Speaking of magic bullets...

10mm Auto Glasers: There's so much different hype I'm believing there that it's not even funny. I'm practically crossing the hype streams.

Once upon a time, I used to think Glaser Safety Slugs were the heat. Glasers, for those who don't know, are basically a copper bullet jacket wrapped around, not a solid lead core, but rather a lightly-compressed bunch of small birdshot pellets. The idea being that, on penetrating, the bullet basically comes apart, sending tiny little birdshot pellets into the assailant like a shotgun blast inside them.

The "safety" name comes from the idea that the bullet won't overpenetrate the bad guy. Further, should you miss and hit some solid object, the bullet will just disintegrate, rather than ricocheting or going through the wall and hitting the school bus full of nuns and orphans on the other side.

This all sounds great in theory, but the bullets hardly ever work that way in practice, and there's a reason that no serious users recommend the things. Ever heard the one about how fishing lures are designed to attract fishermen, not fish? Bullets are like that, too. Anyhow, my favorite Glaser Safety Slug story...

It must have been back about '87 or so, and I'd read some folderol about how devastating these Glasers were compared to normal rounds in an issue of Combat Handguns, borrowed from the magazine rack at work.

So we went to the gun store and bought some .25ACP Glaser Safety Slugs, which the writer in the magazine had sworn did more damage to a shoulder of beef than his .44 Magnum. There were even some fuzzy black and white pictures of what purported to be said shoulder of beef, all blowed up. But we were dirt poor and had blown our dough on the Glasers and couldn't afford a shoulder of beef, so we bought a chicken at the grocery store instead because... well, we were, like 19, okay?

That night we drove up to the old quarry on the mountain just outside town, which we frequently used as our informal shooting range (at least until the cops showed up.) We loaded one of the precious Glasers into our only pistol, my FIE Targa .25, and put the chicken on a fence post and drilled it. It was pretty underwhelming. The chicken didn't explode or anything, or even get blown dramatically off the fencepost. It just kinda rolled off and plopped on the ground.

We hopped into my friend's car and drove off, leaving the chicken for the coyotes, poorer and sadder but no wiser...
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