Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Why You Should Avoid Handloads for Concealed Carry

a lawyer can present convincing reasons that a rock should be soft. Prosecutors are lawyers IIRC.

I've already cited Bluedreaux's post in that same line of thinking and am totally aware of where you're going. (and agree btw) I would argue what you're positing would fall more under the previously cited mens rea arguments. I've intentionally limited my take to the very specific and narrowly defined issue of gunshot forensics. In court both sides are going to argue the hell out of whatever they can make stick but jeopardizing the validity of physical evidence that could play a role in exonerating you (or possibly aid in you not even being charged in the first place) just seems imprudent to me.

To be clear I'm not really sure what the outright fearmongers are trying are tying to sell. The idea that "If you carry handloads you may as well accept you're going to jail if you shoot someone." is simply a given makes no sense in my mind. I don't believe that for a second. I do believe that, if it really comes down to gunshot forensics playing a role in the case, I'd much prefer every advantage in having any evidence that backs my story as admissible and vettable as possible and it's that belief that has me reload for practice but carry branded ammo. That's me...for everyone else I'll repeat "You pays your money and you takes your chances.".

I generally do not waste my time on these campfire whizzing matches, but I'm going to offer a little brain fodder here. What you do with it is up to you.

In the course of 31 years of LE I worked or was privy to about a dozen shootings of one citizen by another, which were reported as self defense incidents. For 10 of those years, I was the investigator for a prosecuting attorney who insisted I do a preliminary review of all cases submitted and with special attention to shootings, civilian or not.

In any cases where the shooter plainly used lethal force to protect themselves or another from imminent death or serious physical injury, no charges were filed. They were never a 'Defendant'. There were occasional cases of mutual combat. There were cases which were represented to be defensive shootings, but the evidence and/or witness statements were 180 degrees apart from what the shooter told investigators. Those were assault or murder cases.

Certainly we looked at ballistics, medical records and autopsies/reports as it relates to the plausibility of a defense claim. But not once the ammunition being reloads or factory loads affect the outcome.

Am I saying you should carry reloads? No. Do I worry if one of my frequently at-hand firearms is routinely stoked with handloads? Hell no.

People love to cite NJ vs Bias in these reload/factory load discussions, but few ever mention the fact he was convicted of manslaughter in that case. Bias' story was that his wife was shot at a close range when Bias tried to stop her attempted suicide using one of his handguns And here, in a nutshell, is why his story didn't hold water.

Thanks for your input, Sarge. Seems to settle it. Essentially confirms my first post in this thread.

Even from the forensics angle of the argument against handloads for self defense is pure fiction.

If anything, there will be less of a lot number of a specific type of factory ammo on hand than there would be a batch of handloads.

I can't think of anyone that reloads in batches of 6 or 15.

Thanks Sarge.

Sarge has it 100% Correct. In my opinion this has nothing to do with caring reloads.

Yea, I think I'll take my queues from the actual shooting investigator.

My plan is to carry reloads with me and then load them into the gun of whomever I shoot.

Thanks for the positive comments. I should add here that everything in my Page 3 post pertains to the filing (or not) of criminal charges. Civil suits are a different matter entirely. I can't say if any the dozen or so defense shootings I mentioned resulted in lawsuits. I can only tell you I was never subpoenaed for a civil case on any of them.

In Florida, if you've been cleared by police investigation, or by trial, on the basis of justified self defense, you are rendered immune from any law suit that's based on the circumstances on which you were cleared.

Same in MO, TRH. Not everyone is so fortunate.

First I’d like to open with saying I appreciate how pretty much everyone has remained cordial through the discussion. Sometimes on topics of this nature things can get…erm, weird.

I appreciate Sarge taking the time to look into this on his own and I had seen what was posted previously. In fact I’d done a pretty deep dive on this years ago which is how I arrived at my current stance of reload for practice and carry only commercial. The part of Sarge’s post to which I’d like to draw attention is the last part.

“Defense attorney John Lanza will open his case today.”

So what we read of Hickman’s account is actually part of the prosecution making it’s case. If someone were only to read that one would assume this would be about as open and shut a case as one could imagine. Taken at face value Hickman’s testimony would seem to completely controvert what the defense claimed. So how did it end up with a hung jury? So they had another trial that ended with another hung jury and the State giving up on the murder charge altogether. We apparently ended up having 4 trials with the final conviction of Reckless Manslaughter being predicated under an entirely different set of circumstances set forth by the prosecution. After doing some digging around I’ve found one of the sources that describes the case in more detail. I know I read an even more detailed source somewhere years ago but couldn’t find it quickly and didn’t think it’d be worth the effort.

NJ v Bias
On the night of 2/26/89, Danny Bias entered the master bedroom of his home to find his wife Lise holding the family home defense revolver, a 6” S&W 686, to her head. He told police that knowing that she had a history of suicidal ideation, he attempted to grab the gun, which discharged, killing her. The gun was loaded with four handloaded lead SWC cartridges headstamped Federal .38 Special +P.

