As horrific as it is, the following tragedy didn’t go down in New York City. Or New York. NY Daily News scribe Philip Caulfield had to turn his gaze southwards, all the way to Florida to ramp-up ye olde cop killer bullet hysteria. “The crazed Florida mom who allegedly killed her four children before killing herself last week pumped 18 hollow-point rounds into the kids, some at point-blank range, according to a coroner’s report . . . Local gun shop owner Herb Stratton told Florida Today the hollow-points are especially lethal. The rounds cause ‘the maximum amount of damage’ because they expand outwards after hitting their target — a process known as mushrooming.” Does Caulfield realize that ANY bullet fired at point blank range or thereabouts is highly lethal, or does he really think that hollow points doomed Tonya Thomas’ kids? Enquiring minds want to know.

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47 COMMENTS

  1. Hollow point bullets are also less likely to go through and through the body of the intended target (for instance your aggressor) and to strike an innocent bystander behind. Air Marshalls use them because they are less likely to puncture a window at high altitude than a round nose bullet.

    • this is exactly what i though, instead of two wounds, hp only leave the entrance wound, less penetration, more kinetic energy dispersed into the target.

      “problem solved, problem staying solved.”

      • Almost certain – Glazer Safeties or something similar – because what about a clean miss?

  2. this is a rehashing to whole whole stupid “black talon” argument back in the day. now if i understand correctly, is Winchester ranger talon hp ammo, the same stuff with a different name or what? i am a fan of the hornady “critical duty” loads these day, some pretty hot ammo there, that is my current HD round of choice.

    • I think it is a slightly improved version of the “black talon” bullet. I forgot what the improvement was, though.
      The name change was to get around the bad press related to the “black talon” name (too deadly for civilians to own, I think). So Winchester stopped selling the “evil” “black talons”, and started selling “ranger talons”. It was basically the same bullet (even a little more deadly, I think), but the press was pacified, thinking they had another gun-control win.

      • They removed the moly coating. Seems some idiots didn’t clean their guns after firing the stuff. Moly + powder residue + time = corrosion.

    • Generally I go for Critical Defense, but I pretty much ran out around the time I bought my latest pistol, so I ended up with Critical Duty for it. It feeds it, it fires it, so I’m happy.

  3. “God could have stopped it…” Any one of the neighbors could have stopped it too, if they had a gun to use, but liberalism had disarmed them. I conclude that gun control is responsible for the deaths of some of these children.

    Also noticed that the author blamed hollow points as a contributing factor. Either very stupid, or intentionally inflammatory. Both motives are despicable for a high-paid investigative journalist. Shame on him.

    • If you read the story, nobody would have been able to stop what happened unless you knew what was on the mother’s mind. You cannot stop every tragedy no matter what law is or is not passed.

      • This is what gun-control people tend to not understand. She was the only person that could have stopped herself. 🙁

    • Leftism, sir, leftism.

      Liberalism is, generally speaking, the political ideology based on securing the highest amount of individual liberty possible. In this vein, the U.S. Constitution is a VERY liberal document.

      The people who CALL themselves “liberals” these days aren’t liberals, they just want to take liberties with the U.S. Constitution — they are CONSTITUTIONAL liberals.

      Thus, calling them anything other than “leftists” or possibly “constitutional liberals” is incorrect, and allows them to preserve their delusions. If we let them define the language, they win.

      • Agree. John Stuart Mill was a defining figure in the Liberal tradition. He was not a leftist or populist.

  4. HP ammo is illegal in many countries, even some that are pretty gun-friendly, such as France (you don’t have a big anti-gun debate after a shootout, even after the Toulouse incidents). It’s commonly referred to as “Dum Dum” over there (pronounced “doom doom”). But then, you can’t buy more than 1,000 rounds of CF ammo a year, because why would you, seriously, right? Meaning that French shooters cast their HP ammo and reload pretty much 100% of what they shoot, keep their contingent of 1,000 for fresh brass.

    I bet you the MSNBC talking heads (especially Maddow, smart girl, but so gun stupid) will bring this topic back.

