reloads and the law

Please understand that I don't disagree with all that's been said here, but what I don't understand in this thread and the hundreds of others just like it posted all over the Internet, does using factory ammo make a person immune from a civil suit? Just seems to me that if a prosecutor or a lawyer in a civil suit could use your handloads against you in court they could just as well use factory loaded ammunition to achieve the same goal.

Bajadoc said:

How would anyone know it was a reload? If facing legal issues don't talk a lot, consult an attorney.

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Ill go ahead and ask this question again since it wasn't addressed. How could they tell if a reload was used. What determining evidence would there be, being of coarse you didn't offer up the info yourself??

Longitudinal marks on the case indicating that it had been run through a resizing die.

Cast lead bullets. Metalurgical analysis of the bullet, non-standard inclusions.

Primer/case mismatch - like a Federal primer in a Winchester case. (Yes, Virginia, it is possible to identify manufacturer of primers)

Bullets that are not found commercially loaded.

And I'm sure others could add to this list. That's just a start.

Flash

chingachkook said:

Please understand that I don't disagree with all that's been said here, but what I don't understand in this thread and the hundreds of others just like it posted all over the Internet, does using factory ammo make a person immune from a civil suit? Just seems to me that if a prosecutor or a lawyer in a civil suit could use your handloads against you in court they could just as well use factory loaded ammunition to achieve the same goal.

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Using commercial ammo will not protect you from lawsuits. Look up Black Talon. No suit were won as far as I know and the alledged effects were mostly hype but that didn't stop the lawyers from trying. Remember that a lawyers job is to win for his client. He will introduce anything that will help him and he can convince a judge to allow. If you ever doubt that then ask yourself if you really think Johnnie Cochran believed O.J. Simpson was innocent.

I have to amend my earlier remarks: When choosing ammunition you do need to consider the state you live in. Apparently some states actually allow ammunition selection to be introduced as evidence in an intentional shooting. I didn't know that. Seriouisly, I thought that would have gone the way of pressing.

So if you pop a cap into some drooling goblin at 5:30 in the morning you don't want more complications in your life. A .357 Hydrashok is going to splatter the bad guy's lung and heart tissue all over the far wall. In some states it is very possible some snot nose DA or pissant Ninjacop may decide that you went a little too far in ventilating the schmuck. I mean he's not really responsible for being a dirtbag. Maybe his mommy didn't toilet train him right. I guess in those states you don't want to have to explain to a jury how you sit in your garage and load ammo that will splatter a bad guy's lung and heart tissue all over the far wall.

In the civil case remember that the dead drooler's mommy will be sobbing in the front row and may your Gods have mercy if the goblin you caulked is not the same race or ethnicity as you are.

In our Utah CWP class last Sunday, the instructor highly recommended that people use the same ammunition as the police use, including but not limited to, the various types of +P and +P+ type "police only" ammunition. He said the "police only" type ammo was a manufacturer restriction, not a legal restriction.

Pretty hard for a DA to use ammunition against you when you use the same as the local police.

FWIW.

Jellybean, JC4013, and P&RFan have nailed it.

So to put it more clearly it isn't the ammunition we use to defend ourselves and our loved ones, but a legal system that has been so perverted as to reward the criminals and lawers in an effort to rape their victims not once, but twice. Hope and Change???

chingachkook said:

So to put it more clearly it isn't the ammunition we use to defend ourselves and our loved ones, but a legal system that has been so perverted as to reward the criminals and lawers in an effort to rape their victims not once, but twice. Hope and Change???

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I think so and I can see some wisdom in the advice that a gun owner must be more afraid of the legal system than an intruder.

chingachkook said:

Please understand that I don't disagree with all that's been said here, but what I don't understand in this thread and the hundreds of others just like it posted all over the Internet, does using factory ammo make a person immune from a civil suit? Just seems to me that if a prosecutor or a lawyer in a civil suit could use your handloads against you in court they could just as well use factory loaded ammunition to achieve the same goal.

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That has puzzled me too. From comments on other threads it seems that many people think that as long as you are using factory ammo you are safe from prosecution or civil suits. And many others say that the use of factory ammo is one less thing that can be used against you. If you are in a situation that drags you through the proverbial mud with handloads, you are going to go through the exact same puddle with factory ammo.

