Defense Articles

Bullet

Background

A bullet is a projectile, often a pointed metal cylinder, that is shot from a firearm. The bullet is usually part of an ammunition cartridge, the object that contains the bullet and that is inserted into the firearm. Cartridges are often called bullets, but this article will discuss only the projectiles fired from small or personal firearms (such as pistols, rifles, and shotguns).

History

Though there were cast lead bullets used with slings thousands of years ago, the history of the modern bullet starts with the history of firearms. Sometime after A.D. 1249, it was realized that gunpowder could be used to fire projectiles out of the open end of a tube. The earliest firearms were large cannons, but personal firearms appeared in the mid-fourteenth century. Early projectiles were stone or metal objects that could fit down the barrel of the firearm, though lead and lead alloys (mixtures of metals) were the preferred materials by 1550. As manufacturing techniques improved, firearms and lead bullets became more uniform in size and were produced in distinct calibers (the diameter of the bullet).

The Industrial Revolution produced further improvements. Firearms with rifled barrels (spiral grooves inside of the firearm barrel that impart stabilizing spinning motion to the bullet) led to the familiar conical bullet. More powerful smokeless powders replaced gunpowder (now called black powder) in the late nineteenth century, but they also required harsher firearm and bullet materials. Lead bullets left lead residue in the barrel; jacketed bullets (a harder metal layer surrounds the softer lead core) were developed to stop this. The familiar metal ammunition cartridge (containing a bullet, a case, a primer, and a volume of propellant) was common by World War I.

Raw Materials

Bullets are made of a variety of materials. Lead or a lead alloy (typically containing antimony) is the traditional bullet core material. Traditional bullet jackets are made of copper or gilding metal, an alloy of copper and zinc. There are many other materials that are used in bullets today, including aluminum, bismuth, bronze, copper, plastics, rubber, steel, tin, and tungsten.

Bullet lubricants include waxes (traditionally carnauba wax made from the carnauba palm), oils, and molybdenum disulfide (moly). Modern wax and oil formulas are generally not made public. Moly is a recent innovation; this naturally occurring mineral sticks to metal on contact. The bullet making process can also use grease and oils to lubricate the bullet during machining and pressing steps. This lubrication prevents damage to the bullet or the machinery by allowing the bullet and machinery to move against each other without sticking. Solvents are used to remove grease and oil from the bullet afterward.

Design

There are several different uses for ammunition, such as military, law enforcement, hunting, marksmanship/target shooting, and self-defense, each requiring different bullet performance. There are also legal and public relations design considerations, such as lethality, threats to innocent bystanders, environmental impact, and appearance.

Bullet design is dependent on firearm design and vice versa. The bullet must fit into the barrel correctly. A bullet that is too small will not engage the rifling in the barrel, or it will bounce around in the barrel and not exit in a straight line. A bullet that is too large will jam in the barrel, possibly causing the firearm to explode from the pressure. The bullet weight must also match the amount of powder in the cartridge, so that it is fired at the correct speed.

Bullets are designed using calculations and data gathered from previous testing (firing) of bullets. This data can include variables such as accuracy (whether it hit the target), precision (whether more than one of the same bullet type produced similar results), speed of the bullet, effectiveness at a given range (distance to the target), penetration into the target, and damage to the target. Bullets are then tested against a target which resembles what they will be used against. There are several materials used to simulate the intended target, including bullet gelatin, a recently developed material used to simulate flesh.

Modern bullets can have many different features. Some of these features concern the shape of the bullet and others the materials of construction. Most bullets look like a cylinder with a pointed end. The cylindrical section to the rear of the bullet is the shank and the pointed section to the front of the bullet is the tip, though the tip may be flat instead of pointed. Bullets can be made of one or more materials.

