Quote:
|
The thing about ammo is there is always something "wrong" with your choice to someone, no matter what your choice is.
|
It's really not that difficult at all. The key is that if you are an informed gun owner you need to make a common-sense choice and be able to explain it.
The other option is to make a reasonable choice and not know much about it at all, then your motives can't be called into question for the selection you make. The problem is that most of us here know a good bit about ammunition.
There are some choices that are really hard to attack.
Two pretty much unassailable options for someone who doesn't really know about guns:
1. If you can truthfully say that you just went to the gun store and asked for self-defense ammunition for your gun, and you ended up with something mainstream (as opposed to Super Maximum Zombie Destruction Killer Chainsaw Bullets with Razor Tip Cutting Features or some such nonsense) that's going to be really hard to attack from a legal standpoint. You have a gun, you want to use it for self-defense, you bought ammo that the expert behind the counter told you was good for self-defense. The lawyer can try to go track down the dude who sold it to you and try to prove that he didn't know what he was doing and that you should have known he didn't know what he was doing, but imagine how that's going to go over with the jury.
2. If you can truthfully say that you bought ammunition for shooting the gun at the range and that was all you had so that's what you kept loaded in the gun for self-defense, that's going to be pretty difficult to argue with. It's pretty hard to argue with the idea of having a gun for target shooting but recognizing that it might be useful for self-defense but just using whatever ammo you have. In this case, if someone asks about the difference in ammo, you would truthfully say that you don't know much about ammo; that you just used what you had.
From the informed gun owner perspective, you have a couple of good options.
1. If you can truthfully say that you just bought what the police use because you figure they know about ammo, that's hard to attack from a legal standpoint. You truthfully say you don't have the ability to test ammunition for self-defense performance, so you went with ammo chosen by an organization who has generally similar requirements to you and that has the ability to test and research ammunition carefully.
2. If you buy mainstream self-defense ammunition and can articulate why you think it was a good choice for self-defense then that's going to be hard to attack as long as your explanation makes sense and your choice was not a stupid one. As far as explanations go, you wouldn't want to wander off into a discussion of the killing power of one kind of ammunition vs. another or start talking about so-and-so who makes video on youtube and shoots meat with clothes on it to show how deadly ammunition is. You'd want to say things like--"I picked premium self-defense ammunition from a major ammunition manufacturer because they should know how to make good self-defense ammunition." If pressed for details about the specific ammo (as when Rittenhouse was asked about FMJ vs. JHP) you could say that you picked a hollowpoint bullet because that's what most police departments use and what most experts seem to recommend for self-defense. Or you could just say that you picked hollowpoint bullets because self-defense ammunition is nearly exclusively loaded with hollowpoint bullets.
Now, if you make a stupid choice, then yes, it gets more complicated and you may not be able to give a good explanation that makes sense to the jury.
One thing to keep in mind is that if the evidence shows that you are an expert on ammunition (let's say you actually know how to make your own ammunition--i.e. handload), then it becomes even more important that you make good choices and that you can explain them clearly and in a way that makes sense to the people on the jury who almost certainly won't know much about the topic.