Opposing counsel will find fault with your ammunition no matter what you used, and your attorney is going to suck up your life savings like a roll of Bounty paper towels. The only case I'd heard of where a prosecutor villified the ammunition used in an alledged self defense shooting was the Harold Fish case, for which information was available on the internet and on one of the real life court TV type shows. The defendant shot, and killed, an alledged attacker with a 10mm pistol. During the investigation a local police officer had mentioned to the prosecutor that the 10mm was a very powerful cartridge and was too powerful for police to use, which the prosecutor mentioned in the trial. (Two or three jurists said later that that statement did have an affect on how they ruled.) The defense counsel apparently never said a word about the fact that the FBI found the 10mm to be the ultimate police weapon, probably because he didn't know a thing about firearms.

If you are ever put into such an unfortunate situation, your choice of ammunition is no where as important as your choice of silver tongued orators. And since it is so hard to find an attorney that knows anything about firearms and ammunition, it might be a good idea to defend yourself with something they have more knowledge about, such as a golf club, whiskey bottle or hooker.

That last line was just a joke by the way, I know many attorneys that don't play golf. Where is that dang smiley thing when you need it?

Hi Mas, how have you been? I haven't seen you around here in awhile, but then I have restricted myself to the reloading forums.

It's worth remembering: Lawyers are experts in the law and its application, not experts on firearms, ammunition or even their use.

Jellybean said:

If you are ever put into such an unfortunate situation, your choice of ammunition is no where as important as your choice of silver tongued orators. And since it is so hard to find an attorney that knows anything about firearms and ammunition, it might be a good idea to defend yourself with something they have more knowledge about, such as a golf club, whiskey bottle or hooker.

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Now that's funny!!!

BTW- We are half way to the 12 pages I predicted for this thread...

Jellybean said:

If you are ever put into such an unfortunate situation, your choice of ammunition is no where as important as your choice of silver tongued orators. And since it is so hard to find an attorney that knows anything about firearms and ammunition, it might be a good idea to defend yourself with something they have more knowledge about, such as a golf club, whiskey bottle or hooker.

That last line was just a joke by the way, I know many attorneys that don't play golf.

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That smiley you were looking for is on my face. Thank you for adding some humor to an accurate description of what our legal system has become.

I believe the main issue with handloads is that with no factory-spec ammo to test, the forensic boffins will not be able to give a proper estimate of HOW FAR AWAY the shooter was from the shootee when he pulled the trigger. If that question is a key element of the police investigation, handloads will cause you serious problems. Most SD shootings occur at five to seven FEET. If the shooter is a cashier at a liquor store, and the dead guy is lying on the floor six inches from the counter that the register is sitting on, no sane person is going to claim the cashier somehow shot him from 50 feet away.

The goal in a SD shooting is not to have the attacker die at some point, but to INSTANTLY INCAPACITATE the attacker, so he CANNOT continue his attack. Plenty of cops have been killed by BGs who had fatal wounds but were NOT incapacitated for the short time needed to squeeze the trigger and kill the cop. May, 1986 with the FBI in Miami, anyone?

In 1964 in St. Louis, there was an incident that we would now call a carjacking/kidnapping, where a BG with a knife forced a woman parked at a supermarket to drive him around in her car while he rifled her purse and looked for other ways to steal money to buy drugs. The woman tried to alert others to her predicament, but for over an hour no one noticed, including the attendant when she stopped for gas.

Finally, a police officer saw the car being driven erratically, and pulled the car over. The woman jumped out of the car and ran. The officer drew his gun on the guy in the passenger seat, and ordered him out of the car. The man complied, then lunged at the officer, and the officer shot him. The wounded BG grabbed the officer's .38 revolver with both hands and took it away from him. The officer ran to his patrol car to radio for help, and the BG fired two shots at him. The officer radioed for help, then collapsed in the street.

The station sent out a call that said "police officer in need of aid, supposedly shot."

Two officers close by responded to the call. One began to aid the fallen officer and the other chased the wounded BG into the area of the Pruitt Igoe housing project, exchanging shots with said BG.

Then another officer, from the canine unit, arrives at the housing project. He and the cop giving chase decide to circle the building from opposite sides to get the BG. The first cop giving chase hears a shot, and then rounds the corner and comes face to face with the BG. Officer and BG fire at the same time. Officer's bullet hits BG in the chest, BG's shot penetrates cop's left forearm, ricochets off the badge on his chest, and hits his right hand, causing him to drop his gun. The twice-wounded BG staggers off.

Yet another cop sees this exchange of gunfire and fires 6 shots at the BG. TWO MORE cops (one of them a Project policeman) join in the shooting and BG falls down from his wounds and is arrested.

