Twitter hides Donald Trump tweet for “glorifying violence”

Yes

One obvious example of this is simply ammo. Military bullets don't expand as much as bullets available to cops or civilians. A military bullet is explicitly not allowed to be an expanding hollow point which really messes you up.

There are all sorts of international agreements on not using certain types of things in war - types of bullets are no exception.

There's an argument for using hollow point bullets on sidearms in civilian environments. There's a lower probability of "over penetration". For a high power rifle in a military environment, such a thing is less of a concern.

Correct, hollow-point ammunition is prohibited by the Geneva Conventions. This has always baffled me since large caliber and high explosive munitions (120mm HEAT rounds from an Abrams) are regularly used against soft targets in combat, not to mention things like hellfire missles or JDAMs. That's the rules of war for you.

This comment is all sorts of wrong.

Military "bullets" (they're called rounds, actually) are designed to be optimized for performance in a warfare environment. That means accuracy, and range. A hollow point round is design to expand and be a stopping shot - with one round - and not continue to travel large distances, which puts other people at risk. Cops can carry those because if they're in a crowded environment firing a hollow point round at a threat means less risk to anyone else who isn't a threat.

>There are all sorts of international agreements on not using certain types of things in war - types of bullets are no exception.

Yeah no one will care about this once an actual near-peer war kicks off.

But for the sorts of conflicts the US is involved in they are often working in situations with a lot of civilians present. There are also frangible rounds other than those also more destructive to humans. And above all the best way not to accidentally shoot civilians isn’t to have ammunition that makes it less likely to penetrate something else if you miss (this is after all a failure of training) but sane rules of engagement about when you can shoot.

Hollowpoints are banned under Geneva because the injuries they inflict are less treatable by medics. Same reason buckshot and such is restricted.

In a civilian environment, the hollowpoints don't penetrate through walls and bodies as easily, meaning less risk of bystanders being harmed - and the local hospital has a lot more kit than your field medic.

None of what you said was about what he said, which was about high powered rifles.

Do the police not use high powered rifles? I’ve seen a lot of pictures of them with short barrelled carbines which I assume are firing 5.56?

Do the military not use pistol calibre weapons? There are frangible pistol rounds as well.

It's mostly because this isn't true, though lots of people love to wax on about what they think is prohibited by the Geneva Conventions. I've heard all kinds of stuff like this over the years, such as "you can't fire a 50 cal at a human" etc.

The Geneva Convention says nothing in particular about hollowpoints, so the verbiage has an "interpretation" by DoD about the Rules of Land Warfare that skirts around the issue . See https://www.justsecurity.org/25200/dod-law-war-manual-return...

I know this because I carried hollowpoints while deployed in an anti-terrorism capacity.

A bullet is a bullet, a round refers to the whole package - bullet, powder, case, etc. I'm referring to just the bullet part.

You're probably right on overpenetration though.

> accuracy

For accuracy up to a few hundred rounds you likely want boat tail hollow point, not a steel penetrator. Just look at the loads for prs, cmp, etc. Military bullets are not made to be the most accurate.

> Yeah no one will care about this once an actual near-peer war kicks off.

Probably right, though restrictions on bullet types have been around for like over a hundred years, and most modern US bullets adhere to the spirit of that.

It's also worth pointing out that there are a whole bunch of those international agreements that the US hasn't signed. Cluster bombs, for example.

hollowpoint restrictions date back to the 19th century (hague convention), not the geneva convention. And yes that is addressing international war.

It explicitly prohibits frangible/flattening/expanding ammo in war. The US hasn't signed that, but in practice they adhere to that part of it (but yes exactly as you point out, only for "war" not "anti-terrorism")

few hundred yards, not rounds... also more like several hundred

My understanding was that hollow point bullets allow the shooter to hurt someone without risking the lives of the people behind them. Not hurting “people just behind [your enemy]” is presumably less a concern in a war zone (than in a civilian setting) because they are presumed brothers in arms.

Did I understand that right?