Derp Still Sells: An Unfortunately Ongoing Series.

So there's some new gimmick bullet out whose makers followed the trail blazed by the mythical "Black Rhino" round: Shotgun out a press release full of hyperbolic claims, get the press worked into a lather, and... I dunno, it gets pretty Underpants Gnome-y from there. Maybe this is trolling for investors?

Anyhow, to anybody with a shred of knowledge about terminal ballistics, everything about these things is risible; from the part where it sheds most of its weight as underpenetrating fragments on impact to the part where the core goes on to leave a pencil-like wound track to the fact that the video tests don't appear to be in calibrated 10% ordnance gel anyway, so all the numbers they're throwing out seem to be pointless. Basically, what these dudes appear to have done is to have taken a bullet design with a proven track record, the Barnes solid copper XPB, and used an EDM machine or something to break it so it doesn't work right anymore.

Anyhow, the problem with this is that it has been shotgunned out to the conservative blogosphere, because conservatives are gun enthusiasts, right? And this has triggered firearms-related discussions in the comments of certain conservative blogs that are certainly... enthusiastic.

My soul hurts.

Jesus wept, this is why I hardly talk about guns on the internet anymore. The level of gun stupid in the comments sections at The Blaze, AoS, or Instapundit makes me long for the raw technical competence and hard factual knowledge of, say, your average Brand-Specific Fanboi or State-Level Gun Enthusiast forum like GlockTalk or INGO.

And then, of course, someone will wade in and denounce this bullet as a Joke Hyperbole Projectile, and my heart will soar, and then they'll turn around and say "What you really need is Black Talon!" and my soaring heart will plummet like a paralyzed falcon, because a twenty-year-old discontinued Gen 2 JHP design is apparently still a name to conjure with, thanks to the Winchester marketing department and the American media.

I actually saw a debate in one of these threads between proponents of Black Talons and Hydra-Shoks. No doubt everybody then jumped into their 5.0 GTs and drove off with Red Hot Chili Peppers CDs blaring from the speakers. Hey, 1991 called; it wants its ammo back.

To return to the original topic, massive strides have occurred in projectile design in the last twenty years. This bullet is not one of them. It's worth noting that the press release isn't even right when it says "The last round you'll ever need" because the last round you'll ever need is some goofy multipiece bullet that spins its bits on fishing line. This is just the second-to-last round you'll ever need.