Right to Opine

This really shouldn’t surprise anyone, since most of what passes for news in popular media regarding guns is inaccurate and/or outright biased. Today CNN reports in shock that hollow-point bullets were used in the murder of Hollywood publicist Ronni Chasen last week.

“One bullet was recovered from her back while at the hospital and is possibly from a 9 mm hollow point,” according to the document shown on Los Angeles television station KTTV.

Hollow-point bullets are controversial because the slug is designed to expand after it enters a body, causing greater damage to tissue than a solid bullet.

Hollow-points are only controversial to anti-gun crusaders and people who aren’t familiar with ammunition in general. Here’s the rundown on the two major types of ammunition available to the general public.

Jacketed rounds have a solid lead core which is fully or partially encased by a covering “jacket” of some other metal. This jacket minimizes the amount of deformation which takes place when the bullet hits its target. As a result, jacketed ammunition has an improved ability to pierce through hard materials such as wood, concrete, and steel. This property is highly desirable for military applications in which the target is often concealed by an obstacle of some sort. The major drawback to jacketed ammunition is a direct consequence of this property: jacketed rounds tend to overpenetrate or pass entirely through soft targets—such as humans. This is not a problem for the military, as the guy standing behind the target is highly likely to also be a target. In civilian and police applications, however, this is clearly not a desirable trait. Very often in such scenarios, other humans in the immediate vicinity of the target are not targets, but are innocent bystanders. A jacketed round is quite likely to penetrate all the way through the target and, on exit, strike something unintended.

Hollow-point rounds, on the other hand, are not jacketed (or are only semi-jacketed) and have a lead core with an indentation hollowed out of the point (hence the name). The shape of the bullet’s tip is designed to cause the lead to flatten—or mushroom—achieving two simultaneous and highly desirable goals: the increased surface area of the bullet after deformation causes more internal damage to the target (and increasing the probability that the target’s attack will be stopped) and it slows the bullet down so that it is much less likely to pass through the target into an innocent bystander. While hollow-points are used mostly in handguns, in recent years they have become available in some popular defensive rifle calibers (e.g., the .223 and 7.62×39 that the AR and AK rifles employ).

Although the CNN article certainly doesn’t tell you this, police everywhere in the U.S. use hollow-point ammunition and recommend that civilians do the same in their self-defense weapons—primarily for the two reasons highlighted above. So the fact that hollow-points were used in this murder—any murder, really—does not surprise anyone who has any real familiarity with guns and ammunition. Almost all handgun owners load their weapons with hollow-points.

This is not news—and certainly not headline news. It is merely more manufactured hysteria.

It was only six months ago that Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon, in an address to Congress, blamed the escalating drug war violence in his otherwise tranquil nation on lax American gun laws. He even called for reinstatement of the 1990s weapons ban—to thunderous applause from the leftists in the audience—even though the high-powered weaponry employed by the cartels doesn’t come from our shores and can’t be acquired here under current laws.

Now Arturo Sarukhan—Mexico’s ambassador to the U.S.—in an address to the Council on Foreign Relations, wants to tell a different story.

[Sarukhan] has criticised the international media for paying excessive attention to the drug-related violence in his country.

So which is it? Is the drug violence—rising murder rates, including beheadings and other gruesome and torturous executions—an impending disaster which can only be averted by undermining American sovereignty or is the reportage of the crisis overblown? You can’t have it both ways.

After a year of studying the incident—in which Muslim Army Major Nidal Hasan ruthlessly murdered a dozen fellow soldiers—and the events that lead up to it, the Army and Dept. of Defense have come out with their findings. The report focuses on information sharing between the military, FBI, etc.

The focus of the findings and recommendations in the Information Sharing area was the lack of policy, procedures and systems for the sharing of threat related information between the Services, Combatant Commands, DoD and other federal agencies such as the FBI.

Unsurprisingly for a government investigation, they reached exactly the wrong conclusion.

The Army report says no single action would have prevented Fort Hood.

And, of course, the Army notes changes which, while welcome, are still not the single action that could be taken to avoid a repeat.

The Army says it already has implemented changes, including having first responders move in quickly to respond to a shooting rather than cordoning it off and awaiting special teams.

And

[Military Police] are now authorized to use jacketed hollow point ammunition to reduce the risk of injury to innocent bystanders.

Those are certainly commendable, but they don’t address the real issue. Why not?

Major Hasan was able to carry out his murderous rampage for exactly one reason: he knew there would be no one able to return fire before he had accomplished his mission. You see, even though we trust soldiers with high-powered weapons in the field, they are not allowed to carry weapons on stateside bases. Just a few miles away, civilians walking the streets of Killeen have the ability to lawfully defend themselves with a firearm, but the very soldiers whose oath includes defense of the Constitution are denied the protection of the 2nd Amendment while on-base.