Bullets made out of only soft material (such as lead) expand on impact causing more damage to the target. Bullets made out of only a harder material (such as steel) penetrate further into thicker targets, but do not expand much. A softer core can be enclosed or partially enclosed in a layer of harder metal called a jacket. This jacket can completely enclose the bullet or it can leave the softer tip exposed for expansion purposes. Varying the amount of jacketing alters the amount of penetration versus expansion.

If you use a .300 Win. Mag. Bullet in a .308, you will probably be disappointed in its game performance. It is likely to produce a wound similar to a full metal jacketed bullet.

Likewise, if you reverse the situation– particularly if you use a match type bullet on game– you can expect poor performance. Every bulletmaker in the business advises not to use their match bullets on game and every year I hear complaints about match bullet performance on game.When I ask why the nimrod used a match bullet and at what velocity, the answer generally is to the effect, “It was the most accurate load and the recoil, at 400 fps under max, was real pleasant.”it is designed for accuracy with total disregard for field performance. One strike for not listening to the manufacturers recommendations, two for flawed thinking and three for using the load on game.

The debate over the best bullets for handgun hunting with a revolver continues to rage–hardcast lead or jacketed. Cast bullets seem to get a lot of press, but are they really as effective as jacketed on game that the majority of handgunners hunt? That means deer, pigs and black bear.

Deer are by far our most popular big game. Deer are relatively fragile animals. Pigs are a bit larger and more solidly put together. The great majority of black bear taken are well under 200 pounds. All of these animals are easily penetrated, with the whitetail being the easiest to ventilate. Any suitable hunting bullet from any properly loaded revolver of .357 Magnum or greater power level certainly has enough penetration to kill a deer, assuming a properly placed shot.

Unless the central nervous system is instantly destroyed, an animal dies only when its brain runs out of oxygen. A deer struck with a double lung shot may run quite a distance before that happens- or he may not go far at all. Many factors are involved here, such as exactly what the bullet struck.

Did the bullet penetrate both lungs and exit without striking a major blood vessel in the lung tissue? Was it a fringe hit or center hit? Did it strike any of the major arteries or veins between the lungs or miss them completely? Was the animal unaware of danger when it was hit, or was it pumped on adrenaline? Did the bullet hit a rib going in, producing numerous tissue-destroying fragments? Or did the bullet slip between two ribs with no fragmentation? Did the bullet itself shed fragments, greatly increasing tissue damage and bleeding?

Animal reaction to a hit is fairly unpredictable. Sometimes there is almost zero reaction to the hit itself. Reaction to a hit which strikes major bones– not ribs– is usually unmistakable. A standing animal hit in the midsection or farther back will usually kick at its side while arching its back and beginning a run.

Rarely a week goes by without my receiving several inquiries from agency principals wanting me to “teach their CSRs to sell.”

“I’d love to,” I reply, “I just need to learn more about your agency.” My list of questions includes:

* What exactly do you want to accomplish quantitatively and qualitatively?

* Tell me about your agency culture.

* Tell me about your people.

* What, if anything, have you done in the past to turn service to sales? What’s worked? What’s not worked?

A few seconds of silence generally follows, then a sigh. “Don’t you just come in and do a training class?”

How I wish it were that easy! Unfortunately, there is no magic bullet to create CSR sales success.

Changing from a reactive service agency to a proactive service-sales agency is a huge culture change. Culture is the set of beliefs that governs behavior. To change behavior, beliefs must change. Let me give you an example from a client on what happens when an agency tries to change behavior without changing beliefs.

Five years ago, Best Insurance Agency signed up for Reliable Insurance Company’s personal lines service center. The agency owner thought that with 25% of the policyholders’ day-to-day inquiries being handled directly by the competent staff at the company, the agency CSRs would be free to grow the personal lines business. The CSRs attended a seminar to teach them the skills to cross-sell, upgrade, and close new business opportunities.

Reliable Insurance Company kept all of its service center promises. Notices were sent to the policyholders advising them of the change of day-to-day inquiries and calls were handled professionally and accurately.

There was only one problem. The CSRs never believed that the company service center could take care of their clients the way they did. So when a service center client called the agency, no one reminded them of the change and the agency continued business as usual.

