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

Using the Bias case as the justification to not use reloads for self defense is a massive stretch of imagination.

Yep.

I use factory only due to concerns about reliability, but what's in the gun isn't relevant in a straight up lethal self-defense case. You either were justified or you weren't. Non-relevant factors are barred from evidence and testimony.

Sasha and Abby: And if you think the relatives of the "perp" will not instigate a "trial" (civil action/suit for wrongful death!) on their own behalf - then you are simply pathetically naive!
I carried a gun professionally for 39 years and the three entities I worked for (one for 29 years!) all prohibited "handloaded ammunition" by us employees!
Most all the reasonings centered around "civil liability" experiences.
Think this through and do what I do/did - use top quality factory ammunitions.
Remember once you are sued civilly in a civil court your assets (homes, properties, cars, businesses etc!) can be tied up (unable to sell!) for the duration of the civil court process - these civil court proceedings/processes are lengthy (years!) and expensive (in real dollars!)!
Take it from someone who's been there - done that!
Carry the factory stuff for personal and home protection.
PERIOD!
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

Ammo, choice will not stop a civil lawsuit, so what’s your point?

OK. Sometimes I get up in the morning and it takes a couple cups of Joe to get the synapses working. Thanks for answering.

I don't know about anyone else, but do I have to defend myself or someone else with a gun, any gun, I will not be firing one shot. I will keep shooting until the gun is empty, the aggressor is down and ceases movement or I am dead. I am not about to shoot someone I do not have to and I am not about to do anything less than everything it may take to save me or whomever. What kind of ammunition I use is secondary to that. I do not care if it vaporizes the aggressor like a .223 hitting a chipmunk. The entire argument is a fools errand. Defending your life is a given absolute right. The method of doing so is the individual's choice and no other's.

You are by no means being dense. Given the circumstances what you posit would absolutely be the approach any lawyer would try to take involving such a scenario. The problem is that it is a complete assumption that the court would allow such and even if they did allow it you can be absolutely certain, and I mean 100% certain, that the prosecution would impugn the validity of such evidence to the best of their ability. I’ve already cited Bludreax’s post on the shenanigans one can find oneself facing in the legal system and deflave, even though more on the other side of argument, posted this:

“Do you want me to rattle off a list of things a prosecutor could use in the pursuit of a conviction?”

The implication here is that if the prosecution has a kitchen sink to throw you can expect to have to duck and he’s dead right.

Now back to your, on the surface, reasonable argument of just using what can be found of the defendant’s being used to generate the exemplars. I was able to track down more of the story than the truncated version I posted earlier. It included some information germane to your point.

John Lanza, the attorney defending a young man against a charge of Murder, has just told me, "The state will contend that a different load with a different powder charge was used than what we determined from the defendant's reloading notes was likely to have been in the gun at the time the fatal shot was fired."

I obtained the necessary mould, and working with gunsmith and expert witness Nolan Santy, put together exemplars of all three of Danny's handloads that were in the mixed box. The three remaining cartridges from the death weapon could not be disassembled or test-fired. They were the property of the court, evidence in what was developing as a murder case, and the necessary tests would literally "destroy the evidence." It was not permitted.
Exemplar evidence is evidence that is not the actual thing at the crime scene, but is identical to it. With the duplicate loads in an exemplar six-inch Smith, Santy and I determined the 2.3 grain Bullseye load with the little 115-grain bullet would deposit GSR to perhaps three feet. At that distance, it left only about a dozen loose particles. At 24" there was still only loose particles, and even at 20" the powder would still be in very loose particles, with virtually nothing embedded. The 2.6-grain and 2.9-grain loads deposited slightly more GSR particles, but still very loose with virtually nothing embedding. Particulate matter from these light loads was so sparse and had hit the white cotton cloth (the same background that had been used by the crack NJSP crime lab in Trenton for the prosecution's testing) so feebly it fell away from the cloth from the force of gravity. Thus, the indications were that with the loads we believed to have been actually in the gun, the GSR would be so sparse and lightly deposited it was entirely possible none remained by the time the body was forensically examined the day after the shooting.

