(Ed. note: Richard of BlueSheepdog.com and GunsHolstersandGear.com was kind enough to review this ammunition for me. He is a true gentleman, experienced law enforcement officer and writer, and a really bad joke teller.)
Knocking someone through a plate glass window with a single shot from a pistol is the stuff of TV fantasy. Handgun ammo is just not that powerful. In fact, pistol calibers are generally considered marginal for stopping a violent attacker when compared to rifle and shotgun loads.
Even so, there are definitely differences between handgun ammunition designs that can affect how quickly an attacker is stopped when shot. Some rounds have built reputations as being effective on the street, while others have been dubbed “widow makers” because of the poor results experienced by the officers relying on them.
Liberty Ammunition is a Florida company building unconventional ammunition for self-defense. The company’s Civil Defense line of handgun ammo uses a variety of techniques to create significant wound channels that are likely to quickly incapacitate an attacker.
Generally, Liberty Ammunition uses lighter-than-typical bullet weights in each caliber. This allows the bullets to be driven to much higher velocities while still staying within the pressure specifications set out by the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute (SAAMI.)
Energy can be described as the potential amount of work done. Since the energy is measured as the mass times the square of the velocity, dropping the bullet weight while increasing the speed can actually produce a load that has more energy than a conventional load design. The idea is the more energy a bullet has, the more work – or damage – it can do to the attacker.
The Civil Defense line of ammunition uses solid copper hollowpoint bullets that are Continue reading →
