Disarmed Brits Lose All Touch with Firearms. BBC Thinks Hollow Points are Super Bullets, Police Firearms Advisor Doesn’t Understand Firearms.

In a staggering show of complete ignorance coupled with Vaudevillian levels of sensationalistic journalism, BBC News, upon learning that a terrorism suspect, Jean Charles de Menezes [1], a Brazilian who in 2005 was shot with 9mm HP (Hollow Point) rounds by police, report that he was shot with “special bullets” that are “designed to kill instantly”. Good grief.

Let’s take a look at the fluff, and the errors in that article …

All ammunition is supposed to kill

For a start, all ammunition is designed to kill in that a firearm is a device that is intended for the purpose of killing. Obviously I’m talking about real bullets and not specifically designed Less-Than-Lethal (LTL) ammunition such as beanbags in shotguns, rubber bullets and arguably rimfire ammunition. When you find yourself in a situation where it is deemed necessary to discharge a firearm at another person you are intending to enact the immediate and complete incapacitation of that person. The only reliable means of immediate and complete incapacitation is by means of a lethal shot to the brain cavity, or the upper spinal column covered by the heart and its major vessels such as the aorta and vena cava. Hitting other portions of the body may kill someone eventually, but if they pose an immediate threat to your person then you will want to eliminate their threat immediately.

Different types for different needs

Different types of ammunition exist to fit different specific needs of the environment most likely for the rounds to be fired in. Hollow Point ammunition, since the British having been so long removed from being legally permitted to own firearms, now seems to be inflated to nearly mythical status if the use of HP rounds is actually a newspaper article headline [2]. The property of Hollow Points in terminal ballistics is that they are designed to “petal” or “mushroom” upon impact, meaning that the literally hollow end of the round allows the surrounding wall of cut jacket and soft lead to expand into an effectively larger diameter (caliber) and thus create a larger wound channel. Although also resulting in a larger temporary cavitation of tissues, the primary purpose of the HP is the resulting larger residual Permanent Wound Cavity.

Alarming lack of knowledge by Brit expert

The British government started disarming its citizens around 1937, slowly tightening their restrictions until the modern British public is not permitted to own almost any of the firearms we take for granted here, so it’s not surprising that a newspaper reporter wouldn’t have known anything about firearms, however a slightly disturbing quote in the article is that a British police “firearms advisor”, a former Superintendent, stated, “You need a bullet that dumps all its energy into the subject." This fundamental misunderstanding of kinetic energy in terminal ballistics is suggestive that the British police themselves do not understand firearms.

Where the  “firearms advisor” failed to understand firearms

Being a too lengthy a topic to explain in great detail here I would suggest that the “firearms advisor” pick up and read a copy of the book “Bullet Penetration: Modeling the Dynamics & the Incapacitation Resulting from Wound Trauma“, by Duncan MacPherson or watch the police training video “Deadly Effects” which has comprehensive information provided by battlefield surgeon Dr. Martin Fackler, M.D., F.A.C.S., Colonel (US Army, retired), president of the International Wound Ballistics Association and notably America's foremost forensic expert on ballistic wounds. For the reader here I will give a radically simplified reasoning why transference of kinetic energy is largely irrelevant as a measurement of the efficacy of a round. Quite simply, it has no bearing on the elasticity of human tissue. Tissue will expand during the temporary cavitation of a wound channel. Various tissues can stretch to withstand large amounts of temporary cavitation then “snap” back into place with no catastrophic damage sustained. A permanent wound channel, however, is where the cavitation has effectively stretched tissue beyond its capacity to stretch and results in a cavity in which all tissue remaining is no longer viable. A bow and arrow would be a good basis of comparison here. A modern broadhead hunting arrow produces around 50 to 80 Foot Pounds of Energy (FPE), hardly anything compared to the average of around 400 FPE produced by a 9mm round. At optimum self defense range (say 15 to 25 yards) both the hunting arrow fired from 60-80 lb compound bow and the 9mm round would be equally deadly. Looking purely at the FPE value, as the British police advisor did, the broadhead arrow wouldn’t even be an effective weapon, yet it is. It can easily drop a 300 lb whitetail deer. This is is because FPE or the “energy” of a bullet is a completely meaningless frame of reference that has no bearing on wound channels. And before anyone says that my example wasn’t even a bullet, a .22 caliber short, which has long been used as an assassination weapon, only has 50 FPE. Hardly any energy at all, yet that round has a documented history of terminal effectiveness.

Aside from their inexpert expert

Aside from the technical misunderstanding of firearms by their firearms expert, since the article was obviously written for sensationalism I wonder if the British reporter, had they known, would have mentioned that HP rounds are amazingly common. HP rounds are actually preferred by many indoor target ranges simply because they don’t over penetrate. I carry two clips of 230 grain .45 ACP nickel-coated Jacketed Hollow Points myself for my primary concealed-carry weapon, and have never thought of them as being “special” rounds. They’re so “special” that I can buy them with milk, eggs and bacon at the local Wal-Mart. Hardly James Bond material there.

The long and the short of it is this: That this level of misunderstanding can only happen in a country that no longer allows its citizens the freedom to bear arms. The British government has taken away the rights of its people and they didn't even put up a fuss. Now neither their news media nor their police seem to understand enough about firearms to even write a simple article about firearms without having an American (recovered Brit) burst into laughter at its inaccuracies. Now that's the scary element of this story.


Jonathan RF Cooke
October 15, 2007

For more articles ...
[ Go to the main blog of Jonathan Cooke at http://coffee.townhall.com ]

References
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Charles_de_Menezes
2. BBC News article: 'Special bullets' killed Menezes, 15 October 2007