So the big buzz on the gun blogs today is about Sebastian’s pondering on loading his own carry/self-defense ammo.
A few of my own thoughts on the matter. But first, I’m not a lawyer. This is my own opinion on the matter, and as I discuss it more with folks, read more on the topic, I may well change my mind down the line. But for now, here’s what’s rolling around in my head.
What if the only way you can have ammo is to load your own? For instance, you carry something that’s rather obscure. Maybe with the way ammo can be scarce these days (and perhaps in the future), perhaps the only way you’ll have access to ammo is by loading your own. How do such factors change the equation, and should they even change the equation?
If someone needs to be shot, what difference should it make if the ammo is loaded by an established factory (e.g. Federal, Winchester, Remington) or was loaded in your garage or basement? This is the same sort of argument about whether your carry gun should be a totally stock factory gun or if modifications are OK. Some say if you are using “non-factory” stuff you’re risking trouble, but how is that? If the shooting was justified, it’s justified. If it’s not justified, it’s not justified… factory or non-factory stuff really doesn’t enter into the equation. For instance, suppose you are strict about carrying a popular stock factory gun with factory ammunition, but you’re happy to have highly-customized guns with hand-loads to take to the range. You’re at home, someone breaks into your house and goes to attack your spouse. The only gun you have handy is one of your highly-customized guns loaded with hand-loads. Are you going to not use it? Are you going to put it down and go searching for your stock factory gun while your spouse is being physically assaulted? In the end, what difference does it make that you used a highly-customized gun to defend your spouse? The self-defense situation was cut and dry. If it wasn’t so clear, perhaps you shouldn’t be shooting in the first place.
Furthermore, why wouldn’t you want to use such things? A lot of guns come from the factory with crappy sights, crappy triggers, and a lot of other things that could be improved. If you need to shoot in self-defense, you’re already behind the curve and need to gain every advantage possible. So why would you cripple yourself with a crappy tool? Don’t you want the best possible tool you can have (and then practice and get training to put the best possible skills behind that tool)? If putting better sights, if getting a trigger job, if using hand-loads fine-tuned to work best out of that gun, helps you gain an advantage why wouldn’t you want to do that? Again, you should only be shooting if there’s a justifiable need.
That’s just how I see it. I could well be wrong.
Stuff From Hsoi 
Yes! I’ve been waiting for someone to bring this up for awhile.
How do the cops know your ammo isn’t factory?! If you use a factory produced bullet, factory brass, factory powder, and factory primers, who do they know it isn’t factory produced ammunition?
You shoot someone justifiably on the street, you’re telling me they are going to seize your gun, take it down to the crime lab, take apart your ammo and analyze it next to a factory loading of the same type? Just so the DA can what? Argue that you loaded the ammo to maliciously shoot someone? Seems like a lot of trouble to me.
Let’s get real, I don’t work for a crime lab, but I know it isn’t CSI, not all analyses come back in an hour or are straight cut. I really doubt they will do more than fire your gun and confirm the lands and grooves match to any bullet recovered and compare extractor and firing pin marks on any casings recovered.
Somehow, I doubt the crime lab guys are disassembling your ammunition to figure out whether you self loaded the ammo.
What’s my point here? Well, if they run an analysis and discover you hand loaded the ammo and they bring it up, then you just go back to your justified shoot, who cares what ammo. If they don’t ask, SHUT YOUR MOUTH!
It all comes down to justified shoot and keeping your frickin’ pie hole shut.
-Rob
In the end, if it’s justified it’s justified. If it’s not, it’s not. I don’t see how such things can enter into it. But, I am not a lawyer.
The thing is, I’m unaware of any court case where such things have been any sort of a factor at all. Granted no one wants to be the first, but in the end all of this is highly speculative and I just don’t see how it really holds legal grounds… maybe emotional grounds.
I have thought about it, but so far Mas has convinced me it isn’t worth the potential legal trouble to save $50.