When the agency manager audited the files of the service center clients six months later, she found that almost all that had been designated as service center clients were still being handled by the CSRs.

Upon learning this, the agency owner’s reaction was to proclaim the company service center a failure. Of course, this was not the case. The responsibility fell on the agency associates to support and reaffirm the service center partnership with their policyholders.

I asked the agency owner if he ever discussed the big picture plan for moving business to the service center with his team. No. Did he create a strategy with objectives to grow the agency-controlled business using the skills learned in the training class? No. Has he incorporated sales objectives into position descriptions and performance reviews? No.

Larry Bossidy, former CEO of Honeywell and co-author of the best-selling book Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done states, “Unless you translate big thoughts into concrete steps for action, they’re pointless.”

Agencies that desire to change from a reactive service culture to a proactive sales one should remember this-to change individual behavior, beliefs must change. Leadership must be willing to debate with their team the ideas behind both old and new positions. Uncovering the CSRs’ perspectives is the first step to overcoming their fear of change. With those issues on the table, an organization can create an execution strategy to assure long-term culture change.

Pre-packaged Mini-Meals such as Oscar Mayer’s Lunchables work for millions of kids and adults while triggering disgusted Yuck’s from an even greater number of rejecters. The users have a simple rationale the products work and they’re easy to use The rejecters say they are overpriced, over-packaged, hard to open, and have too many preservatives, fat grams, and calories and way too much sodium. Observers of kids in school say that they are much too hard for many school kids to open without help. Some of the opposed feel strongly enough about all that’s wrong with these products to suggest that there should be laws against allowing them to be marketed for children. But the bottom line is that they work and they are easy Even if they aren’t easy for kids to open, even if they are hard for to fit into small lunch boxes, they work for the parents and little kids are willing to struggle with whatever works for the bigger kids. The bottom line the products work and the category grows and grows.

Internet shopping is soaring because it works and because it’s easy when you know how. Consumers who successfully did some of their holiday shopping on the Internet reported pride in their accomplishment as well as time and hassle saving. Many were better able to zero on the needs of their giftees on the Internet than they would have been able to do in traditional stores. The feelings of accomplishment were reminiscent of the excitement generated by double coupons in heyday of double coupons when shoppers counted their hits and their savings. Our qualitative input suggests that Internet holiday sales would have been double $7 billion if more of the triers had been able to become buyers.

However, while most of the others painted cheerful snow scenes and villages, Spencer worked in a muted palette and chose as his subjects the tenements and mills along the canals of the Delaware river and the people who lived and worked in them. A Boston newspaper critic summed up these scenes with great vividness: “Out of the grime and smoke and deadly commonplace of the mills, the ugliness of the tenement houses, the sickening squalor of a row of unpainted shacks lining the farther side of a canal, [Spencer] manages to extract the ‘fleur du mal,’ the blossom of beauty emerging from the slime of the gutter.”

The artist was born in Nebraska, the son of an itinerant Sweden-borgian minister, and, as a keen genealogist found that his family tree included an earl of Spencer. However, his favorite ancestor was a pirate who roved the Caribbean Sea in the service of Queen Elizabeth I. Spencer married Margaret Fulton, a painter and architect and a descendant of the artist and engineer Robert Fulton. She grew up comfortably in Philadelphia, where her mother was painted by Thomas Eakins. The Spencers were alternately madly in love with each other or “positively thrived on battles–high-pitched, screaming tirades,” according to one of the reminiscences left by their daughter Margaret, known as Tink. Spencer took his revenge for these scenes by using himself and his wife as models for paintings ironically entitled Happy Family and Alann Clock. The first, quite reminiscent of the work of Honore Daumier, one of Spencer’s favorite artists, shows Spencer dressed and kneeling, fending off an enraged Margaret, who has leaped out of bed and nearly out of her night-dress and is grappling with her husband. On the floor sits a yowling baby. Alann Clock shows a disheveled grumpy Spencer sitting up in bed, while Margaret prepares to wrench the covers off.

