I would like to advocate support for the safety and defense of the police. My concern is for restricting general availability of armor-piercing bullets.
Pistol and rifle ball bullets with lead cores are quite sufficient for all legal uses. Rounds containing iron, steel, or uranium cores are dangerous not only to police, but also to bystanders and neighbors.
Steel-cored 7.62 mm LPS bullets are effective to 1,200 meters and can pierce 15 mm of armor plate at 100 meters’ range. If used in home defense, such rounds can go clear through a home, across a lot or street, and into a neighbor’s house, possibly wounding or killing someone. Criminals and unstable people have no right to use such deadly ammunition. Police wearing ballistic vests would be silly putty against such rounds. Only soldiers and SWAT personnel need armor-piercing bullets.
At a time when even many law-abiding people hate the police, it does not pay to abet gun anarchy.
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Steve T. Kobara
San Luis Obispo
This article appears in Jun 16-23, 2005.