If I had no other option, that would be different and you gotta do what you gotta do.
I believe Mas also says you should only carry a factory stock gun… that trigger jobs and improved sights and fluff and buff jobs (i.e. anything that improves the gun over factory) is also going to get you in trouble.
Where’s the proof?
I admit, if you don’t feel comfortable doing this don’t do it. I admit, I don’t want to become the guy that sets the precedent either. 😉 But let’s just look at the logic of the matter. If you had no other option (e.g. no more ammo available), the laws would still be the same… the self-defense situation would still be the same. So why is the potential risk more worth it then than now?
Actually, you probably save even less than $50.
What does a couple magazines of self-defense ammo cost? Around $25 depending on caliber and capacity.
What does a couple magazines of handloaded self-defense ammo cost? Around $15.
To me, the risk vs reward is just not there for $10.
If there is no other choice, well then the reward is a lot higher then.
I am in favor of trying to duplicate your carry load for practice. That is one nice thing about Gold Dots is that you can buy the bullet and load them yourself. (Well you can in theory anyway, they’re sold out every time I look for them.)
I’m not saying that one should do it one way or the other. To be honest, I’m undecided on this issue. One reason some people hand load is because they have great results, perhaps better than factory, because they can fine tune it. So why couldn’t you come up with something better? But like I said before, I don’t want to become the guy that sets the precedent. So I personally just use factory ammo because that’s all I can (not handloading yet, so it’s not even really a question for me).
But I think it’s an interesting discussion, and I just wanted to inject a few points that I haven’t seen other discussing in this debate.
Like many things, it’s a personal choice. You have to weigh the costs and benefits for yourself.
Mas Ayoob, has also made the point before, that having/using a custom firearm can help you in a court case. Certainly, I think if he really thought using only stock was a choice, he wouldn’t write up or carry some of the custom guns who has over the years. Meaning, I doubt Mas would own and carry Grant Cunningham custom Colt Revolvers, or an older Ernst Langdon Beretta.
The DA can make any claims he want, “Why do you carry .45 or .357 magnum loaded with hollow points? Aren’t those the rounds best known for KILLING people?! Are you saying you wanted to kill someone? Same thing, “Why do you carry _____? If you have a good reason, then you have a good reason.
Bottom line, do your best and keep your mouth shut, let your attorney do the talking.
-Rob
“I believe Mas also says you should only carry a factory stock gun… that trigger jobs and improved sights and fluff and buff jobs (i.e. anything that improves the gun over factory) is also going to get you in trouble.”
No. Mas does NOT say that. Why keep repeating rumors rather than going to the source? What he actually says is that there are only two modifications that are likely to get you into inextricable trouble in court — and he details what those two issues are and why he believes they’re likely to be a problem. He points out that every modification that makes the gun easier to fire or more pleasant to shoot, concomitantly makes it safer for the user, more controllable, and less risky for innocent bystanders should the gun need to be fired in self defense.
Similarly, contrary to internet rumor, I’ve never heard Mas say anything at all about handloads being unreliable, nor anything like that. He recommends handloads for practice ammunition, so he’s not anti-reloading in any sense of the word. Rather, what you get from him is a very reasoned discussion of the benefits of having court-admissible data with exemplars from a reputable third party should your case turn out to hinge on ballistics, issues surrounding gunshot residue, or related questions that require destructive testing of ammunition samples for any other reason.
It’s interesting because of course the common wisdom among online gunnies is that all you have to do is have a “good shoot” and questions like that just won’t come up. True enough, as far as it goes. The difficulty is that the very question of whether it’s a “good shoot” or not often hinges on physical evidence at the scene. If the physical evidence supports a claim of self-defense and supports your story, you’ll be in the clear. If it doesn’t, you won’t. Simple!
But between those two extremes, there’s plenty of room for ambiguity.