Sometimes to recover from these fights, Spencer would flee to New York City for weeks at a time to paint the waterfront in Harlem, or his wife would retreat to a building on their property that contained a studio, kitchen, and bedrooms. She held the only key.

In another mood, Spencer was a convivial companion who was welcomed by the most hospitable of the impressionists, William Langson Lathrop, and his wife at their mill in New Hope, Pennsylvania, which was the social center for the group. The Spencers, in turn, liked to organize parties at which they served the beer Robert brewed in his cellar, where he also made sake and grew edible mushrooms. Oddly, Robert Spencer became an excellent golfer, playing on the local course and with the pros at East Hampton, Long Island, when he visited relations there.

Spencer could not read music and had no ear for harmony, but this did not prevent him from playing the piano. As Tink Spencer recalled, “he often sat for hours at the piano pressing out great crescendoing chords and passionate single-noted melodies. And at other times–with soft, retaining, and loud pedals all to the floor–he made queer, haunting music blow through the house making time forgotten. He said it made him paint better and that he could get, from the music in his head, the substance and the shape and the color of what he wanted to put on canvas.” These shapeless sessions at the piano doubtless helped him build the increasingly imagined scenes he painted in his later career. As he wrote to his friend and faithful patron Duncan Phillips in 1926, “I have to … build a city of real bricks and mortar before I paint it, and the real bricks and mortar are imagination–solidified…. I first have to make what I see–so it’s slow–dreadfully slow.”

ON FSR’s new Nitro Bullet, you’ll find a smooth, three-belt drive system, suspension components derived form 1/8-scale on-road technology and weight where it counts - in the center. Yes, just like its electric sibling, the Nitro Bullet is bulit to work. But is it aws tunable and does it perform well? After a little building, speculating and tunign and a lot of driving, I’ve come up with the answer, but I won’t tell you just yet. Read on; check out what the Nitro Bullet has to offer and see how it fared during my track tests. It might be the gas sedan to beat.

PERFORMANCE

The long-awaited time had come: I headed to the asphalt roadcourse. With just three pulls on the pull-start, I had the V12 running-not bad for a new engine. I broke the engine in, set the car on the pavement (without the body) and gave it a couple of quick squirts of the throttleand watched as the front universal was ejected from the car! I found this unusual, since the universals in my electric Bullet have held up well. I yanked a universal from the aforementioned car to fix the Nitro Bullet, and headed back to the track. Again, the reliable engine fired within a few pulls and I was off and running.

After a few hot laps to scuff the tires and warm up the engine, I leaned it out and let it rip. The Nitro Bullet’s acceleration was pretty impressive, but as I entered the corner, I experienced a slight push. This made the car very forgiving, but I knew it was eroding my lap times.

After a few laps to see just how quick the setup could be, I pulled it off the course and headed to the workbench to make a few minor tweaks (see “Building and Setup Tips”). My efforts paid off: the Bullet hooked up through the corners and surefootedly exited the turns-definitely a faster ride. This is by far the best running gas car I have driven, and with only a few slight tweaks from its box-stock form, it was hooked-impressive.

The ejected universal was my only problem, and it was easy to replace. The tires played a major role in getting the car to stick. I chose Pro-Line’s mounted slicks because I knew they worked well on my track. To get the Bullet hooked up on your home track, start with tire swaps, then tune the suspension.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I’m sure that you are just as excited about the Nitro Bullet as I was when I received the kit. If you’re a little disappointed by the plastic shocks and fiberglass parts, don’t be. Yes, metal and graphite parts would be nice to have, but at a club event, not having them won’t put you in the B-main instead of the A-main.

The car’s superior tunability is all you need to get it dialed in, but this tunability is also why I don’t recommend this kit for beginners; they might find it frustrating to have to adjust the components, and may easily tune themselves into a no-fun setup.

