An Interview with Network President Marty Hayes
Interview by Gila Hayes
eJournal: Thank you for joining us in the studio this afternoon, Marty. The topic on the board today is one on which we get a lot of questions, both from members and non-members. It’s also a topic on which you have considerable depth of experience both as an expert and from other aspects of your life’s work. We entitled this Legal Considerations When Selecting Self-Defense Ammunition. Members, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcEYiExS2LI for a more casual version of this conversation.
Marty, why don’t you start by tell telling us how you began studying the question of what ammunition is best for self defense?
Hayes: In 1990, I was a fledgling firearms instructor, and I traveled to Concord, New Hampshire to attend the Lethal Force Institute. At that time, we would go back to the LFI office after class where we could shop for all kinds of cool stuff that they had there for us to buy – including CorBon ammunition. Now, I had heard Massad Ayoob talk about CorBon and why he was using it. At the time, I was using a 9mm self-defense pistol, and I was happy to get my hands on some CorBon ammo. It was really the first of the specialty “hot” self-defense ammunition.
As time went on CorBon became more and more popular and I ended up purchasing a distributorship for CorBon that supplemented earnings from my training school, The Firearms Academy of Seattle. Between running the school and selling CorBon ammunition I was able to make a living.
About that same time, CorBon started getting some play in the gun press, most notably by Evan Marshall, who had a theory that if high-velocity handgun ammunition with a hollow point bullet that expanded reliably was used, it would result in better one shot stops. Evan spent probably 20 years of his life collecting data supporting this theory. As it turns out, I think that he’s right.
I became fairly successful selling CorBon ammunition. To sell it, I needed to study it and so I got involved on the ground floor of the bullet wars. At the same time, there was another school of thought that favored slow, heavy bullets with a lot of penetration. That was supposed to be the key to stopping power, they said. For several years, those two schools of thought argued, which is why we called it the bullet wars. Today, I think the opposing sides have pretty much come together. In the meantime, I learned an awful lot about selecting handgun ammunition.
eJournal: Where does Ed Sanow come into the story? I remember a lot of the magazine article bylines were his, and he co-authored Evan’s definitive book Handgun Stopping Power. I’d hate to give Ed short shrift. What do you recall?
Hayes: That’s true; Evan and Ed worked together on their book projects, and I don’t know exactly who did what, but I think Ed did a lot of the production, the writing, the photography, and that sort of thing. Evan collected the shooting reports.
eJournal: Both men were roundly criticized, too, thus the word “war” for the hostilities between the “jello shooters,” and the Facklerites squaring off against each other.
Hayes: Don’t forget the “morgue monsters,” which was what they called Evan because as a homicide detective, he went to autopsies, and there he could study what the bullets did to bodies.
eJournal: The quest was for ammunition effectiveness, although I don’t think that Evan suggested that there was one bullet that from which a single shot would stop all hostilities, although once coined, the term persisted. Quicker incapacitation is desirable, though, because we know from court and life in general that the more times a defender shoots an assailant, the greater the exposure to legal problems.
Many factors influence ammunition selection – penetration, how deep is deep enough and how deep is too much? How stiff is the recoil? Will the bullet go through apartment walls? Today, like the days of the bullet wars, we continue to weigh those concerns.
Hayes: By the way, the answer is yes, any bullet’s going to go through the walls in an apartment.
eJournal: Back in the 1990s, there was Joe Zambone’s pre-fragmented Mag Safe ammo, and there’s handgun ammo from other manufacturers containing shot pellets, too, and that names only a couple of entries in the quest for the magic bullet. Of course, there is no magic bullet! Frankly, our concern should probably focus more on shot placement than the performance of the bullet anyway, but the study of terminal ballistics really spawns a lot of questions! When you are choosing self-defense ammunition what are your priorities?
Hayes: First, I’ve got to correct you – there is a magic bullet.
eJournal: [Skeptically] There’s a magic bullet?
Hayes: Yes, it’s a .357 Magnum Federal 125-grain semi-jacketed hollow-point bullet. I can say that is the number one cartridge and bullet configuration, due to Evan Marshall’s study of one shot stops. The concept behind Evan’s study was if a person was shot once, and only once, in the torso, how long did they continue to be viable? After studying 20, 30, 40 of these, Evan found that over 90% of the time a law enforcement officer shot someone with a .357 Federal 125-grain semi-jacketed hollow-point bullet they stopped right now. That is the magic bullet, so I carry it when I’m carrying a revolver.
eJournal: Fewer folks carry revolvers anymore, which requires us to expand our scope, so when choosing ammunition, how do you rank the priorities?
Hayes: If a person is going to use a handgun for self defense, there are a lot of different considerations of which to be aware. Of course, the bullet must be reasonably effective if placed in a reasonably effective place.
According to Dr. James Williams, the originator of Tactical Anatomy, if you can shoot someone basically right here [gestures to high upper center chest] and maybe a three-inch wide strip up to here [points at throat], then you’re going to stop them right now. I buy that. I attended Dr. Williams’ class and became one of his instructors last year.
eJournal: That’s a pretty bold statement. Does it include .22s?
