Banned bullets not banned
Banned bullets ‘used in tube shooting’ says London correspondents
THE Brazilian man mistaken for a suicide bomber and shot dead by British police was killed with a type of bullet banned in warfare under international law, a newspaper reported today.
Outside of the fact that the shooting was a tragic error the use of hollow point rounds has some merit.
It is believed the decision was influenced by the tactics used by air marshals on passenger jets – where such bullets are designed to splinter in the body and not burst the fuselage, it said. They have been assessed as posing less risk to people around the suicide bomber than conventional bullets but the effect on victims is devastating, it said.Fair enough but the piece loses it’s impact with this line
However, there is no legal ban on British police use of such ammunition, it said.So the bullets aren’t banned. It’s just a case of journalists trying to keep the heat on those who try and stem the flow of terrorism.
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>The 27-year-old electrician was shot seven times in the head
Are they trying to say he would have been ok if was shot seven times in the head with FMJ instead of hollowpoints? Unless they are using pellet guns I think you’d be in pretty bad shape regardless of what sort of ammo is used.
Journalists Dave. Their agenda is not to discuss a subject with logic or rationale but to run with their own political agenda.
This is slightly unrelated, but I remember looking at a website a year or so ago which talked about military research into effectiveness of metal jacketed Geneva Convention compliant rounds. Apparently these have a tendency to start turning end over end after a certain amount of travel through human tissue… not hard to imagine what that does to one’s insides…. much nastier than the comforting thought of a nice ‘clean’ wound. I *also* got the impression that the physics is pretty well understood and one can design rounds in such a way as to be more sure this is going to happen after a shorter length of travel through the body. In other words, despite the GC, fair bit of quiet work goes into making the ‘humane’ rounds as nasty as possible.
Hollow point or “wadcutter” ammuniton is used by police and other law enforcement because there is less chance of a bullet passing through a person shot with one and hitting an innocent bystander.
“Frangible” ammunition is used by sky marshals to lessen the possibility of accidental puncturing of an aircraft pressurised cabin. They are considerably lower powered than usual police ammunition.
The military is required to use FMJ ammunition because of the Convention’s prohibition against ammunition that causes “inhumane” injuries.
Modern high speed small calibre military ammunition causes horrendous injuries to soft tissue and easily penetrates body armour at combat ranges.
That’s what it is designed to do.