Hollow point bullets are designed to expand in a more uniform fashion than a traditional bullet, no more no less.
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Since FMJ bullets don’t expand at all, I guess that by “traditional” you mean unjacketed lead? Because many handgun cartridges, like the 9mm, and most long gun cartridges generally come in two (to three) flavors: FMJ (non-expanding) and hollowpoint/softpoint (usually expanding, but not always). Coming from an area where the primary use of guns is sports shooting and hunting, “traditional” might just as well mean “FMJ” as “unjacketed” to me
</nitpick>
Band name dibs.
And someone wanted a bullet that could penetrate armor because… [spoiler]Often, there is someone to whom you wish to deliver a SplatBlaster Kill-o-nator InfraDead Murderizer who is protected by armor!
Either your logic here is really obtuse or I am. What other reason, apart from killing someone/neutralizing a threat (pick the bottle, it’s the same wine) would an armor-piercing bullet serve? I’m sure a simple drill will create a hole with much greater accuracy if all you want is a hole in some armor.
Note: I’m not saying AP rounds are bad, just pointing out that it seems pretty clear what their sole purpose is.[/spoiler]
Sorry for the hijack, but the OP was already answered. Ha! Hijack! In a gun thread!
When a questionably negligent manufacturing defect causes it to do that when it’s not supposed to. The Remington 700 saga is a particularly noteworthy case in point.
Do you have any idea what you are talking about? You’re talking about two different extremes with no apparent understanding whatsoever of the differences between them.
Armor piercing bullets do exist–they usually consist of some dense material (such as hardened steel or even depleted uranium) surrounded by a softer jacket. They are used in the military to penetrate armor (hence the name), as well as concrete and ballistic vests. So-called “tank-buster” aircraft such as the A-10 utilize large caliber armor-piercing bullets to penetrate tank armor. Incidentally, contrary to popular belief, coatings such as Teflon do not make a bullet armor-piercing; instead, the coating is merely used to reduce wear on the barrel of the firearm.
To function properly, armor-piercing bullets need very high muzzle velocities. They simply will not work in pistols and revolvers. This means that they are really only seen in rifles (or larger military guns such as on ships, tanks, and aircraft). With respect to hunting rifles, many commonly used hunting rounds can be considered to be “armor-piercing” because they need to be able to penetrate deeply to ensure that large game is brought down cleanly instead of simply being wounded.
Hollow-points are the complete opposite. They expand when they contact a target. If they hit a vest or armor, they are much less likely to penetrate it. If they strike a person directly, they are much less likely to go completely through, unlike fully-jacketed ammunition. If you are interested in home defense, an argument can be made that hollow-points are safer because they are more likely to be stopped by a wall, which might result in an unintended hit on a bystander behind the wall. They are also less likely to to result in a through-and-through shot that might hit an unintended target behind the intended target.
First, you get one of those lawyers who advertises on bus panels…
To be clear, the design intent of a hollowpoint bullet is to expand upon entering a hydraulic medium, thereby controlling the depth of penetration and delivering their energy without exiting. This does make hollowpoint rounds more effective (when they function properly), but saying that this means that they are “manufactured specifically to kill people and for no other reason,” ignores the reality that all bullets–even those made of rubber–pose a severe threat to life and limb anytime they are discharged in the direction of a living creature, and the difference in lethality between a solid full metal jacket or roundnose bullet and an expanding or fragmenting round is merely one of degree, not class.
While television has given us the idea that one can “shoot to wound,” “wing the guy in the shoulder,” or my personal favorite, “shoot the hostage,” the reality is that even a wound to the extremities can result in permanent maiming or death, and neither the ability of the average skilled shooter nor the precision of service-grade weapons makes it possible to avoid shattering bones or severing arteries. In short, if you have elected to drop the hammer on another human being, you have judged that he can only be stopped by a physical threat to his life, and have accepted responsibility for the good probability of death or significant injury.
What hollowpoint bullets are capable of is entering the intended body of the (presumably nefarious and threatening) target, delivering their energy to the target in a controlled manner, and remaining within that body, thereby posing less of a hazard to bystanders who might be concealed in the backdrop. If placed correctly, they will also disable the attacker in fewer shots, further reducing incidental hazard to bystanders. And if the shooter should miss the target and hit a solid object like a concrete wall, a hollowpoint will deform and tumble, presenting far less of a ricochet hazard than a solid bullet that will rebound elastically and fly off at a potentially oblique angle.