I think it worth adding the above to the discussion since I didn’t have that the first time. (I still don’t know where the no kidding full text version is located, which is irritating) Since we’ve already seemingly reached the point where there’s some repetition/overlap in the comments I’m probably going to bow out here but wanted to make a final run at a summation, particularly where I might not have previously collected everything as well as I might have done.

The original reloading fallacy. I don’t think the argument has ever really been with most, and certainly nothing I’ve offered on the matter, about reloaded ammo making a “good” shoot into a “bad” shoot. When discussing reloads I’m not envisioning this exchange.

Officer 1. “Looks like a clear cut case of self-defense to me at this point.”
Officer 2. “The guy just said he was shooting reloaded ammo.”
Officer 1. “Ah hell…better go ahead and get the DA on the line.”

There is no gunshot forensics being argued in what is being legally considered as a good shoot. Coming at the question from the good shoot being compromised by reloading is pretty much a red herring. It’s looking for an answer without a question. If the legal side of things is looking into firearm forensic evidence you’re already in rapidly warming water as simple “Well, looks like a clear case of self-defense.” didn’t sell from the outset. Which segues to…

The “good guy” fallacy. I know this has been brought up before (IIRC DocRocket had a pretty big post on the matter some time back) but the LEO and investigators are not under some obligation to just accept your side of the story and “sketchy” circumstances don’t mean you didn’t do pretty much everything right as best you could under the situation you faced at the time. Feces happens and sometimes good guys can find themselves very deep in it and this idea that merely seeing yourself as the good guy and telling the truth will clear everything right up is simply making another assumption that might not hold up for you in real life. If you’re sitting there at the defendant’s table it’s, at least “supposedly”, the “good guys” arguing to make the charges against you stick. You are the accused. I don’t think I’ve stressed this enough in earlier posts though I think I’ve tried. If you’re in court across from a prosecutor and a whole team being paid with tax dollars working for the single purpose of making you take the fall for something you did there is nothing, and I mean NOTHING, in the evidence pool that could help your case you want anything other than as pristine as possible. Put it all together and…

I’ve previously stated that the central point to the entire reload vs commercial ammo argument is nothing more complicated than controllable risk. Succinctly anything that could produce a “maybe” that is controllable is probably best left out of the equation. MAYBE, given the circumstances of the case and the crazy number of variables one could get reloading evidence that could prove exculpatory into court. There is still a 100% chance prosecution is going to attack it just as they would anything else they think might be vulnerable but MAYBE the prosecution could at worst be stalemated in such efforts. Or one could carry standardized commercial loads thus controlling for any ambiguity to the greatest degree possible.

So in the end we’re left with basically three groups. A)Believes it’s all a myth. There is literally zero possible negative outcomes possible with using reloads and no court would ever find the use of handloads any different than the use of commercial loads. B)Believes there may be some miniscule, tiny possible issues that hypothetically could arise in the worst possible scenarios but the odds are so remote it hardly seems worth considering and even then, in the end, things would probably sort themselves out. C)Believes that regardless of how unlikely the scenario of reloads being problematic is if the question is “Could it?” and the answer is “Yes.” then the threshold to eschew reloads for defensive carry is already met. Obviously we should all hope that not a single one of us ever has need to engage in lethal force defense regardless of any other aspect, including how one is armed. Regardless of where one sits in the above groups (A, B or C) hopefully we come out of this thread having had more to ponder than when we went in. Outside of that the final decision is one’s own.

The defense would show doubt on anytime expert testimony of the prosecution as well that is simply the adversarial part of the justice system.

Your officer 1 conversation with officer 2 is BS if it is a clear case of self defense the type of ammo is not realevent.

The long posts are put nessecary to make a point.

Maybe you were reading too fast and perhaps even had some bias get you ahead of what I actually posted. Please read this again with emphasis added.

