Homedefense .45ACP Loads?

This is my view on the subject.

There are two possible out-comes a person may face in the aftermath of a self-defense shooting.
The 1st will be the criminal investigation. As far as this goes---if it's justifiable---then it's justifiable.

The 2nd possibility is really the more complicated one and that is a posible civil suit for "wrongfull death or inflicting serious bodily harm. Here you are putting your livelyhood in the hands of a jury that does not know a thing about you. A jury that in all likelyhood are not gun lovers--more or less gun owners, and generally may be quite ignorant. And not all the jury need to agree---a percentage "at fault" could be levied against you and the "beyond a reasonable doubt" does not exist here in a civil jury trial----just a perponderance of evidence.

Believe me, jurys can be a fickled beast and depending on how good their lawyer is and how bad yours is, anything can happen. Castle Doctrines not withstanding, a self defense shooting may ocour away from home and that legal protection afforded by a castle doctrine may not apply.

And if one stops and thinks about it-----Castle Doctrines-----why have they become so popular in a bunch of States? To prevent these types of civil suits would be my guess.............

What has been ingrained in my head from training all these years is that reloaded ammo is a liability. A jury could view that a person reloads his own ammo as factory offerings are not fast enough, strong enough, or lethal enough. And that the person reloads custom taylored ammo to ensure a "kill" or to inflict the most harm as possible. This type of belief does exist in this Country as is evident in some States such as New Jeresy. In new jeresy, HP handgun ammo is out-lawed as it appears to be "too lethal" or inflicts too much harm.. Yes i know, to the vast majority of us, this seems to be out-ragious thinking----but it exists. It would not be a terriible stretch for this same line of thinking to be applied to reloaded ammo as an attempt by the person to custom taylor a more deadly lethal maiming round. It suddenly may become an issue that the person did not shoot to stop the threat, but instead shot to kill, punish, maim, paralize, disfigure, leave children as orfens, wheelchair bound, etc, etc----in other words you did not care so much to save your hide as what you really wanted to do was to kill or punish the other guy. Trying to educate a jury could get expensive..........

So as for me, i carry "class A" factory stuff from reputiable makers such as hornady, speer, or remington. I practice with reloads that shoot to the same point of aim as the factory stuff. $30 a year for factory ammo for my magazines/speed loaders is cheap insurance. I have worked for two departments and reloaded ammo has been forbidden at both of them for street carry due to this liability concern. Also with my current dept, violation of policy in regards to ammo carry could definately land me in hot water for a suit.

Another issue for some is the quality of ammo. Now i will say that there are a lot of expert quality minded reloaders out there that know more about reloading than i ever will. But it has been my experience at the ranges and during competitions that the failure rate (feeding or no bang) of reloaded ammo is higher than "class A" factory ammo from a reputiable maker. This has been my experience and also is what i have seen involving other shooters. The failure rate may not be high----but it is still there. So when it comes to saving my own tail, i'm gonna go with the good factory stuff-------as probably about 99.9 % of LEO agencies do for street carry(strictly guess).

This is just an opinion but its also training that has been pounded into my head for a lot of years. It may never come up-----but then again, we are always reading these squirrely law suits in the paper----the vast majority dis-missed....but every once in a while there is a goofy one that a person will unbelievably win and capture national headlines--at least once a week.....and good lawyers don't come cheap. $30 a year for factory ammo is cheap insurance and just might be one less thing to worry about on the streets and in the courtroom.

I shoot a lot of reloads-----but the factory stuff goes back in the gun for carry.............