Thursday, May 28, 2009

Reloads for self defense?

With the skyrocketing cost of self defense ammo, I’m starting to re-think the issue of using reloads for carry ammo. The traditional mindset has always been that this is a no-no. Many years ago I had a long conversation with Massad Ayoob on this subject and he convinced me that it just wasn’t worth it to use reloads for a self defense scenario. His logic was that if you did happen to shoot someone, you did not want some prosecutor saying something like this: “Your honor, this crazed individual was not happy using standard, commercial ammo – no he had to concoct his own very own brand of super duper killing ammo”.

So I understand the argument, but does it really hold water? What if I carefully construct ammo that duplicates commercial ammo as best I can? My current favorite self defense ammo for the 9MM is the Cor-bon DPX with the Barnes all copper bullet. It penetrates deeply, expands reliably and defeats barriers better than anything else. The bad news is that it runs $35 to $40 per 20 round box – if you can find it. My cost to reload it is about $16 per box. I have developed a reload using this bullet that essentially duplicates the ballistics of the commercial load.

So my argument in court would be: “Your honor, because of the high cost of commercial ammo and the poor availability I chose to duplicate this load on my own. I would be happy to submit these reloads to whatever testing you deem appropriate to substantiate this claim”.

So what do you think? Am I being naïve and perhaps too logical, or am I on to something here?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Dave,

Sadly your friend is probably correct. Courts are driven by TIME. They have no time to consider your truth, they will glomm onto whatever is expeditious. Also, the judge will weigh the two main points "Hmm.. You're off saving cost while the other guy is dead. What?!"

Only argument would be that this is safer for the public, or more selective to disable but not kill the target (military FMJ argument), etc. In fact, referencing the principles of war would be excellent: proportionality, target selectability, etc. THAT'S why a court would like your loads.