    • I adore Rachel Maddow, but I think she doesn’t quite “get” guns at this point (not that I ever expect her to come around). I also think she doesn’t believe in political ritual or symbolism either (the idea of purchasing a gun because you can, and its your right; the idea of purchasing a gun as an individual to battle tyranny even knowing that a civilian population would be crushed effortlessly)

      • *by a state-of-the-art conventional foe.

        totally forgot to finish that thought, haha, my bad.

        • The issue though, is that were the sleeping giant of middle-America to finally awaken to the tyranny of the government, any combat would not be of the conventional army vs army sort.

          The government may win battles, but given enough opposition, they would never win a war.

    • In France, just as in Sweden, the US, and many other nations, hunting regulations require hollow-point or soft-point bullets for most game hunting. This is because these are more sure and merciful. As for the sad incident above, how can you produce “more lethal” when shooting each child four or more times? Four FMJ torso, neck, or head shots would finish off most humans. Further, in a self-defense shooting “sure and merciful” would naturally be defined as stopping the lethal or maiming attack as quickly as possible, something JHP does. Nearly every policeman in the developed world agrees with this view when it is THEIR life on the line. I think salesman Herb Stratton thought his comments would encourage greater sales, a reasonable conclusion.

  5. Remember, this is the mainstream media at hand here. Should the only guns that are legal to own become .22LR firearms, there would be a yellow journalism piece discussing the advanced ballistic lethality of the rimfire cartridge.

    • The news article/ editorial doesn’t state the caliber. Since it took 18 HP rounds to kill 4 people (4 1/2 rounds per person on average), maybe she used .22LR hollow points.

  6. It’s so simple, really. If she had only been able to shoot her children with eighteen rounds of full metal jacketed ball ammo the children would still be alive, right?

  7. Here, I’ll try a mainstream journalism approach to explain why Caulfield endorses mass murder.

    -Hollow points are less likely to exit a body.
    -If a bullet doesn’t exit the target’s body, it will not injure an innocent bystander.
    -Vilifying hollow points means you’d rather people use traditional FMJ.
    -Therefore, you’d rather bullets exited a body to endanger innocent bystanders.
    -In conclusion, you endorse the murder of bystanders.

    Mainstream journalism is fun.

    • He’s a member of the MSM, which means he knows nothing about guns but still thinks that no one should be allowed to own or use them. He had to ask an expert to find out that JHP bullets expand inside the target body. Don’t expect him to know anything about FMJ bullets. I think in this case it was ignorance, not malice. When you combine ignorance with liberal journalistic arrogance, the result is conclusions that are not supported by the facts. That’s what we got in this editorial masquerading as good investigative journalism.

  8. It has to be the fault of the bullets, you see, and not the fault of the dirty bitch who killed her own children. Like, when Andrea Yates drowned her five kids, it was the fault of the water. And when Saiqa Akhter strangled her two children, it was the fault of society.

    You non–New Yorkers just don’t get it.

  9. But she drank rebull! we should outlaw redbull!
    Just kidding… But goes along the same line of thinking doesn’t it?

  11. A plastic dry cleaning bag over the head or a kitchen knife or claw hammer or automobile are especially lethal too.

  13. If history has taught is anything, it’s that we’ll figure out a way to kill each other with or without guns, or with or without hollow points.

    And, history should also tell us that we aren’t going to change the minds of the idiots that can’t / won’t learn from history.

    Sad for the kids.

  14. “…hollow-points are especially lethal.”

    *sigh* 🙄 I get so stinkin tired of this argument. It might be the most asinine of any the control crowd uses. Because FMJs are people friendly. (Like Drew said) If she had used FMJs her kids would be alive. Fvckin nitwit.

    I swear to God. Where the hell is the editor of this “paper”? At first I thought this was an anti-gun thing but now I’m pretty sure it’s just an ignorance thing. This guy probably doesn’t know a buttstock from a flash hider from a magazine, a 1911 from a Glock from a Webley, a HP from a LSWC from a FMJ, an AK from an… you get my point. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about and used w/e he could create a story from nothing.

