bullets
ZAUF: Introduction to Bullet Types
Let’s get back to bullets. There are many different kinds of bullets available on the market today as well as a wide variety of cartridges which utilize these bullets. The anatomy of a cartridge, which we glossed over earlier, consists of 4 major components: the casing, the bullet, the gunpowder, and the primer.
Bullets come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, even within the families of specific calibers. For our introduction, I’m going to split it into 3 very general categories: Full metal jacket, hollow point, and other - since that’ll be what you see the most in stores.
Full Metal Jacket (FMJ), as the name implies, means that the bullet (normally cast from lead [Pb]) is coated in a jacket (most commonly copper [Cu]) that leaves the base of the bullet exposed. For the most part FMJ bullets are the most common bullet types you’ll encounter on the market.
Jacketed Hollow Point (JHP) bullets are true to their name, with a hollow cavity in the nose of the bullet that exposes the lead core and allows the projectile to expand on impact, increasing the terminal damage of the projectile through soft targets. The downside of this is that against even lightly armored targets, the expansion reduces the overall effectiveness of this ammunition type.
The ‘Other’ category of ammunition covers everything from non-jacketed ammunition to extremely specialized ammunition such as Glaser Safety Slugs and snake shot (also known as rat shot). Almost all non-jacketed ammunition will lack the copper jacket the previous two categories sport and can come in a variety of shapes and purposes. For consumer purposes, these different types of specialized ammunition will become viable with experience and actual use cases.
For the examples listed above, non-jacketed reloaded ammunition can be found as an alternative to regular; Glaser Safety Slugs are a special type of bullet with a core made up of loose No. 12 birdshot capped with a polymer tip to prevent over penetration; finally snake shot (or rat shot) is fairly self-explanatory, with different caliber loads meant to be viable against snakes and vermin.
