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  • diveRN

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    This question is aimed at experienced hand loaders. For those of you who are skilled in assembling pistol rounds, do you load your own self defense ammo and carry it?

    I'm well versed in the arguments of why you shouldn't because you'd be inviting a shit-storm of legal woes if you ever had to shoot in self-defense. I also know a few folks (including two California LEOs) who've said your future legal troubles are the least of your worries if you ever need to shoot someone "to stop the threat" while in defense of your life.

    Just curious.
    DK Firearms
     

    TexasRedneck

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    I use factory loads for SD, and use a Dillon 650 for reloading. Part of me hates the extra expense of factory loads, the other appreciates having one less thing to worry about.
     

    Koinonia

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    Hell No.

    You may have more legal woes in california when you shoot someone, but here in Texas, you need to worry stopping the intended threat, and not the kid behind them. There are civil things to worry about from the families, however, if you don't have a justifiable reason for drawing and shooting, you shouldn't have drawn and shot.

    Also where i suggest signing up for Texas Law Shield.
     

    M. Sage

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    This question is aimed at experienced hand loaders. For those of you who are skilled in assembling pistol rounds, do you load your own self defense ammo and carry it?

    I'm well versed in the arguments of why you shouldn't because you'd be inviting a shit-storm of legal woes if you ever had to shoot in self-defense. I also know a few folks (including two California LEOs) who've said your future legal troubles are the least of your worries if you ever need to shoot someone "to stop the threat" while in defense of your life.

    Just curious.

    Let me start with saying that if a CA LEO gives you legal advice, it's usually smart to ignore it.

    I know of zero times someone used handloads in self defense and got in trouble for it. Zero. My worries would be reliability (mine are up to snuff there) and performance. Unless you're comfortable loading to a consistent standard and test some of your loads to FBI and/or IWBA standards, you have no idea what effect your stuff is going to have if you do use it.

    Factory loads, however (ignoring snake oil garbage like Glaser, DRT and RCBD) are usually tested and usually conform to those standards, and you can often find a gelatin test online to confirm that.

    Bottom line: Would I? Yeah. Do I? No.
     

    RACER X

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    If they questioned zimmerman leaving his safety off, attys would have a field day w somebody who loaded his man killer loads.

    Has the the OP done as much ballistic testing as the major manuf do?

    Opening a can of worms.

    Idiots on the MP forum want to take the safety OFF their guns vs just leaving their safeties OFF....another atty field day, IMO
     

    andre3k

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    More Internet gun lore. If there is an instance of someone being liable for using hand loads for self defense then please provide some references of an actual case.

    Sent from my SPH-L900 using Tapatalk
     

    Koinonia

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    BEWARE, long post. This isnt the complete post.

    Editing to add link reference: http://www.thehighroad.org/showpost.php?p=2129976&postcount=140

    If someone can hyperlink it to hide the address, dont mean to cause forum drama.

    This is a post from Mas Ayoob at THR
    ---------------------------------------------------

    Cases Where Handloads Caused Problems in Court

    NH v. Kennedy

    James Kennedy, a sergeant on the Hampton, NH police force, pursued a drunk driver whose reckless operation of the vehicle had forced other motorists off the road. The suspect ended up in a ditch, stalled and trying to get underway again. Advised by radio that responding backup officers were still a distance away, and fearing that the man would get back on the road and kill himself and others, Kennedy approached the vehicle. At the driver’s door, the suspect grabbed Kennedy’s Colt .45 auto and pulled it towards himself. It discharged in his face, causing massive injury.

    The reload in the gun was a 200 grain Speer JHP, loaded to duplicate the 1000 fps from a 5” barrel then advertised by Speer for the same bullet in loaded cartridge configuration.

    This was the first case where I saw the argument, “Why wasn’t regular ammunition deadly enough for you,” used by opposing counsel. They charged Kennedy with aggravated assault. They made a large issue out of his use of handloads, suggesting that they were indicative of a reckless man obsessed with causing maximum damage.

    Defense counsel hired the expert I suggested, Jim Cirillo, who did a splendid job of demolishing that argument and other bogus arguments against Kennedy at trial, and Kennedy was acquitted.

    This case dates back to the late 1970s. The local courts tell me that the case documentation will be on file at Rockingham County Superior Court, PO Box 1258, Kingston, NH 03843. File search time is billed at $25 per hour for cases such as this that date back prior to 1988.

