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

MarineHawk, that was tongue in cheek, and I still feel that the real nugget in your response earlier, for me, was to get a good local attorney that knows how things work in your area

Well said. Guyandarifle’s post was excellent. I’ve copied and pasted it as a Word document for my files.

I have to express my dismay at Montana Man’s dismissive and frankly ignorant comments about lawyers being the cause of legal problems in America. This is akin to saying that engineers are responsible for you not being able to work on your own cars any more like you could when you were 22 years old and your car was a ‘65 F100.

Life is complicated. Things like law, medicine, and engineering are really complicated, and get more complicated with time. This is why we need experts with great intelligence and experience to work in those fields, so the rest of us can get along without having to acquire more than a smattering of their knowledge. Over my lifetime I’ve come to appreciate the marvelous intricacy and even beauty of our legal system. It does a far better job of protecting the rights of the individual citizen than most legal systems in this world have ever done. Now, I am NOT a lawyer. But I’ve hired lawyers when needed, and I’ve worked for lawyers as an expert advisor and witness. I’ve come to appreciate the value of their expertise.

My respect for the intelligence and incisive intellect that lawyering requires has played a large part in shaping my opinions on issues of firearms and the use of deadly force over the past 30 years. On the subject at hand, I.e. the advisability of carrying had loaded ammunition in one’s defensive firearms, I have come down on the side of using factory ammunition only precisely because doing so reduces the chances of something really bad happening to me or mine in the aftermath of a defensive shooting. Yeah, the chances are minuscule. Tiny. Even infinitesimal. But as we say in medicine, statistics and odds are cold comfort to the man who’s just been told he is going to die from a rare disease.

As for looking up court cases, I’m surprised no one has mentioned the guy in Arizona who went to prison in part because the 10mm ammunition he used to shoot a hiker on the trail was hand loaded. About 10 years ago? Seems to me that case is pretty relevant to this discussion. I know it impressed me at the time.

Bottom line: in the aftermath of a shooting, bad, bad things can happen to you even if everything you did in the shooting was righteous. As Flave pointed out, the list of things a prosecutor can think up to convict you is beyond your ability to imagine. As an armed citizen, your best bet is to strive to be as clean as you possibly can, legally speaking. Don’t hang f “Punisher “ decals on your equipment. Don’t carry openly. Don’t make stupid posts on the internet that some attorney can dig up as proof of your murderous state of mind. And so on. The practice of using stock firearms and factory ammunition for your defensive preps is part and parcel with this frame of mind.

Finally: in 30 years of studying and training in the Use of Deadly Force with many of the best experts in the field in America and overseas, I’ve learned that all you can do in your planning and training is no guarantee of a good outcome. You might get shot and die before your gun clears leather. You may go to prison for the rest of your life. Or maybe your life will go on pretty smoothly. What happens after the bullets leave the gun is going to be entirely unpredictable. The first rule of successful gunfighting is not to bring a gun; the first rule is to never get into a gunfight.

"Punisher" logos, which relate to vigilante movies, are obvious problems. Ditto the A/R's of a few years ago that had a bunch of skulls hydro-dipped on the action. Those would be hard to explain, depending on the circumstances

Sage Advice!!! Great stuff Doc!

Kind of like a violation of the Third S before the First S even becomes an issue.

Doc Rocket mentioned the case of Harold Fish the Arizona hiker that shot an attacker with a 10mm. The Prosecution made a big issue of the 10mm being more powerful than a typical police issue weapon. Mr. Fish hiked in mountain lion and black bear country and his defense offered that fact as to why he carried the 10mm. The prosecution also took issue with the hollow point ammunition used by Mr. Fish. These hollow points were not handloaded, they were factory loads. It is an interesting case, scary actually that an over zealous prosecutor can manipulate facts so easily and get an conviction. Harold Fish spent three years in prison as a convicted murderer before he finally won an appeal that set him free.

Here is one view of the case...

https://armedcitizensnetwork.org/guns-appearances-matter

That sucks. Glad he finally got out of prison.

Paul Harrel has a great video that talks about the Harold Fish case.

I’d like to see that video.

Should not & not gonna

Interesting, but not enough info to know how I feel about this case.