Hayes: Maybe not as often as with the .22, but that’s what we need to hit if using a handgun in self defense. Let me ask, why are you using a gun in self defense?
eJournal: Because an aggressor’s trying to kill me.
Hayes: For that or for other reasons, you need to stop that action right now. Maybe he’s trying to kill somebody else. Maybe he’s threatening a bank teller with his finger on the trigger of his cocked .45 and you need to stop it right now or he’s going to start shooting people. If you can put a bullet in that area right there [gestures to upper sternum] or into the ear where it goes in through the middle of the head then that’s pretty much always going to stop the fight.
eJournal: So, as the real estate agent said, “Location, location, location!”
Hayes: Yeah, and I like to stress that training with your defensive handgun for competency and skill is much more important than the type of bullets you’re choosing for self defense. After shot placement, you need to be concerned whether the bullet is going to stay in the human body. I don’t want bullets to over penetrate, to go through the assailant’s body and continue on to injure other people.
One side of the debate thinks bullets need to penetrate 18 inches, but there are a lot of people that aren’t 18 inches thick. If you’re using bullets that will penetrate that deeply, you may end up having also shot someone behind the person that you were trying to stop. Of course, the other question is why take that shot at all? Well, somebody else may die if you don’t.
I’m looking for a bullet that is going to stop inside pretty much any human body. I would likely consider the FBI protocols, the gelatin tests, looking for bullets that penetrate no more than 12 inches in gelatin. It needs to stop inside the human body 100 percent of the time. It might not penetrate even 12 inches inside the human body but unless you shoot someone through the tip of the shoulder down toward the heart the bullet may not have to penetrate that deep. Your heart is only in five to six deep. Advocates of deeper bullet penetration usually don’t have to defend people in court.
I also want to use a full-power load to limit concern about over-penetration. That’s usually called plus-P. For example, if it’s a .38 Special, I want it to be a plus-P .38 Special; if I carry a 9mm, .40, or .45, I want it to be a plus-P load because the higher pressure, the “hotter,” the round is, the less likely it’s going to penetrate deeper than what I want. That’s part of the criteria.
I also want the ammunition I carry to have a good track record. I want to know that it’s been used in other shootings, and that police departments are happy with it. I want it to be from a major ammunition manufacturer like Federal or Winchester or Speer – a company that makes hundreds of thousands of rounds a year. Otherwise, I want it to be from a manufacturer that I know personally, who would come to court and testify about his ammunition.
For example, when I was working closely with Peter Pi, Sr. from CorBon, I knew that if needed, I could call him into court, and he’d explain about his ammunition for the jury and tell them why it is good ammunition for self defense. CorBon has since gone through two or three ownership changes. I don’t know the people involved there now, so I’m no longer using CorBon.
When I started carrying a 10mm, I looked around and found almost nothing for 10mm self-defense ammunition until I found Super Vel.
Super Vel was a boutique manufacturer, started in the 1970s that was out of business for many years until an industry luminary, Cameron Hopkins, purchased the business. He’s been running it for about 15 years now and I know he does quality ammunition. I know that I could call him up right now and say, “Cameron, Marty Hayes here. I need some help on a case,” and he would help me, whether that’s shipping some ammunition for testing or writing a report about the ammunition or even going to court. If you carry ammunition from a boutique manufacturer, make sure that they’re going to be there if needed for court.
eJournal: When people ask for help with ammunition selection, it doesn’t hurt to remind them that the small, emerging ammunition companies have representatives at major gun shows or industry events like the SHOT Show, so it is possible to make those contacts and get those assurances. Don’t move in those circles? Then focus on defense ammunition from Speer, Hornady, Federal or Winchester. Put in the time, study and effort to know the questions to ask when instructors or influencers recommend ammunition.
Hayes: Follow the teachings of Dr. James Williams. He’s done a lot of research into ammunition. Chuck Haggard has taken up the mantle of doing ammunition testing. He’s come up with some pretty good recommendations. Greg Ellifritz was doing some work along those lines, too.
eJournal: Your instructors may be able to help you. Members, you’re really not out in the wilderness trying to solve this on your own, but I would like to stress that it’s shortsighted to say, “I carry a .32 H&R. Just tell me what ammunition to get for it and I’ll carry that.” I do not think the question of ammunition is one the armed citizen can entirely turn over to someone else and say tell me what to do. I don’t think it works that way.
A few minutes ago, you said you see ammunition selection questions through the viewpoint of the courtroom. What concerns specifically apply to ammunition performance when shootings go to trial?
Hayes: Before we start, let me say I work as an expert, not an attorney. Since the 1990s, I’ve been working as an expert in murder or manslaughter cases. I’ve looked at a lot of autopsy reports. I’ve done a lot of ammunition tests and then used the results to determine how they fit into a particular case that I’m looking at. Look at this photograph of a shirt that’s been shot from different distances, then look at the photo of the ball cap with an entrance hole with a bunch of gunshot residue soot. That picture most closely aligns with the test shot taken from three inches. I was able to testify in court that the gunshot that produced the hole in the cap happened from approximately three inches away.
