CNN article, Dum Dum bullets...

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http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/04/14/ramos.horta/index.html

He should have been glad it was a "Dum Dum" bullet, if not it it may have reached another 2mm to his spinal column.


Editor's note: José Ramos-Horta, the president of East Timor, survived an attempted assassination at his home on February 11, 2008. He is in Darwin, Australia, recovering from gunshot wounds.


José Ramos-Horta, the president of East Timor, says he believes he has been given a second chance at life.

(CNN) -- On February 11, a group of renegade soldiers invaded my home. As I walked toward my house, I was not aware that they had disarmed my guards and broken into the house, knocking down doors looking for me. But as I walked up the street -- ironically, Robert F. Kennedy Boulevard, named for one of my heroes -- I saw one of the renegades and knew that he was going to shoot me. As he aimed for my heart, I turned to run. Instead of the left side of my chest, he shot me twice in the right side of the back.

The shooter used "dum dum" bullets, illegal to manufacture and banned by the Geneva Convention because they expand and fragment inside the body, creating an explosion of shrapnel. One piece of shrapnel took a trajectory toward my spinal column. It stopped 2 mm short.

I was told later that between the moment that I was shot and the moment I arrived at the hospital, I lost 4 liters of blood -- 80 percent of the blood in my body. I was also later told that if I had arrived at the hospital five minutes later I would have, without question, been dead.

Oddly, during that time, I was completely conscious. I remember speaking to my brother, who cared for me while we were waiting for an ambulance. I was not particularly concerned about myself. There were about 30 other people going through my mind -- soldiers, staff, some internally displaced Timorese, and relatives. I asked if anyone else in my compound had been wounded or killed. I was reassured that they had not.

I rode in a battered old ambulance from my home to the hospital. Hanging onto the seats of the ambulance because it had no seat belts, I was willing myself to stay alive. In these minutes, I felt that if I died, my country would explode into violence.

It was not until I was delivered into the hands of doctors that I lost consciousness. Even then, in that dream state between consciousness and unconsciousness, I had vivid images. I felt that I was surrounded by a group of people, people were trying to force the remaining life from me. I was trying to ask them why, what I had done to deserve this. "At least," I said, "tell me what I've done wrong."

A thundering voice interrupted them, saying: "Leave him alone. He's done nothing wrong." Suddenly the others left.

I am not one to try and explain such occurrences. But I believe that at that point, I returned to life. And I believe that, while the doctors in East Timor, and in Darwin, Australia, were unquestionably critical to saving my life, I was also blessed by God. It seems that I was given a second chance.

I have, at moments, been extremely saddened reflecting on the great men, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, who did not escape an assassin's bullet. I reflect on the terrible loss the world experienced at their deaths, and I cannot help wondering why I, a much more flawed person and a lesser man, have been spared when they were not.

Since childhood, I have always been disturbed by the injustices in our world, a world with tens of millions malnourished or starved, with no access to clean water, while others live in mansions and spend tens of thousands of dollars on cars and jewelry without even thinking. I have seen both clearly. I lived in exile in the West, including Manhattan for 24 years during the occupation of East Timor. And I have returned home to my Timorese people, among the poorest in the world.

I have been asked more than once how the assassination attempt has changed me. I would say that it has, primarily, reaffirmed my personal conviction and my ambition to lift people out of extreme poverty. Today, I have no other goal or ambition. The recent events have only served to reaffirm my lifelong commitment to helping the poor.

I have always kept a stock of packaged new and used clothes in my house. When I would travel around the countryside, I'd often load up the back of a car with these packages. When we would drive through a village, the children would come running. I would get out and give away the clothes and soccer balls.

Other times, I would leave my security and entourage behind and take a minibus back into town. Like other developing countries, our minibuses are usually packed with 20-30 people. They would be surprised and happy to see me board the bus and ride with them. Often I have had the bus stop at a street café and I would buy everyone a meal for $1 apiece. Perhaps for other politicians these are photo opportunities. For me, they have been one of the deep pleasures of being home after being away for so long.

I am saddened by the fact that these pleasures may be gone for me now. No longer will my security guards listen when I tell them to stay outside a restaurant. I expect that I will no longer be able to travel without a convoy, or walk away from my security to distribute clothing at a village on the road. We have lost something. But we will find a way to remain close.

Our country will need to get to the bottom of these events to heal from them. An investigation has been ongoing, and there is increasing evidence pointing a finger at external elements that were supporting the renegade Alfredo Reinado. These are elements interested in destabilizing East Timor, plunging it into an endless civil war so it could be declared a failed state.

In fact they have achieved the opposite. I have survived them, and we have survived them. Instead of plunging into chaos, my people have united as never before. Our political leaders stepped up in the sudden absence of their president, showing political maturity beyond their years of experience.

Since the attempted assassination, there hasn't been a single violent incident. Even the rival youth and gang groups have stopped fighting. Almost all elements involved in the attacks surrendered peacefully. I expect that those remaining will follow shortly. Many of those who were internally displaced by the violence of 2006, sensing the change, have begun to return to their homes.

I am returning home in the next days, to do all I can to realize my dreams for East Timor -- to continue lifting the Timorese people out of poverty, and to create a Zone of Peace where all forms of violence are abandoned.
 
He should have been glad it was a "Dum Dum" bullet, if not it it may have reached another 2mm to his spinal column.
Maybe, but I'm pretty sure he's also glad he didn't bleed to death.

Sounds like a slightly unpleasant experience all-around for that guy.
 
Yeah - I read that also.

Someone explain a 'dum dum' round... I sort of thought perhaps they were talking about JHP or something. But I'm not certain at all.
 
A dum-dum bullet is a soft-nosed and/or hollow-pointed cartridge-type projectile intended for side-arms or shoulder-weapon use. Uniformed military personnel are forbidden by international convention to use this type of ammunition.