If the physical evidence is even a little unclear, or the story at all questionable in any way, it’s very likely that the prosecutor will decide to file charges and let a jury settle it. Once the system has decided to go forward with a prosecution, the entire investigation will be focused on finding inculpatory evidence (evidence that tends to support guilt) and will ignore exculpatory evidence (evidence that tends to support innocence). Which in turn means that it’s often difficult to get exculpatory evidence admitted at trial, particularly evidence you literally manufactured yourself. The handloads themselves were manufactured by you, and the scrupulously-careful records you keep (you do keep careful reloading records, right?) were also manufactured by you.
While whatever’s left of the load in your carry gun will be admitted into evidence, assuming you didn’t fire the gun dry during the encounter, it’s not likely to do you any good if any part of your case hinges on ballistics, residue, or related questions. That’s because your lawyer probably will not be able to convince the court to tear those rounds apart to weigh the powder or to allow you to fire them to test the residues that will build your case — since doing either of those things would literally destroy the evidence and there are all sorts of legal precedents about that. At the same time, your lawyer will also find it impossible to convince the judge to admit your handloading records as “proof” of what the rounds in your carry gun actually consisted of. You wrote those records yourself, after all, so that’s kind of like writing your own excuse note at school, not “proof” of anything at all. So if you ever need that type of evidence (as you very likely will in the very, very unlikely event you’re involved in a court case), but you carry handloaded ammunition, you’ve just shut off a major source of evidence that might have been critical to your legal defense.
Here’s a quote from LFI-1: “Know where the attack will come, and have a counter already in place.” Mas uses that line a lot, especially when he points out that lawyers cost a fortune. Every minute of time you can save your lawyer is an extra pile of cash you don’t have to pay out. Furthermore, even a good lawyer can have a bad day, and forget to counter something the prosecution brings up in court. Could an overzealous prosecutor try to get a jury riled up & worried about the type of ammunition you use? Of course one could. It might a fairly simple problem to counter, from an experienced defense lawyer’s perspective – but I’ve heard more than one experienced lawyer comment that ANY issue they have to counter in open court can create doubt in the minds of the jury and bias the jury against the defense. If the opponent creates enough doubt on enough different fronts, you lose your case.
As an example, Harold Fish didn’t lose his first court case “because he used 10mm ammunition.” That’s an oversimplification and an obvious misunderstanding of the issues in play — and put that way, it makes a great big easily knocked down strawman for the people who support carrying handloads. The truth is a bit more complex (as most legal issues are).
Harold Fish had three big problems: a somewhat-ambiguous story, a prosecutor out to make a name for himself, and a lawyer who was inexperienced at defending a true self-defense case. The ambiguous story opened the door for the prosecution to go forward in the first place. The prosecutor did everything possible to discredit Fish in court, including dragging his choice of ammunition before the jury, while the defense lawyer failed to counter a great many of the damaging claims about Fish that the prosecution made in court. So the jury convicted – and several of the jurors later commented that one thing that swayed their debates in the jury room was Fish’s choice of a “dangerous” and “deadly” caliber. That doesn’t mean that he was convicted because of the ammunition, but his choice of ammunition was most definitely a factor for that jury. Would the jury have convicted him if he’d used another type of ammunition? Who knows?! What we do know about his case is that the prosecution brought Fish’s choice of ammunition up in court, that the defense did a poor job of countering the prosecution’s claims, and that the jury members discussed their distaste for his ammunition choice in the jury room. Perhaps if Fish had a clearly-articulated reason for his ammunition choices, and also had a lawyer who understood the importance of getting those reasons in front of the jury, he might have had a better outcome in court.
So back to knowing where an attack will come and having a counter in place: even with the high cost of ammunition it seems to me that it’s not so difficult to practice with a handload that perfectly emulates your factory defense load, and then to use the matched factory load for carry. You get the benefit of practicing with ammunition that is ballistically identical to your carry load, but miles cheaper. And you get the insurance factor of having easily admissible evidence on your side should you ever need it. Keeping your legal self-defense options open is probably worth it.
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