Autopsy showed no GSR. The medical examiner determined that Lise Bias had a reach of 30”, and the NJSP Crime Lab in Trenton determined that the gun in question would deposit GSR to a distance of 50” or more with either factory Federal 158 grain SWC +P .38 Special, or handloads taken from his home under warrant for testing after Danny told them about the reloads. However, the reloads that were taken and tested had Remington-Peters headstamps on the casings and were obviously not from the same batch.

Danny had loaded 50 rounds into the Federal cases of 2.3, 2.6, and 2.9 grains of Bullseye, with Winchester primers, under an unusually light 115 grain SWC that he had cast himself, seeking a very light load that his recoil sensitive wife could handle. The gun had been loaded at random from that box of 50 and there was no way of knowing which of the three recipes was in the chamber from which the fatal bullet was launched.

We duplicated that load, and determined that with all of them and particularly the 2.3 grain load, GSR distribution was so light that it could not be reliably gathered or recovered, from distances as short as 24”. Unfortunately, the remaining rounds in the gun could not be disassembled for testing as they were the property of the court, and there is no forensic artifact that can determine the exact powder charge that was fired from a given spent cartridge.

According to an attorney who represented him later, police originally believed the death to be a suicide. However, the forensic evidence testing indicated that was not possible, and it was listed as suspicious death. Based largely on the GSR evidence, as they perceived it, the Warren County prosecutor’s office presented the case to the grand jury, which indicted Danny Bias for Murder in the First Degree in the death of his wife.

Attorney John Lanza represented Danny very effectively at his first trial, which ended in a hung jury. Legal fees exceeded $100,000, bankrupting Danny; Attorney Lanza, who believed then and now in his client’s innocence, swallowed some $90,000 worth of legal work for which he was never paid.

For his second trial, Bias was assigned attorney Elisabeth Smith by the Public Defender’s office. Challenging the quality of evidence collection, she was able to weaken the prosecution’s allegation that the GSR factor equaled murder, but because the GSR issue was so muddled by the handloaded ammo factor, she could not present concrete evidence that the circumstances were consistent with suicide, and the second trial ended with a hung jury in 1992. At this point, the prosecution having twice failed to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt, the judge threw out the murder charge.

It was after this that I personally lost track of the case. However, I’ve learned this past week that the case of NJ v. Daniel Bias was tried a third time in the mid-1990s, resulting in his being acquitted of Aggravated Manslaughter but convicted of Reckless Manslaughter. The appellate division of the Public Defender’s office handled his post-conviction relief and won him a fourth trial. The fourth trial, more than a decade after the shooting, ended with Danny Bias again convicted of Reckless Manslaughter. By now, the state had changed its theory and was suggesting that Danny had pointed the gun at her head to frighten her, thinking one of the two empty chambers would come up under the firing pin, but instead discharging the gun. Danny Bias was sentenced to six years in the penitentiary, and served three before being paroled. He remains a convicted felon who cannot own a firearm.

It is interesting to hear the advice of the attorneys who actually tried this case. John Lanza wrote, “When a hand load is used in an incident which becomes the subject of a civil or criminal trial, the duplication of that hand load poses a significant problem for both the plaintiff or the prosecutor and the defendant. Once used, there is no way, with certainty, to determine the amount of powder or propellant used for that load. This becomes significant when forensic testing is used in an effort to duplicate the shot and the resulting evidence on the victim or target.”

He adds, “With the commercial load, one would be in a better position to argue the uniformity between the loads used for testing and the subject load. With a hand load, you have no such uniformity. Also, the prosecution may utilize either standard loads or a different hand load in its testing. The result would be distorted and could be prejudicial to the defendant. Whether or not the judge would allow such a scientific test to be used at trial, is another issue, which, if allowed, would be devastating for the defense. From a strictly forensic standpoint, I would not recommend the use of hand loads because of the inherent lack of uniformity and the risk of unreliable test results. Once the jury hears the proof of an otherwise unreliable test, it can be very difficult to ‘unring the bell.’”

Ms. Smith had this to say, after defending Danny Bias through his last three trials. I asked her, “Is it safe to say that factory ammunition, with consistently replicable gunshot residue characteristics, (would) have proven that the gun was within reach of Lise’s head in her own hand, and kept the case from escalating as it did?”

She replied, “You’re certainly right about that. Gunshot residue was absolutely the focus of the first trial. The prosecution kept going back to the statement, “It couldn’t have happened the way he said it did’.”

I find more than enough evidence of handloads being a possible issue in the above, particularly comments from attorneys that were actually at ground zero in a murder trial. Who is going to be better equipped to comment on the issue than those literally having addressed the matter in court? My primary takeaway regarding this conversation is that my threshold for making the choice to carry commercial vs reloads is yes/no, up/down, pass/fail. As it’s a variable over which I have complete control I see literally no reason not to take the best odds available to me. The variation of the saying is something along the lines of “Carrying a gun in public puts you out on the ice and being involved in a shooting puts you on thin ice. Wherever possible, stay on the thickest ice you can.”. If not carrying reloads might make my ice even a mm thicker I’ll take that advantage, however how small or unlikely it would ever be needed.

