Firearms and ammunition are subject to restrictions and import permits approved by The Congress of Costa Rica (”Asamblea Legislativa”) and the Ministry of Public Security (”Ministerio de Seguridad Pública.”)
Applications to import weapons may be filed by or through a licensed importer, dealer, manufacturer, or a person. Permits to import war weapons -airplanes, tanks, rifled barrel, etc.- are issued by The Congress of Costa Rica (”Asamblea Legislativa”). Permits to carry personal weapons in Costa Rica are issued by the Ministry of Public Security (”Ministerio de Seguridad Pública.”) The red tape to issue these permits may take up to three (3) months.
Weapons, ammunition, or other devices prohibited by the Costa Rican government will not be admitted into Costa Rica unless specifically authorized by the Congress of Costa Rica (”Asamblea Legislativa”) and Ministry of Public Security (”Ministerio de Seguridad Pública.”)
The Embassy of Costa Rica and the Government of Costa Rica discourage people from traveling with their personal weapons.
However, if you want to bring a handgun, a revolver, or a pistol to Costa Rica, you must follow the following procedure:
1. Inform the airline that you are traveling with a weapon.
2. Once you arrive in Costa Rica, your weapon will remain at the Customs office until you provide the following permits:
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Weapon Entrance Permit issued by the Customs/airport authorities.
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Weapon Circulation Permit issued by the Ministry of Public Security (”Ministerio de Seguridad Pública.”)
3. Once you have those permits, bring them to the Customs Office and your weapon will be released.
4. Then, you will be required to register your weapon at the Ministry of Public Security (”Ministerio de Seguridad Pública.”) in the Department of Firearms and Ammunitions. You may be required to show your police record authenticated by a Consulate of Costa Rica, and to take a psychological test to evaluate your personality traits.
Self Defense Ammunition Generally
American ammunition is the best in the world. Stick to Federal, Cor-Bon, Hornady, Remington, Winchester or CCI ammunition. Some foreign stuff is pretty good (PMC, IMI-Samson, Fiocci), some foreign stuff is great (Dynamit-Nobel, Norma, GECO), some foreign stuff is practice-only junk (e.g. Wolf, CDM - Mexico, military surplus), but no foreign stuff is anywhere near as good as domestic ammunition when it comes to vanquishing hostile attackers. Buy American.
Never use hand-loaded or re-loaded ammunition for self-defense! You may encounter some joker who says he can hand-load ammunition so powerful it will knock anything on two legs down for the count, but don’t buy it. This junk will either misfire or ruin your gun. Use only fresh factory-loaded cartridges, period. There are NO EXCEPTIONS to this rule: use factory-loaded cartridges only.
Handguns
One should carry only hollowpoint ammunition in a defensive handgun. Hollowpoint ammunition has much better stopping power than full metal jacket or round-nose lead, and stopping power is what you need when being assaulted.
The point is not to wound or kill the adversary: the point is to stop him in his tracks and make him cease attacking you. “Stopping power” (sometimes called “knock-down power”) refers to a particular bullet’s ability to incapacitate an attacker - the greater that ability, the less chance that your attacker will be able to continue shooting, stabbing, or beating you after you have shot him.
Handguns are not death-rays; despite what you see in the movies, the vast majority of people shot with handguns survive (over 80%). Handguns are weak compared to rifles and shotguns, and thus you want every edge you can get. Great ammunition is no more expensive than mediocre ammunition, so carry the best. Rifles and shotguns have stopping power to spare; handguns do not. Thus you must select your handgun load very carefully, and the detail of the handgun ammunition section reflects this.
Hollowpoint ammunition is NOT more lethal than ball (full metal jacket) ammunition. You may have seen media hype about “killer dum-dum bullets” but this is nonsense. Hollowpoint bullets usually expand and stop in the human body, and thus the attacker absorbs much more of the bullet’s kinetic energy than if the bullet had merely zipped through him and left two small holes. Hollowpoint ammunition is also safer for all parties concerned.
* You are safer because your attacker is more likely to be incapacitated after one or two shots and thus unable to fire back, stab you, or whatever. The decreased likelihood of your attacker dying from hollowpoint bullets saves you the moral and legal complications and expense you will experience from killing a man.
* Innocent bystanders are safer because hollowpoint bullets are less likely to exit the attacker’s body and go on to injure anyone else. The ricochet danger is also much lower than that of ball ammunition, and hollowpoint bullets are less likely to penetrate walls or doors and strike uninvolved third parties. Furthermore, if your foe is incapacitated quickly he won’t be spraying wild bullets around, endangering uninvolved third parties.
* Lastly, your attacker is safer because he is far less likely to die from one or two hollowpoint bullets than the five or six round-nose slugs you would have had to fire to put him down. Most gunshot deaths occur from shock and loss of blood, and ball rounds tend to make entry and exit wounds, whereas hollowpoints go in and stay put. An attacker shot twice with ball ammo will probably have four holes in him rather than two, and is thus in far greater danger of death from blood loss. If you can avoid killing your attacker you should, for both moral and legal reasons.
There are some exceptions to the “carry only hollowpoints in a handgun” rule. Some older or cheaper automatic pistols, will jam with hollowpoint rounds. With these guns one must use ball rounds (or “full metal jacket” rounds - the terms are synonymous), and I specify “reliable with ball only” models by caliber. It is crucial for you to test your pistol to make certain it is reliable with specific loads - don’t rely on my advice. My life will never depend on the reliability of your handgun. Your life may.
Rifles
Generally speaking, fast expanding bullets are the best choice for rifles. Hollow point and plastic tipped bullets usually expand rapidly. Some soft-point designs are recommended, and these will be specified.
