What are dum-dum bullets?

[Officers'Wife]

Some of the latter designs for 303 bullet (MK7) did use both aluminum and wood to create a two piece construction under a full metal jacket.

the description I heard was a wooden bullet with a copper half jacket. When it hit the target the ball would splinter and travel through the body. Any unremoved splinters would fester and kill the victim weeks or months later.

 

[WardenWolf]

Dumdums are mostly a generic and highly vague name for any soft point or hollow point bullet. Soft point is actually closer to the original meaning.

 

[nwilliams]

Thanks for all the info guys.

 

[makarovnik]

Hollowpoints. The first reference I have seen to them was the Afrikaners using them against the British in the Boer War.

 

[Guillermo]

We always called wadcutters Dum Dums when we loaded them backwards.

Of course maybe it was us that were the Dum Dums

 

[mljdeckard]

In high school I had a guy tell me that in Vietnam, they took their M-16 rounds and cut a cross onto them, to get them to expand, and these were dum-dums. That was before I actually saw a 5.56 bullet and tried to imagine ANY manual process where you could do this without completely destroying the bullet. (I later heard stories of guys filing the tips flat, just past the jacket. I'm not going to replicate it to see how it works.)

 

[hksw]

I later heard stories of guys filing the tips flat, just past the jacket. I'm not going to replicate it to see how it works.

Woudn't hurt. You'd just be making the FMJ ball round into a soft point. Plenty of manufactured softpoint ammo in the market including .223.

 

[Leanwolf]

JIM WATSON - "And everybody knows to rub garlic on a cut-nose dumdum, too. If the victim survives the bullet wound, this will insure he gets blood poisoning."

Yes, and those garlic tipped bullets are the only way you can kill a vampire with a gun.

Dispatching werewolves, however, requires silver bullets.

L.W.

 

[halfded]

Aren't they also called extreme shock?

 

[Jim K]

Interesting that the arguments go on when Jim Watson told you exactly where the term came from and what it meant.

Fiction writers make up whatever terms they think will make the story interesting, whether "automatic revolver", "assault machinegun" or "silent rifle."

FWIW, contrary to what the press tries to peddle, the Hague and Geneva conventions apply only to the signatory nations when engaged in conflict with government-sponsored armies. Bandits, murderers, terrorists and crazed religious zealots who do not represent any nation or government organization (not even a government in exile or a rebel government) are not covered, any more than a captured bank robber or serial killer has to be treated as a prisoner of war.

Jim

 

[Mainsail]

In the old days dum-dums used to be sold for 2 cents a dum.

 

[the foot]

dum dum = any bullet other than ball ammo.

 

[Mr_Rogers]

FWIW, contrary to what the press tries to peddle, the Hague and Geneva conventions apply only to the signatory nations when engaged in conflict with government-sponsored armies. Bandits, murderers, terrorists and crazed religious zealots who do not represent any nation or government organization (not even a government in exile or a rebel government) are not covered, any more than a captured bank robber or serial killer has to be treated as a prisoner of war.

And not only that the other side did not exactly play fair by handing captives over to the women for castration (Iraq) or burying them up to the neck in sand and pouring ants over them (the various -Stans).

 

[loose cannon]

if i wanted to file on bullets to make dum-dums id make sure the bullet had a solid base.

otherwise the core could be blown out of the jacket causeing a obstructed bore which turns into a kb when you fire again.

lotsa people who filed military ball had this"issue" happen to them.