Self Defensive Ammo

[ridgerunner1965]

the thing about handloaded self defense ammo is simple.if a prosecuter finds out you handload your ammo you are going to look real bad in front of a jury.i know and you know that most folks can load ammo that is reliable and shoots well in your gun.show up after a clean shoot in court with your handloads of 5 grns of reddot under your own cast bulletts. and trust me you you are going to be the bad guy. you made a load intending to kill.regardless of what it was.i dont have a lot of trust in the court system.but i have been wrong.

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

And where is the proof of this? Lots of people SAY this, but I've yet to see this supported by objectively verifiable evidence in any posting.

I've been searching and I can't find any case where a guy was hammered in court because he used handloaded ammunition.

And even if there's a single case...that would not be indicative of a trend.

People are far better served knowing and understanding their laws with respect to deadly force so that they know enough NOT to put themselves in a situation where a "bad shooting" happens when they draw their weapon.

Yes, lawyers will go a long way towards "character" traits, but that's much more difficult and subjective than simply pulling out the law and showing the jury where a guy has screwed up by violating the letter of the law. Show that it was a bad shooting and the DA wins the case.


Besides, with all the different loads available for guns now, that would be a lousy tactic when a guy could just go out and get some kind of magnum JHP or other "scary" sounding ammunition in the retail market. Kind of difficult to trump that, in my opinion.

The real concern is that forensics experts have a much more difficult time establishing physical, quantitative facts with handloads than with factor loads of known characteristics.

 

[481]

Something happen a few weeks back that made me realize that while I have a goodly amount of ammo, much of it is of the target/plinking variety (i.e. WWB, Remington, Federal, Fiocchi, Seller & Bellot ...FMJ stuff). My SD ammo is about a couple of hundred rounds in each caliber (38, 357, 9, 40, & 45).

A dozen loaded mags later and I was down to zero SD 9mm in boxes. I have started picking up a box of SD here and there. It's a shame that we're still in a tight market. Otherwise, I could pick up a case of SD at a reasonable price.

Am I overthinking it?

Perhaps, but I really don't think that it is a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

Since we are probably going to be doing a lot more practicing than shooting in self-defense, it goes to reason that we should have a lot more practice ammunition than self-defense ammunition.

Maintained properly, a couple hundred rounds of quality self-defense ammunition ought to see the ordinary, average guy through a whole lot of concealed/open carry.

 

[Cee Zee]

I am fortunate to have stocked up on every flavor of hollow point my arsenal requires before the circus came to town. I prefer not to shoot it all up, so the ritual is to empty the mags of JHP into my back pocket upon arriving at the range, and refill the mags with standard ball for plinking.

I've had all the SD ammo I need for every firearm I own for years. I didn't run out and stock up on it before the shortage. I stocked up a long time ago just because a person never really knows how much they might need or when they might quit making the ammo your gun likes.

So I've bought up enough SD ammo to keep and to practice with once in a great while just to make sure the function is still there. I mainly practice with FMJ stuff though. I don't see spending the extra money to practice mainly and keeping a tight group is generally the same with good plinking ammo or SD ammo. I like to be sure my target ammo does shoot about the same as my SD ammo. But that's all figured out within the first month or so I own a gun. I buy a lot of ammo and test a lot of brands right after buying a new gun. Once I figure out what my gun likes I basically just shoot up what SD is left over so I won't be tempted to use it although I never seem to shoot it all up. I still have a dozen brands of .45 from testing on two different carry guns. Same goes for my HD shotguns. My HD carbines have always ate whatever I feed them so that's not a problem

 

[bdickens]

the thing about handloaded self defense ammo is simple.if a prosecuter finds out you handload your ammo you are going to look real bad in front of a jury.i know and you know that most folks can load ammo that is reliable and shoots well in your gun.show up after a clean shoot in court with your handloads of 5 grns of reddot under your own cast bulletts. and trust me you you are going to be the bad guy. you made a load intending to kill.regardless of what it was.i dont have a lot of trust in the court system.but i have been wrong.

You care to cite some case law on that?

Because you have no way of knowing what will happen until it does happen.

I think if a prosecutor is trying to make an issue of the ammo you used, then that is actually a very good sign because it means he has no case and is desperately grasping at straws.

A desperate prosecutor could conceivably use any cockamamie, harebrained idea in the world against you. The name of the gun, the color of it, the name of the ammo, the ammo is too powerful, not powerful enough, you didn't have enough training, you had too much training, anything.

Heck, the prosecution tried to use the fact that George Zimmerman carried a round in the chamber (the way handguns are designed to be carried, and the way that probably every LEO in the country does it) against him. They also tried to use the fact that his DAO Kel-Tec doesn't have a manual safety (Just like the #1 most popular handgun among LE agencies in the US, the Glock) against him.

Any of those ridiculous arguments could easily be swept aside by a good lawyer and expert witness. And I think if the prosecutor had a decent case, he would just try it on the facts and not waste his time with nonsense.

 

[buck460XVR]

I roll my own. My range ammo is also my SD/HD ammo. I know where it shoots and it goes bang everytime. As has been said, while many so called "experts" warn about using it for SD and that one should only use factory ammo, they never have a case to prove their point. The main case they cite is a murder case where the accused murderer got off because of reloads.....don't seem to make much sense. Maybe it's just their sponsor's money talkin'.

 

[420Stainless]

I don't think you're over thinking it, but its not like plinking or target ammo and FMJ just bounces off of bad guys either.

 

[Cee Zee]

Where do you get one of those sponsors that pay you to post obvious information? I've shot reloads friend. I think in all the years I've been shooting (about 50) I can't remember a single factory round actually being bad without being noticeably bad before I stuck it in a gun like the bullet was mounted at an angle or something like that. I've never had a factory round fail to fire that I remember either. And I'm not a newbie or a part time shooter either. And if there's sponsor money to be made please tell me how to get it. Because I have seen lots of reloads fail. I've seen lots of them that were ridiculously underpowered and wouldn't hit anything if they did fire. I'm sure people reload their own ammo better than the stuff they might sell at a flea market or just give out to their friends to shoot on the range. But the stuff that comes out of boxes from the factory is better for 99% of the people out there in the real world. Maybe you can maintain control over long hours of tedious work but not everyone can. Think about it. Do you know anyone who forgets to take out the trash from time to time? Or maybe they spell a word wrong when they're typing even though they really know how to spell the word? Those people can mess up loading catridges too.

I went to the range with a guy who brought about $5000 worth of reloads with him and we shot it all up in about 90 minutes. Yes we had full automatics to do it. I have to say that most of it worked fine. But certainly not all of it. We had a substantial number of failures and this guy owned a gun shop and reloaded a lot of ammo. He also tried to do it well as evidenced by the fact that most of it worked well. But even if it's only one out of 100 rounds that doesn't fly straight or doesn't fire at all that's too high odds for me. I'd rather use the almost sure thing. I don't plan on shooting enough SD ammo to save enough money to pay for a bag of high quality bullets. Yeah I might shoot some once in a while to check function but I rarely if ever shoot hollow points for practice. There just isn't a lot of reason to do that.

There is a difference between factory loads and roll your own stuff. I've seen it for myself and no one has to pay me to say it. At any rate what makes you think the Lee Press people wouldn't spend money promoting reloads if the world of word of mouth gun information was dictated by companies spending money to control what gets said on the net. They spend their money hiring "experts" to trumpet their products in gun magazines. The whole point of the internet is that it's the real voice of the real people. I've been on the networks for right at 25 years (anyone remember Fidonet?) and no one has ever offered me a dime to say good things about their stuff.