Contrary to internet rumor, I’ve never heard Mas say anything at all about handloads being unreliable, nor anything like that. He recommends handloads for practice ammunition, so he’s not anti-reloading in any sense of the word. Rather, what you get from him is a very reasoned discussion of the benefits of having court-admissible data with exemplars from a reputable third party should your case turn out to hinge on ballistics, issues surrounding gunshot residue, or related questions that require destructive testing of ammunition samples for any other reason.

It’s interesting because of course the common wisdom among online gunnies is that all you have to do is have a “good shoot” and questions like that just won’t come up. True enough, as far as it goes. The difficulty is that the very question of whether it’s a “good shoot” or not often hinges on physical evidence at the scene. If the physical evidence supports a claim of self-defense and supports your story, you’ll be in the clear. If it doesn’t, you won’t. Simple!

But between those two extremes, there’s plenty of room for ambiguity.

If the physical evidence is even a little unclear, or the story at all questionable in any way, it’s very likely that the prosecutor will decide to file charges and let a jury settle it. Once the system has decided to go forward with a prosecution, the entire investigation will be focused on finding inculpatory evidence (evidence that tends to support guilt) and will ignore exculpatory evidence (evidence that tends to support innocence). Which in turn means that it’s often difficult to get exculpatory evidence admitted at trial, particularly evidence you literally manufactured yourself. The handloads themselves were manufactured by you, and the scrupulously-careful records you keep (you do keep careful reloading records, right?) were also manufactured by you.

While whatever’s left of the load in your carry gun will be admitted into evidence, assuming you didn’t fire the gun dry during the encounter, it’s not likely to do you any good if any part of your case hinges on ballistics, residue, or related questions. That’s because your lawyer probably will not be able to convince the court to tear those rounds apart to weigh the powder or to allow you to fire them to test the residues that will build your case — since doing either of those things would literally destroy the evidence and there are all sorts of legal precedents about that. At the same time, your lawyer will also find it impossible to convince the judge to admit your handloading records as “proof” of what the rounds in your carry gun actually consisted of. You wrote those records yourself, after all, so that’s kind of like writing your own excuse note at school, not “proof” of anything at all. So if you ever need ballistic or residue evidence (as you very likely will in the very, very unlikely event you’re involved in a court case to begin with), but you carry handloaded ammunition, you’ve just shut off a major source of evidence that might have been critical to your legal defense.

Here’s a quote from LFI-1: “Know where the attack will come, and have a counter already in place.” Mas uses that line a lot, especially when he points out that lawyers cost a fortune. Every minute of time you can save your lawyer is an extra pile of cash you don’t have to pay out. Furthermore, even a good lawyer can have a bad day, and forget to counter something the prosecution brings up in court.

Could an overzealous prosecutor try to get a jury riled up & worried about the type of ammunition you use? Of course one could. It might a fairly simple problem to counter, from an experienced defense lawyer’s perspective – but I’ve heard more than one experienced lawyer comment that ANY issue they have to counter in open court can create doubt in the minds of the jury and bias the jury against the defense. If the opponent creates enough doubt on enough different fronts, you lose your case.

As an example, Harold Fish didn’t lose his first court case “because he used 10mm ammunition.” That’s an oversimplification and an obvious misunderstanding of the issues in play — and put that way, it makes a great big easily knocked down strawman for the people who support carrying handloads, as we see above. The truth is a bit more complex (as most legal issues are).

Harold Fish had three big problems: a somewhat-ambiguous story, a prosecutor out to make a name for himself, and a lawyer who was inexperienced at defending a true self-defense case. The ambiguous story opened the door for the prosecution to go forward in the first place. The prosecutor did everything possible to discredit Fish in court, including dragging his choice of ammunition before the jury, while the defense lawyer failed to counter a great many of the damaging claims about Fish that the prosecution made in court. So the jury convicted. Several of the jurors later commented that one thing that swayed their debates in the jury room was Fish’s choice of a “dangerous” and “deadly” caliber. That doesn’t mean that he was convicted because of the ammunition, but his choice of ammunition was most definitely a factor in his conviction. Would the jury have convicted him if he’d used another type of ammunition? Who knows?! What we do know about his case is that the prosecution brought Fish’s choice of ammunition up in court, that the defense did a poor job of countering the prosecution’s claims, and that the jury members discussed their distaste for his ammunition choice in the jury room. Perhaps if Fish had a clearly-articulated reason for his ammunition choices, and also had a lawyer who understood the importance of getting those reasons in front of the jury, he might have had a better outcome in court.

