Wednesday, November 16, 2005
More Fallout From Shooting the Wrong Guy
Shortly after the July bus and tube bombings in London, on July 22, 2005, Scotland Yard policemen tragically shot Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes, seven times in the head and once in the shoulder, believing him to be another bomber. He wasn't. Over the next days and weeks, the original details of the reason for the shooting came under real doubt. By the time we were seriously wondering why then the police killed this guy, the story disappeared.
It reappeared today in the Daily Telegraph, with revelation that the police used hollowpoint bullets. Here in the states, we go "ho hum" because nearly all our police forces and certainly the elite anti-terrorist units use hollowpoints (indeed, they use a modified black talon round--but more on that below). The Brits point out that such bullets are banned in warfare by the Hague Declaration of 1899. OK, we Yanks say, the police aren't soldiers. But the paper has a slight case of the vapors over use of these specialized bullets, saying:
The firing of hollow point ammunition into the head of Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, is believed to be the first use of the bullets by British police. It will re-ignite controversy around the shooting, at Stockwell Underground station, south London, on July 22.
Modern hollow point bullets are descendants of the expanding "dum dum" ammunition created by the British in an arsenal of the same name near Calcutta, in India, at the end of the 19th century and outlawed under the Hague Declaration of 1899.
The bullets, which expand and splinter on impact, were available to officers taking part in Operation Kratos, the national police drive against suspected suicide bombers which has been described as a "shoot to kill" policy.
There is no doubt that anything other than fully jacketed rounds are illegal for soldiers under the 106 year old international convention which states, in pertinent part:
The Contracting Parties agree to abstain from the use of bullets which expand or flatten easily in the human body, such as bullets with a hard envelope which does not entirely cover the core or is pierced with incisions.
For the entire early history of the firearm, the usual projectile was the relatively soft and heavy metal lead. However, after the development of improved gunpowder, often called smokeless powder, the bullet was sent down the grooved (or rifled) barrel at too great a speed for the soft lead to "take" the groves and come out the end of the barrel spinning. The solution was to encase the soft lead in a harder metal, usually copper of some alloy of copper. A fully copper jacketed bullet, a "ball" round, goes into flesh and neither expands or fragments and one channel the width of the bullet is created. Ball ammunition is called a humane round, which is kind of ironic, upon reflection. I'm trying to kill you, but in a humane way. Silly.
If you have the the copper jacket (the "hard envelope" in the international document) not go over the tip of the lead core, you create a 'soft-point' which expands as it hits flesh and creates a mushroom shaped bullet within a few centimeters and a much bigger channel through the flesh. You can make the bullet expand even more with a hole in the unclad front of the bullet, a hollow point. You can also cut (or "incise") the incomplete copper jacket so that either the bullet fragments in flesh (and creates multiple channels there) or the expansion of the lead core pushes out the cladding so that it creates a ring of cutting surfaces around the edge of the bullet. That's what happens with the black talon, the bullet expands to more than twice its original size and the cladding becomes a ring of sharp, talon-like cutting edges. Thus, the name. Oh yea and the cladding metal is dark, nearly black, so black talon.
The idea behind the black talon and other such rounds is to make it much more lethal, so that it kills the person hit right then and he (or she, I guess) doesn't shoot back or even have the strength to push the button on the suicide belt or other explosive device. It is the right round to use against a terrorist out to bomb citizens of our nation. We right thinking Yanks don't understand the problem at all, there's not even enough controversy to generate even the steam from a teapot. Only a bleeding heart, nancy boy, terrorist lover, would oppose the use of a bullet which is designed to stop someone immediately so that he (or she, I guess) can't trigger the explosives and kill innocents. Who could be for allowing the terrorist a last, dying chance to kill our citizens?
And if the terrorist is a suicide bomber, he (or she, I guess) wants to die, so by shooting him with a black talon or indeed any other bullet, we're not going against his wishes.
It reappeared today in the Daily Telegraph, with revelation that the police used hollowpoint bullets. Here in the states, we go "ho hum" because nearly all our police forces and certainly the elite anti-terrorist units use hollowpoints (indeed, they use a modified black talon round--but more on that below). The Brits point out that such bullets are banned in warfare by the Hague Declaration of 1899. OK, we Yanks say, the police aren't soldiers. But the paper has a slight case of the vapors over use of these specialized bullets, saying:
The firing of hollow point ammunition into the head of Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, is believed to be the first use of the bullets by British police. It will re-ignite controversy around the shooting, at Stockwell Underground station, south London, on July 22.
Modern hollow point bullets are descendants of the expanding "dum dum" ammunition created by the British in an arsenal of the same name near Calcutta, in India, at the end of the 19th century and outlawed under the Hague Declaration of 1899.
The bullets, which expand and splinter on impact, were available to officers taking part in Operation Kratos, the national police drive against suspected suicide bombers which has been described as a "shoot to kill" policy.
There is no doubt that anything other than fully jacketed rounds are illegal for soldiers under the 106 year old international convention which states, in pertinent part:
The Contracting Parties agree to abstain from the use of bullets which expand or flatten easily in the human body, such as bullets with a hard envelope which does not entirely cover the core or is pierced with incisions.
For the entire early history of the firearm, the usual projectile was the relatively soft and heavy metal lead. However, after the development of improved gunpowder, often called smokeless powder, the bullet was sent down the grooved (or rifled) barrel at too great a speed for the soft lead to "take" the groves and come out the end of the barrel spinning. The solution was to encase the soft lead in a harder metal, usually copper of some alloy of copper. A fully copper jacketed bullet, a "ball" round, goes into flesh and neither expands or fragments and one channel the width of the bullet is created. Ball ammunition is called a humane round, which is kind of ironic, upon reflection. I'm trying to kill you, but in a humane way. Silly.
If you have the the copper jacket (the "hard envelope" in the international document) not go over the tip of the lead core, you create a 'soft-point' which expands as it hits flesh and creates a mushroom shaped bullet within a few centimeters and a much bigger channel through the flesh. You can make the bullet expand even more with a hole in the unclad front of the bullet, a hollow point. You can also cut (or "incise") the incomplete copper jacket so that either the bullet fragments in flesh (and creates multiple channels there) or the expansion of the lead core pushes out the cladding so that it creates a ring of cutting surfaces around the edge of the bullet. That's what happens with the black talon, the bullet expands to more than twice its original size and the cladding becomes a ring of sharp, talon-like cutting edges. Thus, the name. Oh yea and the cladding metal is dark, nearly black, so black talon.
The idea behind the black talon and other such rounds is to make it much more lethal, so that it kills the person hit right then and he (or she, I guess) doesn't shoot back or even have the strength to push the button on the suicide belt or other explosive device. It is the right round to use against a terrorist out to bomb citizens of our nation. We right thinking Yanks don't understand the problem at all, there's not even enough controversy to generate even the steam from a teapot. Only a bleeding heart, nancy boy, terrorist lover, would oppose the use of a bullet which is designed to stop someone immediately so that he (or she, I guess) can't trigger the explosives and kill innocents. Who could be for allowing the terrorist a last, dying chance to kill our citizens?
And if the terrorist is a suicide bomber, he (or she, I guess) wants to die, so by shooting him with a black talon or indeed any other bullet, we're not going against his wishes.
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 4:13 AM 
