Don't buy bullets from Monte Cook

[kigmatzomat]

OK, now I want the stats for two dragon-sized Uzis...

Please see reference "M2HB .50 caliber machine guns"

 

[Umbran]

There is no such thing as explosive hollowpoints.

Right. So a guy who is using a metaphor to describe a book of fictional monsters to use in a game of telling stories cannot refer to fictional ammunition?

With people like you around, how does poetry survive?

 

[Liquidsabre]

With people like you around, how does poetry survive?

It doesn't.

 

[Chainsaw Mage]

I believe the weapon of choice you're referring to, Scaramanga, is commonly referred to as a "wad cutter".

Yeeeeearggh! Just reading that made me scrunch my legs together!

 

[Sado]

There is no such thing as explosive hollowpoints. There are indeed explosive bullets (though very rare on the market, ever since Regan was shot with one), and there are indeed hollowpoints. But since the points are hollow (being basically a lead shell that breaks apart on impact), there is nowhere to put the explosive!

I'm afraid you are mistaken. Hollowpoints are indeed "explosive" bullets, but not in the sense of having explosives inside them. When someone who knows guns says a bullet "explodes", they mean it fragments and breaks apart inside the target (the technical term is "frangible"). Hollowpoints do this much better than ball ammo, which is why they are preferred ammo of police and many of us "gun nuts" for self-defense.

When a bullet fragments inside you, it has the potential to cause greater damage as those little pieces of metal go shooting throughout your body and into your vital organs. Ball ammo doesn't break up as well and has a greater chance of going straight through the target out the other side, which is bad both because it has less chance of stopping the target and greater chance of hitting someone/something you didn't want to hit as it exits out the back of the target.

The military isn't supposed to use hollowpoints due to the Geneva Convention, which prohibits the use of frangible ammo during war. But most police and many civilian gun enthusiasts prefer hollowpoints because they have the greatest chance of stopping the bad guy.

So hollowpoints are "explosive".

And I don't know what type of bullets Hinckley used on Reagan, but he used a .22 cal H&R 9-shot revolver he bought in a pawn shop for $47, so I doubt he had any of that rare explosive-filled ammo that was mentioned.

 

[Scaramanga]

Bullets

So hollowpoints are "explosive".

No, they're not. There's no charge inside them. As was duly pointed out earlier, they don't explode, merely flatten.

But like I said, never mind. I just thought it was an odd metaphor (and poetry, by the way, it ain't).

Please forgive my iconoclastic tendencies. I should have known folks would wrongly assume I was shooting barbs at one of their Third Edition exemplars.

 

[S'mon]

In Britain we call frangible ammo dum-dums (from the Raj, I think) - there are modern versions that use a binding gel, not commonly used anywhere AFAIK; the military use FMJ ball rounds (good for armour penetration), and the police mostly use semi-jacketed ball rounds with reduced penetration and increased spread. Hinckley used home-made frangible/dum-dum ammo that didn't actually 'explode' properly AFAIK because the impact velocity of the .22 rounds he used was too low...

 

[Dirigible]

If someone could work the word 'frangible' into this argument, I'd be very happy indeed.

edit: Oh, I see Sado and S'mon already did.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

I'm afraid you are mistaken. Hollowpoints are indeed "explosive" bullets, but not in the sense of having explosives inside them. When someone who knows guns says a bullet "explodes", they mean it fragments and breaks apart inside the target (the technical term is "frangible"). Hollowpoints do this much better than ball ammo, which is why they are preferred ammo of police and many of us "gun nuts" for self-defense.

Granted I am not a gun enthusiast myself, but my father is. I do not believe hollowpoint and frangible are interchangeable terms. A hollowpoint does not necessarily explode into fragments within the target. Rather,

BTW AFAIK hollow point bullets don't break apart on impact, being soft-nosed they just deform more for a bigger spread & reduced penetration -more damage to soft body, less chance of shooting through walls, so safer than full metal jacket for police work.

...this is how I understand it. Hollowpoints, by their nature, will mushroom on impact, flattening and expanding when they hit, so that the entry wound will be small, but the exit wound significantly larger. Therefore they do far more damage to an unarmored human target than a full-metal-jacket, which would merely punch a bullet-sized hole through a man front to back.

 

[S'mon]

I don't think Sado is a real gun nut.

Re FMJ rounds - according to some discussions of ballistics & wounds I read (there was a nice one in GDW's Fire Fusion & Steel), all bullets tumble a lot when entering solid matter, so FMJ rifle rounds' wound trail & thus damage is proportional more to the bullet's length x diameter than to its cross-sectional area; this is the main reason (long) rifle bullets are much more damaging than (shorter) pistol rounds of similar mass & velocity.