    NJ V. Bias

    This is the classic case of gunshot residue (GSR) evidence being complicated by the use of handloaded ammunition, resulting in a case being misinterpreted in a tragic and unjust way. On the night of 2/26/89, Danny Bias entered the master bedroom of his home to find his wife Lise holding the family home defense revolver, a 6” S&W 686, to her head. He told police that knowing that she had a history of suicidal ideation, he attempted to grab the gun, which discharged, killing her. The gun was loaded with four handloaded lead SWC cartridges headstamped Federal .38 Special +P.

    Autopsy showed no GSR. The medical examiner determined that Lise Bias had a reach of 30”, and the NJSP Crime Lab in Trenton determined that the gun in question would deposit GSR to a distance of 50” or more with either factory Federal 158 grain SWC +P .38 Special, or handloads taken from his home under warrant for testing after Danny told them about the reloads. However, the reloads that were taken and tested had Remington-Peters headstamps on the casings and were obviously not from the same batch.

    Danny had loaded 50 rounds into the Federal cases of 2.3, 2.6, and 2.9 grains of Bullseye, with Winchester primers, under an unusually light 115 grain SWC that he had cast himself, seeking a very light load that his recoil sensitive wife could handle. The gun had been loaded at random from that box of 50 and there was no way of knowing which of the three recipes was in the chamber from which the fatal bullet was launched.

    We duplicated that load, and determined that with all of them and particularly the 2.3 grain load, GSR distribution was so light that it could not be reliably gathered or recovered, from distances as short as 24”. Unfortunately, the remaining rounds in the gun could not be disassembled for testing as they were the property of the court, and there is no forensic artifact that can determine the exact powder charge that was fired from a given spent cartridge.

    According to an attorney who represented him later, police originally believed the death to be a suicide. However, the forensic evidence testing indicated that was not possible, and it was listed as suspicious death. Based largely on the GSR evidence, as they perceived it, the Warren County prosecutor’s office presented the case to the grand jury, which indicted Danny Bias for Murder in the First Degree in the death of his wife.

    Attorney John Lanza represented Danny very effectively at his first trial, which ended in a hung jury. Legal fees exceeded $100,000, bankrupting Danny; Attorney Lanza, who believed then and now in his client’s innocence, swallowed some $90,000 worth of legal work for which he was never paid.

    For his second trial, Bias was assigned attorney Elisabeth Smith by the Public Defender’s office. Challenging the quality of evidence collection, she was able to weaken the prosecution’s allegation that the GSR factor equaled murder, but because the GSR issue was so muddled by the handloaded ammo factor, she could not present concrete evidence that the circumstances were consistent with suicide, and the second trial ended with a hung jury in 1992. At this point, the prosecution having twice failed to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt, the judge threw out the murder charge.

    It was after this that I personally lost track of the case. However, I’ve learned this past week that the case of NJ v. Daniel Bias was tried a third time in the mid-1990s, resulting in his being acquitted of Aggravated Manslaughter but convicted of Reckless Manslaughter. The appellate division of the Public Defender’s office handled his post-conviction relief and won him a fourth trial. The fourth trial, more than a decade after the shooting, ended with Danny Bias again convicted of Reckless Manslaughter. By now, the state had changed its theory and was suggesting that Danny had pointed the gun at her head to frighten her, thinking one of the two empty chambers would come up under the firing pin, but instead discharging the gun. Danny Bias was sentenced to six years in the penitentiary, and served three before being paroled. He remains a convicted felon who cannot own a firearm.

    It is interesting to hear the advice of the attorneys who actually tried this case. John Lanza wrote, “When a hand load is used in an incident which becomes the subject of a civil or criminal trial, the duplication of that hand load poses a significant problem for both the plaintiff or the prosecutor and the defendant. Once used, there is no way, with certainty, to determine the amount of powder or propellant used for that load. This becomes significant when forensic testing is used in an effort to duplicate the shot and the resulting evidence on the victim or target.”

    He adds, “With the commercial load, one would be in a better position to argue the uniformity between the loads used for testing and the subject load. With a hand load, you have no such uniformity. Also, the prosecution may utilize either standard loads or a different hand load in its testing. The result would be distorted and could be prejudicial to the defendant. Whether or not the judge would allow such a scientific test to be used at trial, is another issue, which, if allowed, would be devastating for the defense. From a strictly forensic standpoint, I would not recommend the use of hand loads because of the inherent lack of uniformity and the risk of unreliable test results. Once the jury hears the proof of an otherwise unreliable test, it can be very difficult to ‘unring the bell.’”