This was the reason for the creation of the .223 rem: As a replacement for the .22 rimfire in Air Force survival weapons.

The .22 rimfire is a prime example of a dum-dum bullet!
 
If he'd lost 80% of the blood in his body, he'd be dead.

Soft-nose...or "Dum Dum" ammunition was banned by the Hague...not the Geneva Convention...and it only applies to military conflicts involving armed forces in uniform.
 
Someone explain a 'dum dum' round... I sort of thought perhaps they were talking about JHP or something. But I'm not certain at all.

They were called "Dum Dum" because the original bullets that caused the controversy were made at the Dum Dum arsenal near Calcutta, India before WWI.

Good write up on the whole thing here:

http://www.thegunzone.com/hague.html
 
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I might be mistaken, but if I recall correctly, the military of any signatory to the Hague Convention is not obligated by the convention to use FMJ only if that nation's opponent is not using FMJ only in any hot confilct between the two. For instance, if Jihadists in Iraq were using JHPs in their AKs, then American troops would not be bound by the Hague convention to use only FMJs in return. Of course, they are bound to use whatever their supply chain provides to them and whatever their chain of command permits, but there would be no external Hague restrictions on ammunition codifying the use of only FMJ by U.S. troops.
 
Obama's stepfather was in the Indonesian army during the East Timor repression. In his first book Obama says he wouldn't talk about it much.
 
Obama's stepfather was in the Indonesian army during the East Timor repression. In his first book Obama says he wouldn't talk about it much.

Unless he was there in 1899 that little fact has nothing to do with "dum dum" bullets because that's the last time they were actually made......
 
wait a minute, this guy said that two renegade solderis disarmed his gaurds?

dum dum is a term that was first coined during the zulu wars the british fought...

you would think the gun "experts" at CNN wouldnt use termonology from the 1800's

this guy apparently trusts two guys to protect his life, yep, some porfessional body guards there...

i always called 'em hollow points...
 
We would not be, we are not, bound by the Hauge Convention in the current "war on terror" because we are not fighting the uniformed soldiers of a country that also signed the Hauge Convention. In the Original Gulf War and this Iraq war we would most likely have been bound even if Iraq had not signed. But once we started fighting "insurgents" and they did not represent a country or wear uniforms we wwere free to use whatever ammo we pleased.

Same with Afghanistan.
 
Why is it inhumane - even illegal under some circumstances - to shoot game animals with FMJ bullets, but it is more humane to shoot humans in war with FMJs? I've never understood this. (This is a rhetorical question. ;))

In any event, the wounding described is consistent with an ordinary soft-nosed hunting bullet. Whoever reported this are themselves dumb-dumbs. :rolleyes:
 
I lost 4 liters of blood -- 80 percent of the blood in my body.

I am going to call BS on this one! Once you lose 3 Liters you are not concious, and oh the disrhythmia's an ACLS EMT has to fight. He may have lost alot of blood but no where near 4L and no way could he have stayed concious after the loss of 3. Entire organ systems would have been shutting down to preserve life.
They may have drained that much over several days while reinflating his chest cavity, but Not at one time.
 
Actually, the reasoning is that when a soldier survives being shot, the FMJ creates a smaller wound channel, and less physical damage than a soft nose or hollowpoint round will.
For those who survive, it's a lot easier to heal from a small wound channel and there is usually less internal damage, all else being equal.
 
I might be mistaken, but if I recall correctly, the military of any signatory to the Hague Convention is not obligated by the convention to use FMJ only if that nation's opponent is not using FMJ only in any hot confilct between the two. For instance, if Jihadists in Iraq were using JHPs in their AKs, then American troops would not be bound by the Hague convention to use only FMJs in return. Of course, they are bound to use whatever their supply chain provides to them and whatever their chain of command permits, but there would be no external Hague restrictions on ammunition codifying the use of only FMJ by U.S. troops.

True enough - but when the subject of Hague and FMJs comes up, I always find it amusing how many people think or assume that the USA is actually concerned about following treaties or other international law - we would blatantly violate Hague in a heartbeat if we thought it would make a difference in the outcome of a conflict. Throughout history, we pretty regularly break and violate treaties when not deemed expedient - who's gonna *enforce* international law? Some country with an army? An army that we are KILLING with our soft points and hollow points when they try to enforce the law?

Ask the Native Americans whether treaties signed by the US gov't are worth the paper they're written on. But, so far, for better or worse, we DO in fact comply with Hague - it's pretty silly that soft points are deemed to cause "unnecessary suffering" whereas nuclear fallout at Hiroshima is not considered to cause unnecessary suffering. If anything, getting killed cleanly with a rapidly expanding soft point can in many cases (more often than not, in fact) cause LESS suffering than a nasty non-immediately-fatal pass-through wound from ball ammo. The theory is admirable (gentlemanly rules of war), but the execution and parameters regarding FMJs vs. soft points are absurd.
 
I'm sure he lost 4 L of blood TOTAL, including what was lost once they started transfusing him. Pretty easy to lose that much, but much of it is what they are pushing into him from the other side.

My understanding is that early "fragmenting" bullets were designed or at least happened to leave multiple fragments that were difficult to remove during surgery. It was considered cruel to wound a soldier in such a fashion. I don't think a modern expanding hollowpoint would be considered in such a way, and we all know the 5.56 will EXPLODE inside the body if it hits with enough velocity, literally breaking in half and showering the body with lead fragments. So by any rational review, hunting style rounds would be allowed, as they kill faster and more cleanly while the 5.56, when slow enough, will not tumble and fragment, leading to wounding injuries.

And it all seems pointless when you can shower your opponent with airburst fragmentation bomblets, napalm, and MOABs :p
 
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