Four of five bullets fired from the gun of a security guard at New Life Church hit Matthew Murray during his deadly shooting spree at the megachurch on Sunday afternoon, according to autopsy results made public Tuesday.

But a bullet Murray fired into his own head is what killed him, the El Paso County Coroner’s Office said Tuesday.

Guard Jeanne Assam, 42, fired at Murray inside New Life Church, hitting him twice in his legs and once in his wrist, authorities said. Police spokesman Lt. Skip Arms said Murray also received a superficial wound in the chest, likely from one of Assam’s bullets that deflected off his highpowered assault rifle.

After those wounds took him down, Murray shot himself with one of the two handguns he was carrying, Arms said.

That ended a 12-hour rampage during which the 24-year-old from Englewood killed four people, wounded five and ranted on the Web about Christians and his plans to kill many of them.

Authorities said Murray opened fire about 12:30 a.m. Sunday at Youth With a Mission in Arvada, about 70 miles northwest of Colorado Springs, killing Tiffany Johnson, 26, and Philip Crouse, 24, and wounding two others.

About 12 hours later, Murray arrived at New Life, where he fatally shot two teenage sisters and wounded their father as they left church services. Stephanie Works, 18, died at the scene; 16- year-old Rachael Works later died at Penrose-St. Francis Hospital. Autopsies showed both died from single gunshot wounds to the torso, Arms said.

The girls’ father, 51-yearold David Works, remained at Penrose on Tuesday in fair condition.

The Rev. Michael Ware, a pastor of Denver-based Victory Church, said he was with the girls’ mother, Marie Works, and her other daughters, Laurie and Grace, at the hospital after the shootings.

He said he watched the four sisters grow up to be confident and happy kids who were steeled in their Christian beliefs. He said the family had attended Victory Church for several years before switching to New Life and was deeply involved in both churches.

Two other New Life parishioners, Judy Purcell and Larry Bourbannais, were wounded during the shooting at New Life. They each were treated Sunday and released.

Bourbannais, 59, said when Sunday’s gunfire started he tried to distract the shooter by calling him names as he hid behind a pillar that Murray was firing upon. Bourbannais, who has been attending New Life for a little more than a year, said he received “just fragments” in his left arm.

“He was the Grim Reaper, all in black, and he showed no emotion,” he said of Murray.

Parishioners and authorities searched for reasons why Murray went on his rampage. The writing, it turns out, was on the cyberwall.

Using Web discussion forums for people who have left Pentecostal and fundamentalist religious organizations, Murray wrote of killing Christians and of his rejection from YWAM. His posts, under the names “Chrstnghtmr” and “nghtmrchld26,” expressed his hatred for his mother, Loretta, and the social skills he was supposedly deprived of by 12 years of homeschooling.

Richard Werner, who was Murray’s roommate at YWAM in Arvada in 2002 for missionary training, recalled Murray as an odd 19-year-old who was painfully shy and displayed extreme “mood swings.” Werner said Murray, who growled and spoke to himself in the middle of the night in strange voices, had trouble socially with other young people.

Murray was let go from the two-month training program because of “issues with his health,” according to YWAM.

According to a police affidavit, Murray was on his home computer for three to five hours every day for the past two years.

“If you’re an extrovert, and popular, then yes, there is plenty of love waiting for you in christianity,” Murray wrote May 8. “If you ask questions and want to understand things and/or desire a real and deep spirituality, or if you’re just not popular. .. well. .. you are considered as one of the horrible people and are either going to be abused or kicked out by ‘holy spirit love filled’ christians.”

In the weeks leading to the shootings, Murray sent hate mail to YWAM in Arvada and to its director, according to the affidavit. Authorities have declined to say what the letters said, but Colorado Springs police Sgt. Jeff Jensen said the letters, like the Web posts, expressed his disdain for Christianity and YWAM.

“The terminology that was used was different (in the hate mail),” he said. “We’re not sure if YWAM reported it to police up there.”