    Ms. Smith had this to say, after defending Danny Bias through his last three trials. I asked her, “Is it safe to say that factory ammunition, with consistently replicable gunshot residue characteristics, (would) have proven that the gun was within reach of Lise’s head in her own hand, and kept the case from escalating as it did?”

    She replied, “You’re certainly right about that. Gunshot residue was absolutely the focus of the first trial. The prosecution kept going back to the statement, “It couldn’t have happened the way he said it did’.”

    The records on the Bias trials should be available through:
    The Superior Court of New Jersey
    Warren County
    313 Second Street
    PO Box 900
    Belvedere, NJ 07823

    Those who wish to follow the appellate track of this case will find it in the Atlantic Reporter.

    142 N.J. 572, 667 A.2d 190 (Table)

    Supreme Court of New Jersey
    State
    v.
    Daniel N. Bias
    NOS. C-188 SEPT.TERM 1995, 40,813
    Oct 03, 1995
    Disposition: Cross-pet. Denied.
    N.J. 1995.
    State v. Bias
    142 N>J> 572, 667 A.2d 190 (Table)
     
    Last edited:

    bones_708

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    Let me start with saying that if a CA LEO gives you legal advice, it's usually smart to ignore it.

    I know of zero times someone used handloads in self defense and got in trouble for it. Zero. My worries would be reliability (mine are up to snuff there) and performance. Unless you're comfortable loading to a consistent standard and test some of your loads to FBI and/or IWBA standards, you have no idea what effect your stuff is going to have if you do use it.

    Factory loads, however (ignoring snake oil garbage like Glaser, DRT and RCBD) are usually tested and usually conform to those standards, and you can often find a gelatin test online to confirm that.

    Bottom line: Would I? Yeah. Do I? No.

    I think this is funny because while I know of no one who has "gotten in trouble", which really isn't the question posed, but I do know of cases where ammo choices have been used by prosecutors as evidence of the shooters intent. One of the best and simplest ways of disabling that line of attack is by using ammo that police use. If it is an open and shut case it makes no difference what ammo you use but if the are even the slightest question you don't want anyone to be able to go on about the homemade mankillers you used.
     

    Younggun

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    I think the argument is way overblown to a certain extent.

    If we become that concerned with how deadly are ammo will be accused of being we should probably only carry wax bullets.


    I don't carry hand loads in my SD guns because of the reason I reload for pistol. I do it to save money and make cheap ammo. I don't want my life to depend on cheap ammo someday so I will buy ammo that has been run through the ringer and tested to the hilt for reliability and performance.
     

    shortround

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    Prosecutor: "Sir, did you hand load the ammunition that killed the deceased?"

    Defendant: "Sir, he attacked me and I was in fear of my life."

    Prosecutor: "Why did you not load your pistol with commonly available commercial ammunition?"

    Defendant: "What would that ammunition be?"

    Prosecutor: "Well you know, any you could just go out and buy."

    Defendant: "I guess you would have give me an example."

    Prosecutor: "No I don't ... what you used was far more lethal than commonly available ammunition."

    Defendant. "Please prove to the Court how that is possible."

    Prosecutor: "If it pleases the Court, the defendant loaded his ammunition with Intent to cause great harm."

    Defendant: "I had no intent to cause harm. The Assailant gave me reason to lawfully defend myself, by all available means."

    Prosecutor: "I petition the Court to find this defendant guilty of murder, he proved his intent by hand loading extremely lethal ammunition."

    Defendant: "If it may please the Court, the Prosecutor has not proved intent. He is a married man, and his wife has all the equipment to be a whore or a prostitute. That does not make her one."

    I trust the Jury to follow the law in matters of self-defense.
     

    bones_708

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    Prosecutor: "Sir, did you hand load the ammunition that killed the deceased?"

    Defendant: "Sir, he attacked me and I was in fear of my life."

    Prosecutor: "Why did you not load your pistol with commonly available commercial ammunition?"

    Defendant: "What would that ammunition be?"

    Prosecutor: "Well you know, any you could just go out and buy."

    Defendant: "I guess you would have give me an example."

    Prosecutor: "No I don't ... what you used was far more lethal than commonly available ammunition."

