![]() ![]() We have become the dominant speciesthe alpha, the top predator if you willbecause we have learned to tailor our tools to the given task. We are also, ipso facto, the weapon-bearing mammal. We homo sapiens are the tool-bearing mammal. In the big picture, the firearm is a tool. These men had been killed, but not stopped. Every combat soldier who fought in heavy battle can tell you stories of enemy soldiers who, wounded unto death, still took one or more Americans with them. Many an American soldier who was mortally wounded went on to kill so many of the enemy before he ran out of blood and died that the majority of those on the sacred list who won the Congressional Medal of Honor won it posthumously. When you get into it deep enough, you realize that the righteous combatant does not shoot to kill, he shoots to stop. Therefore, the job of the bullet he launches is instant incapacitation. However, that young man desperately wants the other young man not to kill him or one of his comrades. No young man fighting for his country wants, when he thinks about it, to end the life of another young man fighting for his country. Note that damage is greatest early in the path, before resistance has slowed the bullet and reduced its energy.Īt this point, both the semantics and the ethics of the matter start to become complicated. However, the soldier who is bad breath distance away from an Al-Qaeda fanatic with an AK47 doesn’t just want his opposite number wounded, he wants him instantly out of the fight at the moment the bullet hits him.īullet has lodged in the translucent gelatin, leaving a “wound path” clearly visible behind it. I am sure that this makes good sense to the generals behind the lines, and the bean counters behind them. A wounded soldier means at least three less of the enemy: one down, and two more to carry him off the field of battle. In warfare, the bullet that wounds an enemy soldier becomes a greater “force multiplier” than the one that kills him. The reason is that it tends to result in slow death and is not humane. Ironically, in the name of human decency, virtually every state in the union forbids the use of such ammunition against deer, bear, or other big game. Essentially, they call for full metal jacket projectiles that just punch neat, clean holes through the bodies of enemy soldiers. The Geneva Conventions and Hague Accords require that the bullets used not be designed to expand. Interestingly, the Judge Advocate General’s office has already determined that these restrictions apply to declared wars between recognized nation-states, not things like the current “war on terrorism,” but that’s another story. The military is bound by the codes of international warfare, going back to the Geneva Conventions and the Hague Accords, all of which predated napalm, chemical warfare, and the concept of thermonuclear war. Paul Nowak of Winchester (left, with Springfield Armory pistol) fires over a chronograph (on tripod) which measures the bullet’s velocity, and into the block of ballistic gelatin set on steel holder at right. And ditto again for the bullet a rural American citizen uses to harvest game for the family table. Ditto for the police officer’s ammunition. This is true for an armed citizen’s home defense gun, as surely as it is for the battle weapon of one of Col. It is the bullet that actually does the job. ![]() The gun, he explained, is merely the launcher. Jeff Cooper, USMC, Ret., once made the observation that the bullet is more important than the gun. One of our greatest modern gun experts, Lt.
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