explain how the use of factory ammo will right the errors of evidence from the investigation.