    Sure HPs are, in theory and depending on more than a couple variables, more deadly than FMJs. But that is completely irrelevant. The fact that she used HPs had no bearing on the outcome of the night. If she had used FMJ, LSWC, BTHP, API, Inendiary, Tracer, or probably even rubber bullets, then those kids would probably still be dead.

    The author found one irrelevant factoid that sounded scary and wrote an entire ‘article’ without actually saying anything.

    *Deep breath* [/rant] 😆

  15. Were these four children among the 30 by the fellow begging for child-support relief? Yes, my question is in bad taste, but it is remarkable that we get the details in the news about the type of bullet [trivia], but nothing about the mother’s psych history or the the father’s provision or lack of support. If the children had been drowned as in Texas a few years back, would they be reporting on the hardness of the water in the tub?

  16. I actually read a study a few years back that showed that in many shootings, the hollowpoint pistol rounds actually didn’t really mushroom due to the low energy of the cartridge and the squishiness of the target. They’re still less likely to over-penetrate than pointy FMJ, but they often don’t expand like a high-power rifle round.

  17. from the link:
    “At a funeral for the five held at Temple Baptist Church in Titusville on Monday, Jarvis Walsh, the family’s pastor, urged mourners to show forgiveness.
    “It was God’s will, it was God’s plan. God could have stopped it, but he didn’t,” Walsh said, according to Florida Today.”

    I reflected upon the accusations of racism against GM in the TM shooting after reading the above. I wonder what the pastor might have been preached if the shooter was not the mother.

    • Yeah, that God guy always seems to have something else on his schedule when these things go down.

  19. The comments on the original story were interesting–not one mentioned the bullets. That aside, the most condemnation was for the preacher at the funeral who said that these killings were “God’s will.” Only a couple of comments about the neighbors who refused the kids entry, telling them to go away, while at the same time being on the phone to 911. Maybe they didn’t own a gun? I was more shocked by that than anything else–but then again, at my age I should no better. No one wants to get involved.

    • That may be the ultimate cause for this shooting – No one in the neighborhood wanted to get involved. This could never have happened in my neighborhood, because someone would have stepped in weeks before, and stopped the insanity in that house before it ever got this far.

  20. Let’s focus on the type of bullets used by this mad woman and nothing else, that’s what liberals like to do.

  21. right because phil sounds like a credible expert when it comes to firearms and ammunition. jesus fucking christ, the media couldnt even get the facts straight about 9/11, the war on terrorism, and the economy.

    1.) hollow points are more advantageous in a urban environment, because they expand and do not over penetrate as much.
    2.) ALL bullets are deadly at point blank range. Ill show you what a 22 LR or even a 22 Short can do at that range.
    3.) walmart 243 hunting cartridges are technically “cop killer” bullets because they can pass through kevlar body armor. hollow points have inferior penetrating ability.

    As if new york doesn’t have its own shit hole to report about. Lets see:

    1.) rampant poverty
    2.) subversion of personal liberties
    3.) police corruption
    4.) political corruption
    5.) unemployment
    6.) wall street’s fraudulent financial paradigm
    7.) the Federal Reserve, which deserves to have its front doors pissed on
    8.) corporate fraud and theft
    9.) a population dominated by dicks

  22. In Belgium, a woman choked her four kids to death. Hands are especially lethal, causing the maximum amount of damage, and should be banned, right? Especially for those who have long nails, causing a better penetration at close range. Also, having your hands in your pockets should require a CCW permit.

    Ok, I think everybody with a very very little knowledge of the topic will agree that the anti HP thing is really ridiculous.

  23. The name “Hollow point” has a bad ring to it, we should change it to Happy rainbow neighbor safe projectile…problem solved.

  24. If “hollow points” were not used, the news would have stated “sharp pointed projectiles” or “high velocity missles” or “specialty lethal ammunition” in it’s place. The goal of the news is not to report facts, it is to sell advertising.

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