Shotguns
Use buckshot. Slugs and birdshot are useful in some limited and uncommon situations.
A Note On Exotic Ammunition
There are several exotic ammunition designs on the market today, such as the Glaser Safety Slug, Mag-Safe, GECO BAT 9mm, Thunderzap, et cetera. Generally speaking, I recommend that you avoid them. Exotic ammunition is expensive, inaccurate, and often unreliable. These rounds cost so much ($2-$4 each) that you will never practice with them and thus will not be certain of their reliability and accuracy in your gun. This is a big mistake: you should not carry a particular type of ammunition until you have fired at least 150 rounds through your semi-automatic gun to ensure reliable feeding (this doesn’t really apply to revolvers, but you should still fire the ammunition you intend to carry to assure yourself of its accuracy).
‘Glaser Safety Slugs’ are one exotic round I can fully recommend, but only for revolvers in a few scenarios. The Glaser is a proven man-stopper and has very good quality control, but may not feed or cycle reliably in your automatic pistol. Because you cannot afford to fire enough Glasers to establish that it feeds reliably in your pistol (i.e. 100 test-fire rounds will cost $300), I cannot recommend them for pistol owners (if you insist on Glasers, carry one in the chamber and load the magazine with a proven hollowpoint. Be aware, however, that the Glaser may not have the power to cycle your slide, and thus you may be carrying a single-shot gun. You can always cycle the slide manually, of course, but this takes time and both hands; two things you may not be able to spare when fighting for your life. The Walther PPK, H&K P7 series and SIG P230 are notorious for this failure-to-cycle problem with Glaser Safety Slugs).
With revolvers feeding is not an issue, of course, but there are other factors to consider. The Glaser is designed for easy break-up and minimal penetration, which is great for cutting down ricochet and over-penetration dangers but drastically limits its ability to penetrate light cover between you and your foe. A car window, hollow-core door, or even thick winter clothing between you and your assailant can cause the Glaser to disintegrate and leave him unharmed. Bad news for you….great news for him.
There are some situations where the Glaser is a good choice, however. I keep my bedside .357 revolver loaded with .38 Special+P Glasers because I live in a thin-walled apartment building and want to be able to put down an intruder rapidly without worrying about injuring my neighbors. I chose .38 over .357 Magnums because I am likely to be in a just-awakened daze and would rather not be blinded and disoriented by the flash, kick and blast of firing a .357 Magnum in a (probably darkened) room. You may have a similar situation (e.g. retail store defense) where injury to third parties is of concern, and you’ll likely be facing an assailant at extremely close range where the Glaser’s inaccuracy and inability to penetrate cover will not be drawbacks. In these narrowly defined scenarios, the Glaser is a good choice, but keep a couple of speedloaders of hollowpoints handy, just in case. I do.
Glaser Safety Slugs are available in “Blue” or “Silver” versions. The latter are a little heavier for better penetration, but performance is similar. I would be happy with either, but Sanow prefers the Silver. It’s up to you.
Mag-Safes are imitations of Glasers, and I cannot recommend them due to poor quality control. Reliability is the number one requirement of a self-defense handgun, and Mag-Safes don’t make the grade.
GECO “Blitz Action Trauma” or BAT 9mm rounds from Germany are a proven design. Called the “GECO Action Safety” in Europe, this is a high velocity (1400 feet per second) lightweight (86 grain) hollow bullet that has proven itself to be very reliable and successful on the street. I recommend them, but they are very tough to find. Save yourself the trouble and use a good American-made hollowpoint.
Other exotics are best avoided. You may occasionally encounter “Thunderzaps,” “Omni-Shocks,” “Terminators,” “Annihilators,” “Kaswer Law Grabbers,” and other such marginalia in gun shops. Stay away. If you want to gamble, go to an Indian reservation. Don’t gamble with your life, or the lives of others. Glasers and GECO 9mm BATs are the only proven exotics.
Terminology
I have tried to keep specialized technical jargon to a minimum, but it will be helpful for you to understand a few terms and acronyms:
- ‘Ball’ is round-nosed metal jacketed ammunition. It is used for self-loading firearms like pistols. All military pistol and rifle ammunition uses full metal jacket bullets. Synonyms for ball include FMJ (”full metal jacket”), MC (”metal case”) and TMJ (”totally metal jacketed,” a term used only by the ammunition maker CCI). Ball rounds do not expand and are always the worst choice in a defensive round. The military uses ball because it feeds well (i.e. rarely jams), penetrates far, and the military is required to use ball under the Geneva Convention. Fortunately, you are free to choose better ammunition, and should use ball for practice only.
- ‘Wadcutters’ and ’semi-wadcutters’ are sharp-shouldered revolver bullets with an odd cylindrical appearance. True wadcutters are very weak rounds used for target shooting only. Unless you own a .38 or .357 revolver, forget about these.
- ‘Jacketed soft-points’ are jacketed bullets with exposed lead at the tip. These make poor defensive rounds for handguns but may be effective for rifles, due to the latter’s high velocity. Never use JSP rounds in a handgun for self-defense. Never.
- ‘Jacketed hollowpoints’ are the best choice for handguns and most rifles. JHP rounds have a hollow cavity in the nose and usually expand (and stop) in the body of your attacker, transferring all their kinetic energy for maximum stopping power. They are the safest and best bullets available. JHP bullets are always best for self-defense.
-’Round-nose lead’ (or RNL) are generally revolver bullets without any metal jacket around the bullet. These are worthless for self-defense, and I don’t even use them at the range. If you come upon a bargain lot of RNL ammo, feel free to buy it for target practice. You will be scrubbing out your barel until the wee hours, however, as all-lead bullets scum up barrels something fierce. Use ‘Flitz’ metal polish to scour out the grimy residue.