So back to knowing where an attack will come and having a counter in place: even with the high cost of ammunition it seems to me that it’s not so difficult to practice with a handload that perfectly emulates your factory defense load, and then to use the matched factory load for carry. You get the benefit of practicing with ammunition that is ballistically identical to your carry load, but miles cheaper. And you get the insurance factor of having easily admissible evidence on your side should you ever need it. Keeping your legal self-defense options open is probably worth it.

a) Manufacturers of defense loads have more time and equipment to test than I do.

b) While no case has come up where this has been called into question, I think it’s always best to take away as many tools from lawyers as possible. Remember, there was a point in which a 10mm was never used as an argument by a lawyer. And granted that got over-turned. But would you want to endure the hell and finances that it took before it was.

c) Is it really that much for a handful of rounds?

We then proceed to watch Ayoob who is talking about carrying a back-up to your back up. He pulls out his primary pistol, a Glock 19 I recall. Then he pulls out two magazines for it. That’s 45 rounds for everyday carry. Then he pulls out his back up pistol. Then two magazines for that. Then he pulls out a big ass knife. Then a SECOND big ass knife. Then a multi-tool. Then a second. Then his wallet, then a money clip. Then a cell phone, then a second cell phone! Keys. Then a second set, and so on. I swear to god I’ve never been so humiliated by my redneck step-father as I was at that moment, because he was absolutely right. Massad Ayoob is PARANOID.

I carry reloads in my 2 1/2″ S&W model 19-2 that I call “Mag-lites” because they are downloaded to keep from cracking the forcing cone on my beloved K-frame magnum. That is, they are LESS POWERFUL than factory ammo. I’d like to seem them bust me for that.

It’s about having a “cut and dry” court case.

Remember, Harold Fish was convicted, in part, because he used hollowpoints in his 10 mm. The DA used that to “imply” malice which bolstered the DA’s case. Long story short, maybe it took a borderline jury into a “guilty” call.

Fish won the appeal, but big whoop, that wasn’t a vacation he had in the state pen. Also, everyone needs to understand that the jury will be 12 people who are NON-SHOOTERS!

I don’t hang out with fellow gunnies. My social circle includes a few hunters, a few people with a gun in the back of the closet for home defense, and a whole lotta people who know so little about guns that they couldn’t understand how the 4 Rules worked unless you had a prop to show them.

Non-hunters and non-shooters think reloading is such a crazy thing to do that when you talk about it they look at you like a tree is growing out of your head! Furthermore, most people think hollowpoints =cop-killer-bullets. I know a woman (with said gun in the closet) that thought HP where too dangerous because “um, aren’t they, um, illegal, or something…” I then explained that her ammo was HP (I recommended it). She only knew that HER ammo was “good, self-defense” ammo. Hollowpoints are, after all stuff that only bad people use. The nice guy on TV said so. (Feel free to bonk your heads against something now).

Here is the kicker. She is NOT the only one to do this. On a forum I used to frequent, there were a few stories about how non-gunnies just.don’t.get.it. Example; gunny husband (lots of guns) with a wife (one gun, for protection) where the wife, after hearing the news one night, commented on “how bad” hollowpoints are and why would anyone make them, let alone use them. Husband then says to the Mrs “Honey, YOUR gun has hollowpoints.”

“Oh, well then maybe they aren’t so bad.”

This is what I call the “It’s always different when it’s YOU” syndrome.

And THESE are the people who will be on YOUR jury.

I was going to talk about what if your case gets “political” but John Ross said it better here:
Comments on Using Handloads for Self-Defense
http://web.archive.org/web/20060509094917/www.john-ross.net/hldefense.htm

And his is a lawyer who uses handloads. I am not anti-handloads for PD, but I insist others only do so “with both eyes” as the saying goes. Because, in short, that is how we should handle everything regarding personal defense

One last thing; DO NOT fall into the mental trap of “I don’t have a problem with it, and I don’t know anyone who does.” Back in the USMC, I saw too many demotions because of that attitude. And don’t forget Pauline Kael of “Nobody I know voted for Nixon.” fame.

But that is beside the point I intended to make here. If you want to get around the concern that the prosecutor will say you could have put in any load and that your notebook is meaningless, then get a friend to witness you making the load. The prosecutor would have a pretty hard time rebutting an eye witness without any real evidence.

Best regards,
Albert
Why I Carry a Gun

I load my own carry ammo. If that was ever an issue in court (unlikely since I doubt any LEO or prosecutor would recognize non-factory ammo), my answer would simply be that I reload carry ammo and competition ammo for the same reasons: better accuracy and better reliability.