More officers arrive and find the canine officer on the other side of the building, DOA of a gunshot to the head. BG survives.

A BG with a knife gets shot, THEN takes the .38 away from the officer that shot him, and wounds two officers and kills one more with the remaining 5 rounds in the gun.

The dead canine officer leaves a widow and four children, one of them a 12-year-old boy.

The boy grows up and goes to work for the government. He is strongly anti-gun and spoke out often, both in print and on television, against Concealed Carry in Missouri during the twelve years it took us to get it passed. What is his position in the government, you ask?

He's our Prosecuting Attorney.

If he ever prosecutes ME for using ammo that is "too powerful" in a self-defense shooting, my lawyer is going to put him on the stand, make him read aloud the official police report of his father's death, and then ask him what would have happened if the officer who first shot his father's killer had been using a more powerful gun/ammo combo...

In one case, NJ v. Danial Bias, the attorneys who defended him through three trials both told me they felt he would not have been convicted if he hadn't had handloads in the death weapon. It was one of those forensic issues that John Ross just mentioned.

In several years of such debates, no one has ever been able to show me a case where the court DID take the handloader's word for what was in the gun at the time of the shooting, when gunshot residue testing to determine distance became a pivotal issue in the case.

That's the main reason I wouldn't want handloads in my defense guns. None of us can predict the circumstances of a shooting before it happens, nor the issues that will arise from it in court. I agree with John Ross that the power issue is an easy one for the defense to handle.

It only becomes a factor if there is a questionable shoot. Like, Daniel did to his wife. That case is closed. Why do we keep trying it one the forums?

Just fear mongers spreading fear.

The moral to be learned from Bias is don't shoot your wife and then try to claim it was suicide, period.

Skip, "fear mongers spreading fear" is what the Brady Bunch call us because we keep and carry guns for self-defense. In fact, we're simply people who face a reality we don't like. Same with this issue.

Every shooting becomes a "questionable shoot" as soon as a question is raised, by definition. The questions raised are often utterly bogus, which is why we need to be able to refute them with hard, scientific evidence.

The tests the defense did with the handloads in his gun to determined GSR residue were exactly consistent with his description of a failed attempt to disarm a suicidal woman, as was the rest of the evidence. Unfortunately, testing was done with Federal +P factory ammo consistent with the headstamps on the reloads, which deposited GSR at a far greater distance than the light handloads in the death weapon. Read up on the case, and you'll find the evidentiary inconsistency was the only thing the prosecution had. Unfortunately, it appeared to the jury to be hard, scientific evidence, and that's probably why he was ultimately convicted.

The trouble was that the reloads could not be introduced because they were untrustworthy in source -- "the defendant literally manufactured the evidence!" -- and the guy wound up convicted. The rules of evidence are the same whether the defense theory is failed suicide intervention, or self-defense.

Both his attorneys said they believed the handloads paved the way to his conviction. Guess you know more about the case than the defense lawyers, though...

smith crazy said:

The moral to be learned from Bias is don't shoot your wife and then try to claim it was suicide, period.

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Very good advice.

BTW, in Bias was the defense allowed to bring up the reloads to the jury?

But if you guys really are wanting something to worry about...

If you are ever involved in a shooting and face subsequent legal actions. Every post you've ever made on a gun forum is admissible evidence. Hundreds, if not thousands of posts about guns. Picking and choosing, cutting and pasting, taking everything out of context. Heck, even a mediocre attorney could make any one of us look like Charles Manson.

Massad Ayoob said:

Both his attorneys said they believed the handloads paved the way to his conviction. Guess you know more about the case than the defense lawyers, though...

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No, I know almost nothing and I like to keep it that way. Keeps me from thinking of myself as an "EXPERT"


What I do know is that it means NOTHING about what the lawyers, good or bad, think or thought, it means nothing what you or other think or thought, it was what the people on the jury thought and NOW that is all that matters.

Like I said earlier, and the jury happens to agree with me or vice versa in this instance, that you shouldn't shoot your wife with your handloaded ammunition.

Here is where the EXPERTS got it wrong, the GSR test you claim to be true. Others have tested those same loads with much different results. But, hey, it isn't about the truth anymore, it's about reputation and ........You know what, I just got tired of this. Later!

What amazes me about this subject is how excited people get about it. Seems to me it's a lot easier, and cheaper in the long run, to just spend $20 or $30 on a box of quality, factory manufactured self defense ammo.