Jensen said Colorado Springs police learned of the Web posts Monday. The Arvada Police Department was primarily investigating the hate letters and Web posts, with the assistance of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and the FBI, he said.

Peter Klismet, a former profiler for the FBI and a criminal justice professor at Pikes Peak Community College, said Murray fits the profile of a rampage killer.

Trends

Real-life superheroes are taking inspiration from comic strips to give their cities a dose of citizen policing.

In the US, Mr Silent roams Indianapolis along-side Doktor DiscorD to help those in distress. “I don’t have any powers, obviously,” he says, “but so many people emulate criminals that I wanted to offer another option.” Meanwhile, the UK can boast Captain Champion (www.myspace. com/captain_champion), The Watcher (www.myspace.com/ thewatcher26) and Zeitgeist (www.myspace.com/zeitgeist_ 99). The website www.heroesmeeting .com is bringing many of these oddly- dressed vigilantes together to shed some light on this phenomenon, while hero-gear.net (pictured) is selling the do-gooders outfits and masks.

The train system should take the Pacheco Pass route, entering the Bay Area near a stop in Gilroy, rather than coming through the Altamont Pass, if the California High-Speed Rail Authority board follows the recommendation presented Wednesday by its staff.

The Pacheco and Altamont routes, and several variants of each, were reviewed as part of an environmental impact study commissioned by the board and is the last unsettled section of the proposed 700- mile system connecting the state’s major cities.

Board Chairman Quentin Kopp, a retired San Mateo Superior Court judge, said the board would vote on the route at its Dec. 19 meeting.

While refusing to indicate how he or other members might vote, Kopp was sharply critical of some points made by opponents of the Pacheco alignment.

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission, made up of Bay Area elected officials, last month recommended the Pacheco Pass route with an added high-speed rail connection fromSan Joaquin County to commuter rail services in Livermore.

The rail authority’s staff recommendation follows the MTC’s lead in calling for the authority to “pursue ‘regional rail’ commuter and high-speed train service via the Altamont Pass between Sacramento- Northern San Joaquin Valley and Oakland-San Jose in partnership with local and regional agencies.”

But several speakers at the meeting noted that the pared-down Altamont idea, while presented together with the Pacheco Pass recommendation, would be separate from the overall high-speed program.

“The problem is, it’s unfunded on an already unfunded project,” said Alan Miller, executive director of the Train Riders’ Association of California. “It’s basically the Pacheco Pass alternative with this political bone thrown out for those who live along the Altamont Pass.”

He also questioned the authority’s estimate that the Altamont commuter service would cost between $1 billion and $3billion extra. The MTC, he noted, estimated that its dual-route plan would cost an extra $5 billion.

After following its agreed-upon route from Anaheim and Los Angeles and through the Antelope and San Joaquin valleys, the high- speed line should head west across the northern edge of Madera County. Then it will stop at Gilroy, where it turns north to stop in San Jose, then in Silicon Valley at either Palo Alto or Redwood and on to stops at San Francisco International Airport and San Francisco’s future Transbay Terminal.

Bay Area transportation officials and elected officials have coalesced around the Pacheco route, which consistently was supported by San Jose and San Francisco officials, who were joined by Livermore Valley officials who feared the system would take large swaths of land and have noisy aerial structures.

Just where to get money for the statewide system, estimated at nearly $40 billion, was also discussed in detail at Wednesday’s meeting.

A $10 billion high-speed rail bond measure would jump-start construction if voters approve it next November, but a team of financial experts studying financing for the board presented a lukewarm assessment about seeking other funds from potential private investors and the federal government.

Getting private partners onboard may require a strictly government-funded segment to open and begin earning revenue first, they said.

The most likely candidate for that might be a line from Anaheim, where Orange County officials have put $7 million up to help study high-speed rail, to Los Angeles, followed by the San Jose-to-San Francisco segment, where the route would follow an existing Caltrain right of way.