As for reloaded ammo landing you in jail, I have heard of one case of that, but it had nothing to do with self-defense. I have no cite, since this is off the top of my head. Dude was charged for murdering his wife. He claimed it was suicide. His story was that he reloaded soft ammo for her gun because she wasn’t comfortable with full-recoil. She shot herself in the head, and the police forensics people said there wasn’t enough powder residue on her head for it to be a self-inflicted wound. They based that on factory ammo and refused to do tests with the other ammo in the gun to see if that ammo would be consitent with the residue found.

An unjustifiable statement by a prosecutor needs to be rebutted by the defense attorney, and almost anything can be made to look bad.

I have a Glock 19 9mm. “So this gun is completely unmodified from when you bought it. Did you buy this gun because it is favored by gang members, or because you could use it to shoot as many times as the Virginia Tech killer?”

I have a S&W Model 10 38 SPL. “This gun is almost 40 years old! Did you buy it knowing it had no safety lock and could be used to kill someone quicker because it lacked that safety device now installed on every S&W revolver?”

I have a Ruger 10/22. “So the semiautomatic feature of this gun made it easy to pump 5 rounds into the victim before he even fell over?”

I have a cheap Mossberg Mustang 12 gauge shotgun. “This evil black plastic weapon – did you buy it because it could be discarded after you shot someone with it, because it was inexpensive?”

I’m sure you can think of your own prosecutorial statements about the vile and evil intent evidenced by your choice of self defense weapon. Presenting the truth convincingly with enough information for the jury to understand is absolutely necessary.

Then again, the instructor did say you’d have to sweat out the civil suit more than the criminal one.

10-4.

Even if you publicly admit that you shot someone with extra deadly rounds of ammo that you made yourself, there’s still a decent chance that such an admission would still be excluded as irrelevant to the legal issues at stake in the trial. The issue usually isn’t whether you were trying to kill someone, it’s whether you were justified in doing so.

In the end, it’s a risk, but a minor one. A defense attorney who can’t get something like that excluded is just as likely to miss something else even if you don’t admit to anything or use factory ammo.

In the end, the best general advice is to avoid being a dumbass so that you don’t give prosecutors a million reasons to proceed. Most self-defense prosecutions (at least around here) seem to result from facepalm inducing conduct.

I followed the Fish case as I am in his situation – hand loaded 10mm. They threw everything in the book at him. Had it not been hand loads, it would have been something else. The only thing that would have made Fish’s life any easier would have been not to shoot.

We’re talking ROI here, folks. The chances of you being involved in a shooting are very, very slim to begin with. I’ve used a firearm in self defense, and even then I didn’t fire a single shot. That seems to be the norm.

Then, the police are going to try to recover casings and hopefully the bullets themselves in order to ensure that the gun that was used is the one you had when they showed up. They’re not going to examine the bullet and the primer and the casing and the powder to see if they match a known manufacturer’s standard unless they are told to. And considering their backlog, that’s not a common event (from the information I’ve discussed with law officials).

Finally, in court, the prosecution is going to pull every trick to convict you. There’s no difference in the concept of loading your own ammunition and putting on a different set of grips – it can be argued that you’ve modified your pistol to be ‘more lethal’ (yeah, it sounds dumb because it is). The chances of me losing in court based on that fact alone are nil. If it were likely, we’d see it all the time in court cases.

So, for the .0000001% chance that I might have to explain to a jury why I build my own ammo (simple – cost effectiveness) and, as a 10mm guy who doesn’t feel like spending $35 on 20 Self Defense cartridges that I cannot practice with due to cost, I’m willing to take that risk because I’m practically assured it’s never going to be an issue.

However, I will say this – If you’re not comfortable with carrying reloads, for Pete’s sake don’t!!! If you DO carry factory made self defense ammo but practice with cheaper stuff, that’s a bad move. I can honestly say that what I practice with is the same stuff I’d use during a SD situation and that the comfort with those rounds allow me to be more precise in my shot placement.

Finally, a word of advice. For those of you who think that hand loads are an actionable thing in a courtroom, how do you think the prosecution is going to look at your comments here? Or your blogs? I think talking about this kind of stuff online is more damaging than if you carry a specific combination of off the shelf components.

I’m not trying to argue not over zealous prosecuters won’t try every trick in the book to gain a conviction, just that reloaded ammo gives them one more trick to throw at the wall to see if it sticks.

The charges were dropped on Harold Fish (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15199221) this year because the laws regarding reasonable concern for your life were changed in Arizona, (http://armsandthelaw.com/archives/2009/07/harold_fish_con.php), not because of his choice of ammo was ruled appropriate.

Harold Fish was convicted (in part) because he was carrying a 10mm and was using hand-loaded hollow point ammo. Was he convicted because of that alone? No. Did it hurt him in court? Yes.