[Don P]

Mas Ayoob
Senior Member


Join Date: December 1, 2005
Posts: 214 Bob, the defense moved to get the remaining rounds examined. The prosecution used the arguments that (a) the defendant literally manufactured the evidence, and the round in the chamber could have been made intentionally different from the others to throw the investigators off; (b) that since the test was destructive, the defense was requesting the court to destroy the evidence; and (c) the defendant had mixed slightly different variants of the light load in the same box, and it could not be determined which was in the chamber.

Hopefully, (c) would not be a problem for anyone here. I thought (b) was BS myself, since one key purpose of having evidence is to test it if necessary. The (a) argument was what stuck. "The defendant literally manufactured the evidence, your Honor! The court cannot accept it" is an argument that resonates in a courtroom, and will come back to haunt any of us who carries hand loads.

I appreciate Al Norris' dedicated research and the absolute honesty with which he has presented it here. He has noted that none of the hand load cases he found revolved around GSR testing to determine distance.

Therefore, we're down to one case where the use of the hand load sent the guy who loaded them in the family defense gun to prison, and zero cases where the hand loader's records or testimony as to the load was accepted. One to nothing is a score that gives us a fairly decisive preview of what we can expect if we're involved in a disputed, close-range shooting with hand loads.

I think I will follow this posts evaluation. Yes I have made mistakes reloading I had a round that the primer was missing and 1 that the primer was in upside down. Human nature to error no matter how carefully one is. If you reload IT WILL happen eventually. Saying never is like saying I'll never have a negligent discharge. The possibility is always present