The DOD could take one “single action” which would with almost 100% certainty guarantee that such an incident is not repeated—allow our servicemen to carry sidearms on stateside bases. That the report does not include this recommendation (at least according to more than a dozen articles I read) is not surprising, but it is damnable.

Two U.S. Postal Service employees were fatally shot in TN. The perp is still at large. Think he would have been as bold if he thought half the people in the building were armed instead of knowing they weren’t?

A former employee of Emcore Corporation forced his way past “security” with a handgun and killed two people inside.

[Police Chief Ray] Schultz called the Emcore campus a “very secure facility”

Yep. Very secure.

It wasn’t known how Reza got past security at Emcore Corp.

Um…he had a handgun. I’d bet dollars to donuts the “security”—if it’s like most such corporate mall cops—didn’t. Brilliant idea. Disarm your employees for “safety” and post Paul Blart at the front door. As long as companies can’t be held legally responsible for the safety of their employees when they disallow personal protection, most workplaces will remain safety-free. The notion that they are gun-free would be laughable if it weren’t so often tragic.

How does a single mom, home alone with her infant child, protect herself from a knife-wielding attacker? Here in the U.S., she has the option of arming herself for her own protection. In the U.K., she just screams while the assailant stabs her and her child to death.

Remind me again how that gun ban’s working out for ya’.

From the only-in-California file, the state’s legislature has passed a law banning violent felons from owning body armor. Not surprisingly, the Gubernator signed it yesterday:

“Violent felons wearing body armor pose a dangerous threat to our communities and especially to our men and women in law enforcement,” Schwarzenegger said.

You know, Arnie, the real problem ain’t the body armor…it’s the violent felons. The law was apparently inspired by the infamous North Hollywood bank robbery of 1997.

In 1997, two bank robbers wearing body armor exchanged hundreds of rounds of gunfire with LAPD officers in a takeover robbery at a Bank of America in North Hollywood. Some of the bullets fired by police were deflected by the body armor worn by the robbers. The battle left 11 officers and seven civilians wounded. The two robbers were eventually killed by police during the shoot-out.

Let’s see here. Robbing a bank is already illegal. Robbing a bank with guns is, um, armed robbery, which is double-illegal. Now robbing a bank with guns and body armor will be triple-illegal. So the nutjobs who run CA believe that criminals who are willing to commit an armed felony are going to hear about this law and think, “Yeah, I’m all for using my rifle to rob a bank, but, gosh! I can’t wear body armor, ’cause it’s illegal. Guess I’ll skip the body armor today.”

This is what happens when you hand over your legislature to the far left—a bankrupt state that’s drowning in red ink, unemployment, and punitive taxes (all three of which are very closely related) wherein law-abiding citizens find it almost impossible to arm themselves for protection but have representatives whose idea of keeping them safe is passing yet another law that criminals are going to ignore.

Armed thug invades home. Armed 80-year-old homeowner shoots and kills said thug. The perp probably thought he’d have an easier time of it, not just because of the occupants’ ages, but because…this happened in Chicago, where the homeowner wasn’t supposed to possess the handgun that saved his and his wife’s lives.

No charges have been filed against the homeowner, but Chicago currently has a statute outlawing the possession of handguns. Its legality is currently being decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

A high-profile Chicago attorney has already stepped forward offering to represent the man pro bono if he faces charges for possessing a weapon.

“Self-defense isn’t just a right, it’s a duty,” said attorney Joel Brodsky. “If this man is prosecuted for saving his own life it’s not just a travesty, it’s justice turned inside out.”

Chicago’s Mayor Daley—and the rest of his gun-grabbing ilk—would rather have two innocent, elderly victims dead than allow them the ability to defend themselves in their own home.

The UK must be so proud of its ban on private ownership of handguns. How is an 89-year-old woman supposed to defend herself from an attack by a 28-year-old home invader? She can’t. She simply gets raped.

Repeat the leftist mantra: “Handguns are bad. They kill people.” Yeah, whatever. Just be honest about it. You hoplophobes would rather have society suffer atrocities than allow people to protect themselves from animals like this.

A woman stabbed four people at a Target store in LA before an off-duty sheriff’s deputy stopped her. I, for one, am sick and tired of reading stories about people being stabbed by knives. It’s high time we banned private ownership of knives. All knives. They kill people.

The stabbing set off a stampede among customers, authorities said.

Well, duh. California has made it impossible for its residents to legally carry virtually any kind of weapon for self-defense. What do you expect? Of course they’re going to run in panic. Here in AZ, there’d have been at least five people within the next two aisles who’d have stopped her with their concealed handguns before that deputy even showed up.