The search
for the magic bullet continues.
 |
| The latest entry for Magic Bullet Award |
It is our
nature to search for a cure that can be bottled, packaged or shrink-wrapped and
purchased. Smarts, skill, grace under
pressure, surely we can buy a product to replace these core skill, can’t we?
If there is
one message I came away from competitive bulls-eye shooting with, it is
every competitor is a sucker for bottled advantage. Don’t take my word for it; check out most of
the gun rag articles and advertisements.
Some
designer looked at handgun ammunition and boiled down the stopping power
problem to insufficient bloodletting.
And he is, in my opinion, correct.
There are many variable to stopping power, but nobody doubts that if we
could drop the VCA’s blood volume by 30% almost instantaneously, the fight
would be over.
Sailing
navies had the same problem and they came up with a solution. It might not be a stretch to metaphorically
link the wooden ships sails with human blood circulation.
Sea combat
with sailing ships boils down to wind and your ability to use the wind. Opposing ships would sail towards each other
in one manner or another to bring their guns into range. If you could rob your opponent of the ability
to move, he became a stationary target you could simply hammer away at. The easiest way was to destroy the sail and
rigging.
A single
canon ball might hit and destroy a mast. But more likely it would punch a hole
in the canvas. Some naval designer came
up with the idea of chain shot. Simply
put, it was two halves of a cannon ball joined by 6 feet of chain. Fired from cannons this would cut rope
rigging, shred sails and have a much better chance of shattering the mast. The downside is the fired shot was relatively
inaccurate and had to be used at close range.
I also suspect the penetration power against the thick wooden hulls of
warships was significantly reduced by the separating mass of the cannon ball.
Multi Impact
Bullet (MIB) Company has come up with a high tech version of this round. This innovated design was brought to my
attention by my good friend and fellow cartridge collector, Marty.
 |
| Note the partial separation and independent top of bullet |
 |
| top view |
The round,
called Multiple Impact Bullet, is a four component projectile. There is a center portion and three equal
weight fragments joined bolo style by Kevlar string. The rotation imparted by the gun’s barrel
cause the projectile to open up bolo style.
The stated purpose for this is poor shooting. Even if you are 4 inches off center of mass,
the theory goes, one of the bullet bolos will hit somewhere near the center of
mass.
We just had
to try it out.
 |
| Marty cracks one out, note the happy brass in midair. (It's happy cause it's doing its thing) |
Marty set up
a paper target on a cardboard backing board and shot it at two distances. He used the zero on the target as the point
of aim and he marked each impact.
Here's the
target. Marty got two center of mass
hits, which conventional, and often wrong, wisdom indicates should have ended
the conflict.
 |
| This target was fired at 9 and 12 feet. Note the two impacts at aiming point at "0" |
In this case the reduced
mass of the center of the projectile may not have had enough oomph to penetrate
deeply into the body.
If you were
expecting the stronger-than-steel Kevlar to open-up the target like a wire
cheese cutter through a wedge of Swiss cheese you’d be wrong.
 |
| The red box shows the end of the Kevlar string which was attached to one of the bullet bolo ends |
The Kevlar cut the paper, but not the
cardboard. The bullet bolo pieces did
penetrate the cardboard but we don’t know what that would have meant to a
person. So I went to their website.
It’s a slick
site. Nice cartoons of how it works and
of guns firing cartoon bullets. There
are several videos of real people, but they’re fluff videos. Nowhere did I find actual numbers about
penetration into ballistic gelatin.
I’m a
performance-based prejudiced shooter.
Shooting clay, wet phone books and gelatin tissue stimulant is, in my
mind almost worthless. Give me
coroners/doctors reports detailing internal damage and what the person did
after they were shot. Yeah, I know, it’s
ghoulish, but it is what it is.
As I
understand the website the MIB has problems with accuracy, which they discount
with the standard disclaimer most self-defense shootings happen within X number
of feet. (Pick your own X depending on
your belief system.) This mirrors the
problem with chain shot, reduced accuracy.
Comments
Post a Comment