Hollowpoint rounds are designed to reduce incidental hazard and stop an assailant with as few rounds fired as possible, which means fewer injured bystanders, a lessor threat to the defender, and quite frankly, fewer holes in the perpetrator. In a very real sense, hollowpoints are designed to save lives.
Stranger
I do understand the difference but I’m not a firearms enthusiast and I briefly conflated two types of specialty rounds a bit in my head. Christ people, take a breather.
And ExTank, you are way out of line. I had no political agenda whatsoever with my statement (for the record I appreciate firearms although I don’t own any), I was just idly musing as to whether manufacturing certain types of ammunition could be considered negligent if it was proven that they were designed specifically to inflict maximum damage on a human target.
I don’t think so.
Incendiary ammunition is outlawed in most states, so a private individual caught with it is held at fault (along with whoever sold it to him, if it is possible to figure that out), not the manufacturer.
There is a legitimate lawful use for the stuff (military), so production itself is not necessarily illegal. (Assuming, as a manufacturer, you get all the required permits, etc.)
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Colibri
General Questions Moderator
And yet Ex Tank can be called “clearly unstable” for being a gun owner and that’s suddenly ok?
In fact, a quite normal rifle round like .308Win FMJ, will pass easily through at least 0.5-1cm of mild steel. You’d literally need armor steel to guard yourself against something like that. Ordinary “bullet-proof” vests? Bah, piece of cake.
They were taken off the market as unsafe after someone tried to used them as rivets.
If you see a post that you believe is inappropriate, please report it. I don’t necessarily read every post in the thread.
Colibri
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Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Doesn’t seem that way. Winchester was sued over its “Black Talon” ammunition after it was used in the 1993 Long Island Railroad mass murder by wingnut Colin Ferguson. Quoting Wiki, “the claims were dismissed because it was held that the bullets were not defectively designed.”
Short of an explosive tip, I’m not sure what you could do to a bullet to make it more damaging than a Black Talon.
My point was that even when you substitute “hollow-point” for “armor-piercing” in your first quote, the resulting sentence makes no sense.
First off, a ballistic vest generally will stop a hollow-point bullet fired from a typical handgun. (Whereas no soft vest will stop a high-powered rifle round, whether it’s “armor-piercing” or not.)
Secondly, your sentence then changes to “hollow-point bullets are manufactured specifically to kill people and for no other reason.” As Stranger On A Train so eloquently explained, that is not the sole purpose of hollow-point bullets. When compared to conventional ammunition, and especially when compared to full-metal jacketed (FMJ) ammunition, hollow-points are much less likely to cause harm to innocent bystanders.
Finally, because the two types of ammunition are so different (and could be considered to be two opposing extremes of a spectrum), I just find it hard to believe that anybody who knows anything about ammunition would conflate the two, especially when you throw in the stuff about bullets being “manufactured specifically to kill people and for no other reason.” :rolleyes:
There are other purposes for firearms and ammunition, you know. I pass an armed security guard outside of a bank on my way to lunch every day. Is the sole purpose of his pistol and ammunition to kill people? How many people do you think he has killed this week? :rolleyes:
I do not understand this part of your post. Why does the security guard have the pistol, if not to fire it at someone if necessary? Firing a warning shot into the air?
Not trying to be contrary; just genuinely confused.
What do security guards typically do all day? Fire warning shots in the air? Shoot people?
Of course not–they just stand there with their firearm as a deterrent to potential criminals. Of course, to be a credible deterrent, the firearm and ammunition have to be functional.
Think about it–why else would the bank arm the security guard in the first place? Because they want the guard to shoot bank robbers, or to deter potential bank robbers from even making the attempt there in the first place?
Well, OK, but the only reason it works as a deterrent is because it will kill you when used as intended.
I mean, I sort of get what you’re saying. It’s like saying that the function of the US nuclear arsenal in the 1980s was to scare the shit out of Russia. But that’s only because the real function of the nuclear arsenal is to blow stuff up very effectively. Just because a weapon is scary doesn’t mean that being scary is its job. In my opinion.