I’m not sure how much there is to contribute beyond this without us falling into a repetitive rut. Everyone can (and should) do as they see fit. This forum is awash with people making their choices. Every single person here that walks out their door armed has made a myriad of choices starting with the desire to go armed in the first place. Revolver or auto? Your call. Brand/platform? Caliber? Bullet weight/type? (reload or commercial) Holster? It’s your show, you do you. As a fellow gun guy I support every one of you and your decisions on what you decide to carry even if it wouldn’t be my personal choice. I most sincerely hope anyone reading this never finds themselves in court having to justify defending themselves for any reason whatsoever. I just think when this particular topic comes up the more information we have on the matter the better. I’ve just wanted to pass along information on the subject I’ve run across, not try to convince anyone they're stupid for not seeing it "my way". Everyone’s personal take on the matter is their own.

Be safe out there.

This was not a self defense case, it was a murder/suicide case

Yep. Not relevant to a case of an armed person defending himself from a deadly threat. For straight, lethal force, self defense cases, the only issue to be considered is, "Did he reasonably fear for his life or limb at the moment he used lethal force?" This excludes any consideration of the ammunition used, since not relevant to this one question.

Within the context of the observation itself this makes perfect sense. If someone is shown to have justifiably used lethal force on someone in self-defense it shouldn't matter jack if they used an atlatl or a bazooka, right? This goes to the mens rea aspect some posit and it's pretty ridiculous to argue any aspect of the weapon itself being used being prejudicial against the shooter. (outside some crazy outliers) The key is the "For STRAIGHT, lethal force, self defense cases...". What if the case isn't so straight? What if in fact it's very crooked? People don't tend to find themselves facing charges in "straight" cases, which is were the forensic argument comes into play.


Let's say someone has to shoot some thug. His story and the shooter's story about events couldn't be more different. Of course his two angelic friends that were there are all synced up with their buddy's telling of the tale. Every single molecule of physical evidence that might support the shooter's story and controvert theirs could be invaluable. What if one of those things was gunshot forensics? Literally anything that could call the validity of such evidence into question would be most inconvenient, don't you think?

It is often brought up in a sort of "forest for the trees" kind of way about the inapplicability of the Bias case to a self-defense setting. What this ignores is that since the point in citing the Bias case is purely forensic the context of the case is pretty irrelevant. Forensics is forensics no matter the end result. Items show up in a lab with a set of testing parameters and the techs set about their tasks. Murder case? Suicide? Self-defense? Other? It's a lab...none of that should matter...they generate the results and from there it leaves the people in lab coats and goes to the people in suits and robes. If something can be shown to be a forensic issue in testing for one case what is keeping that testing issue from being problematic in another?

The distance that gunshot residue differed from a factory round, but according to the husband the woman should have had gunshot residue on her hand since she controlled the revolver according to him.

This is all BS, use for power loads and it matters not if reloaded or not.

Not wanting to retry the case but think it’s interesting that Bias’ lawyer argued that the 2.3 grain load wouldn’t consistently leave residue at distances more than 24 inches. I’m wondering who shoots themselves in the head while holding a pistol more than 2 feet away, especially from what I read the entry point was behind her ear, I can’t see a persons arms being long enough or flexible enough to accomplish that, and why there was no gsr on her hand since the hand holding the gun was more closer than 24 inches from the cylinder.

Maybe I'm being a little dense. I haven't had my second cup of coffee yet. This is a question about the unknowability of what's in a handgun load.

Let us just say A pops B in the parking lot at close range. A claims self defense. A appears to be a good responsible fellow. B was a meth addict. A turns over the pistol to the cops. He lawyers up. He used hand loads, and turns over his remaining loads from the batch and the reloading notes, which are thorough and immaculate.

The load in question was a 125 grain Hornady XTP .357 over Unique with a CCI small pistol primer. They were loaded 3 years before and were one of 200 rounds produced by A in this batch. The notes show this was the third time A loaded this recipe, and also show his prior loads working up to this batch.

How are these reloads going to effect the course of A's destiny? They have the loads. They have the notes. They have A's word that it was a defensive shooting. What's unknowable here?

You are not wrong in wondering how "A" is in a worse position for having used handloads--because he isn't. Even without reloading notes, one of the remaining rounds can be taken apart and the components identified, right down to the weight of the charge. At that point, both sides of the trial have all they need for whatever forensic/ballistic evidence they intend to present. Or, if they want to go load their own rounds and do some testing, they can--just like they'd be free to go buy more factory fodder once a factory round is identified.

Even if there are no extra remaining rounds from the gun (unlikely), and no extra rounds at the shooter's home (unlikely), and no reloading notes in the shooter's reloading room (unlikely), and the shooter can't recall what load he used (unlikely), and the load used in the shooting remains a mystery, other facts are going to decide the shooter's legal jeopardy long before the issue of handloads comes up. Realistically, if the prosecutor is down to the issue of handloads in trying to make his case, he knows he's already lost and is just grasping at straws.