The original reloading fallacy. I DONT' THINK the argument has ever really been with most, and certainly nothing I’ve offered on the matter, about reloaded ammo making a “good” shoot into a “bad” shoot. When discussing reloads I'M NOT ENVISIONING THIS EXCHANGE.

Officer 1. “Looks like a clear cut case of self-defense to me at this point.”
Officer 2. “The guy just said he was shooting reloaded ammo.”
Officer 1. “Ah hell…better go ahead and get the DA on the line.”

The entire reason for this hypothetical exchange is to point out that some people on the pro-reload carry side of the argument actually assume this is something believed by the other side. (there's no accounting for crazies but they're definitely the outliers) It's a fallacy. It matters because if the fallacy is believed it gives them the ability to be dismissive of the whole of the argument from the outset which is a disservice to all parties involved.

I'd pretty much intended to have my last post actually be my last...precious little to add and anyone having their mind made up at this point in the conversation isn't likely to change now...but 475's taking that part of my post so out of context really needed addressing.

Frequently I cannot find the best defense loads available locally. However, I can usually completely duplicate these loads by handloading. I would go to a jury with this argument anytime.

Not dissing, but why the hell would you volunteer information about your ammunition? You are going to jail, weapon and ammunition are confiscated. Don’t say anything without a lawyer that could come back and bite you.

The whole argument as presented by the OP is unmitigated BS.

“Created the bullets?”

Has anyone been convicted on using reloads in self defense?

Convicted of what? “Creating billets?”

I didn't present the argument, I cut and pasted an article that I disagreed with as stated in my posts on this thread. But I didn't expect you to understand since you an argumentative retard.

Btw, you can kma.

I was in fear of my life, I want an attorney.
Then STFU

My translation of what I have read here about the Bias case is that the dude killed his wife and attempted to use the handload card to beat the rap. Then the case gets cited as the reason not to use handloads. Plus, the case is 30 years old and still seems to be the most recent one everyone cites for the proposition, notwithstanding the number of cases decided since then. That mostly serves as proof of how irrelevant the issue is.

This is by far a paranoid and over hyped argument. It has been tried in court a few times and from what I am told by a few friends in law enforcement including 2 who work for the FBI, the argument has never succeeded in court to favor the prosecutions side. Not even one time.

BUT>>>>>>>>>>>>> they all have agreed with the next 2 policies for home and self defense as iron clad ways to stop this exact argument about what gun or ammo you use: If you worry about being the next target of an anti-gun pro-big government prosecutor that is a very easy way to get around that admittedly very small potential for such a malicious prosecution.

#1 Ask the Sheriff or Police Chief what ammo they issue for the cops.
Buy some of that. If an idiot prosecutor tries to say "The Ammo was designed to kill and maim to a maximum extent" you simply ask the court why it's the issue ammo of the cops who arrested you?

#2. Use a hunting rifle with hunting ammo. (home/dwelling defense for the most part)
"Why did you use that gun and ammo?" says the prosecutor.
Because it's what I had handy and that what kind of ammo I buy to hunt with, but I bought it to hunt deer. There was never any thought to use this old rifle against people, but the criminal forced me to shoot, and that's all I had at the moment.

That #2 just really had me laughing and scratching my head in bewilderment.

Prosecutor Why did you shoot the man and your refrigerator with a 30.06? Isn’t that a bit large?

Answer, well it’s the only gun in the house with factory ammunition so I put it next to the night stand where my defense pistol sits, but it has handloads in them.

What really strikes me is that I haven’t bought a factory hunting round in 35 years either pistol or rifle. But, in my state I have no duty to retreat so if you kick in my door you are going to get shot handloads or factory doesn’t mean squat.

I think Ayoob gets all the factory ammo he needs for free, pimping for the ammo companies gets you a lot of benefits. Other than the reliability factor. He ain't going to bite the hand that feeds his guns for free. I watched that guy shoot at the 2nd Chance National street combat match (bowling pins) in 1979 he ain't no whiz, he has a line of BS and is good at spreading it. MB