Special "Super Effective" Bullets

Every so often some ammo companies come out with a "new" super-duper amazing bullet that will be THE ultimate ... either for self defense or hunting or stopping the Zombie Apocalypse. They make a big splash in the gun media ... sometimes in the regular brain-dead media ... and then disappear.

Years ago ... back in the last century ... I was doing a little writing for Harris Publications thanks to the help of Hal Swiggett. Ammo companies sent me stuff to test from time to time. One day I received The Latest And Greatest in self-defense ammo. It was in .357 Magnum. Velocity from my 4" Ruger was 1600 fps!

I shot some at targets and found them to hit very low. Of course my sights were set for standard loads. I pulled a couple rounds apart and found the following:

Bullet was a copper tube weighing 65 grains
It had a plastic base wad that increased the projectile weight to just over 71 grains
Powder charge was 6.6 grains of a shiny flake powder that looked like 231

The hollow tube did not impress me. But I took it out and shot several animals with it. None of the animals I shot showed any initial reaction to being hit through the lung/heart region. You could not see the bullet wound unless you got up very close and examined the critter. At ranges under 10 yards the base wad made a larger entrance wound.

The company was promoting this as the Ultimate Self Defense round.

I called them and asked them if they had shot anything that was living and breathing at the time. They said no they had not. I explained what I had done and told them they needed to test this some more as they were likely to get some good guys hurt if they didn't.

I never heard back from them and they removed me from their mailing list. I was not bothered by that. As far as I know they dropped the project.