    Defendant. "Please prove to the Court how that is possible."

    Prosecutor: "If it pleases the Court, the defendant loaded his ammunition with Intent to cause great harm."

    Defendant: "I had no intent to cause harm. The Assailant gave me reason to lawfully defend myself, by all available means."

    Prosecutor: "I petition the Court to find this defendant guilty of murder, he proved his intent by hand loading extremely lethal ammunition."

    Defendant: "If it may please the Court, the Prosecutor has not proved intent. He is a married man, and his wife has all the equipment to be a whore or a prostitute. That does not make her one."

    I trust the Jury to follow the law in matters of self-defense.

    It's easy when you write the script, but let's not pretend it's the real world. If you end up in a trial then it's not because of what bullets you use but either it can or cannot be an issue. One way of eliminating it as an issue is by using commercially available rounds that police find acceptable for duty use. The possibility that it will matter is very small but I on't see any reason to use handloads in a carry pistol with all the options we have in factory ammo
     

    Josh Smith

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    Hello,

    Against what?

    When I'm at home or in town, I'm carrying commercially available hollowpoint. At this time, they're Federal Classic Hi-Shok, which I'm perfectly comfortable with.

    If I'm in the woods, I use my "critter getter" loads which are likely to stop anything found in Indiana:

    crittergetter2.jpg


    crittergetterheadspace.jpg


    According to the Lyman Cast Bullet Manual, the max should be 4.8 grains or so of W231 for about 850fps. I'm pushing it with 5.2 grains.

    The bullet weighs a nominal 230 grains but is an actual 235 grains as cast with dead soft lead.

    Very, very precise. I have match grade precision and accuracy with them from that pistol. Took a while to develop.

    Honestly, I think they probably would outperform most factory ammo. But they're made for stopping wild critters, not humans, and if a human critter's time has come and I'm to be the means, I'll not stand in the way of destiny simply because I'm afraid of using handloads designed to stop thicker critters than humans tend to be.

    Same if I were carrying a .22 while squirrel hunting. I'd not worry that it's a .22 but rather employ it in defense of my life.

    I believe any jury around would see this as rational and reasonable as no attacker will pause if you say, "Pardon me, but I'm not properly loaded to defend my life against a human at this point. Will you kindly stay your attack while I swap magazines?"

    Regards,

    Josh
     

    Vaquero

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    @ post #8.
    Ho-lee sheet! I guess I'll quit reloading and sell my equipment. Not.

    I keep factory sd loads in mag 1 or cylinder 1 as the case may be. After that, I'll shoot what I can get my hands on.
     

    Koinonia

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    Hey, i never said to sell equipment or anything like that.

    Someone wanted a post with info on cases where handloads were used.

    Im with ya Vaquero. If i run dry on a mag, I'm grabbing anything.
     

    GPtwins

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    Back when I was shooting .45 ACP I was loading it was target rounds mostly. I would make some loads near factor spec for carry purposes. For those I would use 185 gr Gold Dot hollow point. I have my brass, primer, and power charges written down somewhere but I do not have them at hand. Most people will advise that one just carry factory ammo due to legal liability issues, real or imagined.
     

    rushthezeppelin

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    My worries would be reliability (mine are up to snuff there) and performance. Unless you're comfortable loading to a consistent standard and test some of your loads to FBI and/or IWBA standards, you have no idea what effect your stuff is going to have if you do use it.

    Factory loads, however (ignoring snake oil garbage like Glaser, DRT and RCBD) are usually tested and usually conform to those standards, and you can often find a gelatin test online to confirm that.

    Ignoring the possible legal issues, couldn't you simply take a factory load that you can buy the bullets for separately, like Gold Dots, and simply work up a load on the chrono that matches the velocity of the factory rounds? I mean that's basically the only factor in expansion when comparing the same exact bullets. Why do your own testing when you could simply piggyback off of the factory's testing? As long as you are hand measuring each and every charge and not just going a million miles an hour with a automatic powder drop on a progressive I can't see any possible difference in reliability either function or stopping power wise.
     

    roadkill

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    I don't reload but if I did I wouldn't hesitate to carry with them. I think the focus of prosecution would be shoot/no shoot. If you could legally shoot what difference does ammo selection make? The only situation I can imagine where hand loads could be detrimental to you would be over penetration and an innocent killed/wounded.


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