I’ve found this to be perhaps the most visceral and contentious of gun forum debates. When I suggest to someone that the ammo he crafted himself might be a handicap in court, it’s as if they had just prepared a Thanksgiving feast for their family from scratch, and I’d told them “Don’t poison your family with that crap, go out and buy them some KFC.”
Source: Massad Ayoob » Blog Archive » THE PROBLEM WITH HANDLOADS FOR DEFENSE
Seriously, I keep hearing people still arguing this subject and for the life of me I can’t understand the stubbornness. Go read the article and follow the links in there.
Mas sure has a way with words.
My mentor, a prolific hand loader and excellent shot, responded to my enthusiasm for a new load I had developed:
“No, you DON’T want to use that load when you carry!”
Why not?
“Because you should be able to say in court that you just used the bullets that the gun store guy recommended.”
That was 20 years ago.
It was advice that I have always followed.
Most often you shouldn’t say anything at all in court. It is usually foolish for a defendant to take the stand.
NJ v Bias isn’t a self defense case. It’s Mr Bias claiming his girlfriend shot herself and there being no compelling evidence that he didn’t shoot her.
Mr Ayoob frequently cites two other cases of LEO self defense one with hand loads and one without. The one without underscores his point well that the factory made, department issued ammo was a text book case where the residue matched exactly in the lab as the forensic evidence.
The precedents are so scanty that one really can’t come to a conclusion about it being a good idea to use handloads or not.
In the Bias case, you can make a decent case that you should NEVER have handloads in the house.