Virginia Gun Owners Forum - VGOF

Would someone explain what the theory about carrying hollow points and full metal jacket ammunition staggered in magazines? I have always been told something different.

John

First I've heard of jhp staggered with fmj in a defensive sidearm. Only jhp, for my edc. I do stagger 00 or 1 buck and rifled slugs in my defensive shotgun, though.

I've heard of that with .380 and smaller ammo. Seems the owners aren't confident in the penetration of the hollow points so they use them anyway but mix with FMJ.

Staggering is something I've heard of a few times, but it seemed to be rarer than loading x number of HPs to feed first followed by the rest of the mag being ball. (Tru confession: I do have a mag loaded like that. Not because I buy the theory behind it, but because I ran out of HPs and had plenty of ball rounds left.)

I used to hear stories (quite possibly urban legends) that some police departments required the opposite... a magazine with the first x shots to be ball, then the rest could be jhp. The stories went that the departments expected the first x shots to be "humane", then if the officer had to shoot more times, it was assumed he was in a firefight and jhp were then, somehow, okay to use. IDK, may be apocryphal as I said, but I have heard that more than once.

I have also heard several times (and i think it is probably SLIGHTLY better advice, but I don't follow it, so there) that one should load the same as the local police, on the theory that a DA would be less inclined to scream that you were loaded to "go hunting for trouble". Again, IDK and YMMV, as IANAL... (how's them beans?)

It would be nice if the people who always perpetuate these stories could provide some kind of solid factual basis for them.

My brother has been a NJ State Trooper for coming up on 25 years. They have always carried HP rounds in their sidearms, period.

I think things like this are from people who are trying too hard to be clever.

The best round for self-defense is HP. I've read arguments that using ball round could be viewed as negligent or even reckless, due to overpenetration and the potential risk to bystanders.

I would love to see something - anything - factual, based on reality, that supports any of these ideas, rather than a whole mess of hypotheticals, which is all I've ever seen.

TenchCoxe wrote:It would be nice if the people who always perpetuate these stories could provide some kind of solid factual basis for them.

True enough. I DID add the disclaimer that what I have heard in the past was possibly urban legend. On the other hand, it is quite possible that someone with a LE background on this forum MAY have chimed in with a "yeah, my old dept had that policy once" kind of a comment... hence the reason for my post- curiousity.

Since you weren't the NJ trooper in question (therefore your post is heresay, also) and since the NJ State Patrol, by itself, probably comprises less than a thousandth of a percent of ALL LE agencies in this country, it remains just barely possible that your opinion is not definitive, since it still is possible that SOME pd's had that policy, even if was just one dept in some small 'burb.

I agree with you that is a host of material online regarding FMJ vs HP, and a host of scenarios/rationales about which are best during a shoot and for the aftermath second-guessers, and most is just opinion to be evaluated and adopted or discarded.

http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/ayoob130.html

In 1999, the nation was outraged by a shooting in the Bronx where NYPD officers fired 41 shots at a man, hitting him 19 times. The fact of the matter was, the man didn't fall until he was hit the 19th time, at which point the four involved officers all stopped shooting. All were vindicated at trial. The ammo they had been using was full metal jacket 9mm, issued by the department for reasons of political correctness.

This was taken from the last paragraph of the section "The problem with full metal jacket"... Massad Ayoob has in multiple instances reiterated stories of the failures of FMJ for stopping power - after reading several of his books and various publications, he harps on this point a lot in order to make his point. So even as recently as 1999, FMJ has been used in the US by a law enforcement agency - but I doubt they're proud of the results. I'm sure people who don't always hear the whole story probably did the whole "If it's good enough for NYPD, it's good enough for me" thing as well... and thus, you have the situation where "so and so's uncle's brother's cousin said his lady friend's hairdresser's husband only carries FMJ, but since I don't know him, I'm gonna use both"...

BW1911 wrote:Since you weren't the NJ trooper in question (therefore your post is heresay, also) and since the NJ State Patrol, by itself, probably comprises less than a thousandth of a percent of ALL LE agencies in this country, it remains just barely possible that your opinion is not definitive, since it still is possible that SOME pd's had that policy, even if was just one dept in some small 'burb.

Pick a gun or gun-related philosophy, and you can almost certainly find a department somewhere that does now or has in the past used or subscribed to it as policy.

In a way, it's good, since pretty much everything gets a real-world tryout. The hard part is probably finding when/where it happened and what the outcome was.

CCFan wrote: The hard part is probably finding when/where it happened and what the outcome was.

Agreed. I grew up in Missouri and was hearing about PD's mixing their magazine loads back when PD's were first starting to switch from revolvers to semi-autos... Not much internet back then (pre Al Gore!), so not much to be searched. My guess is that we do know the result, at least indirectly, since we don't hear of similar policy now.

CCFan wrote: The hard part is probably finding when/where it happened and what the outcome was.

Agreed. I grew up in Missouri and was hearing about PD's mixing their magazine loads back when PD's were first starting to switch from revolvers to semi-autos... Not much internet back then (pre Al Gore!), so not much to be searched. My guess is that we do know the result, at least indirectly, since we don't hear of similar policy now.

Well,,I liken this to...."It would be a boring world if everybody like the same thing"
What works for me mite not work for yall and vice versa..
Ask a question about firearms and you will have a host of different answers!!!
mikeb