To draw that kind of conclusion, you’ve got to be able to test with the same type of ammunition that was used in the incident. Ammunition can vary wildly. I’m going show you another picture from a reference book. It shows two different test shots fired at the same distance using the same gun but with different ammunition.
The caption identifies powder patterns from firing factory-manufactured .38 Special cartridges loaded with different powder. These powder patterns were produced with the same Colt revolver at the standoff distance of six inches with two different loads of 125-grain jacketed hollow point Remington .38 special ammunition. One contained a charge of 18 grains of spherical ball powder and the other contained five to five-and-a-half grains of unperforated disc flake powder. These cartridges produce comparable muzzle velocities, but as shown, each produces a very different powder pattern.
Let me explain why it’s so important that the ammunition you load in your handgun can be replicated. In order for an expert to go into court and testify to the distance from which a shot was taken, they have to be able to tell the jury, through the judge, that yes, the test used the same ammunition or something very, very similar because good attorneys know that different ammunition and different powder charges can produce wildly different results.
For evidence to be admitted into court, it must reasonably adhere to basic scientific standards. It must be replicable: you’ve got to be able to replicate the ammunition you were using. That is what we’re trying to accomplish with testing.
That’s also one of the reasons we don’t use reloads for self defense. If you reload, you’re the ammunition manufacturer. If you stuff your own .38 Special case with powder and cap it off with the bullet, how is an expert going to replicate that for court? Maybe the test would be perfectly valid, but the expert’s testimony would not be allowed into court. If the tests are not allowed into court, you may be convicted.
I’m reviewing a case right now where the medical examiner said there was stippling on the area around the wound, but no other testing was done, so we don’t know exactly how far the muzzle was from wound. There’s no testing from that gun firing that particular type of ammunition to compare to the stippling pattern on the deceased. This defendant was convicted when they may be perfectly innocent.
We’ve got to be able to do the tests. This is the primary reason you can’t use hand loads for self defense.
eJournal: Manufacturers provide loading books that may specify “recipes,” if you will, for example, how many grains of Hodgdon or whatever specific powder, primer and bullet weight and type. Some handloaders keep great records, and consistently use exactly the same components every time. Why isn’t that reliable as evidence? If that hand-loader testifies, “I know the shot was with the load spelled out on page nine of my Hornady reloading manual” presumably that cartridge could be replicated.
Hayes: The problem is that it’s your word at a point when what is at question is also your word. I pretty much know all the “recipes” that I load for handgun ammunition, but that’s just my word as far as what was used.
eJournal: At a time when you desperately need and want the independent expert’s word about what happened.
Hayes: When the expert testifies, they’re drawing on training and research like I cited from one of the reference books I use, Shooting Incident Reconstruction, by Gary Haag and Lucien Haag.
eJournal: One facet that impresses me is the importance of the post-shooting investigation. You’ve said in earlier videos that sometimes small rural law enforcement departments lack highly professional investigators. Combined with your comments about analysis you’ve provided as a shooting reconstruction expert, I am convinced that as armed citizens, our defense attorneys need to be quick about hiring an expert who has the training and experience to perform an independent investigation because there are enormous questions that the evidence can answer but what if the evidence isn’t preserved?
Hayes: Then the defense has to take its best shot and then you make the prosecution look inept for not preserving evidence that they should have preserved. [Sighs] I don’t know how many times I have done that in court. Once, I tried to explain, “No, you don’t put Campbell soup cans in the crime scene photograph to show where a shell casing is. You identify the case by a marker.” That case actually turned out okay for the defense.
eJournal: I doubt you were maliciously trying to make the police look bad, but it’s a serious, serious, serious problem if you are going to be sent to the penitentiary if your defense team can’t make it understood that you acted in self defense.
We are able to make choices today, in advance, that facilitate one aspect of showing that our use of force was self defense, if only we will budget the money to buy commercially manufactured ammunition. Even then, there’s an element of “buyer beware!” Even large ammunition manufacturers occasionally have stumbled into inflammatory product names. How sensitive are you to the name game?
Hayes: I remember when Winchester came out with their Black Talon line. White cops would be using Black Talon ammunition to shoot black criminals on the street? The name – just that stupid name – killed an otherwise very good ammunition design.
Today, there’s one from Dynamic Research Technologies, with a similar issue. They produce, in fact, very high-quality frangible ammunition. I looked into carrying that for a while in my 10mm because it is such good ammunition. The problem is they named it DRT and what does DRT stand for in our little world?
eJournal: In our little sub-set or when we’re texting, it means, “He’s dead right there.”
Hayes: Dead right there, yeah. I couldn’t open myself up to that criticism. The other problem with DRT – and with any frangible ammunition – is whether you can look at a frangible bullet path inside a body. You can’t because there is no bullet path. When I do a shooting incident reconstruction, one of the major issues is where did the bullets enter the body and what path did the bullets take before they stopped. I do this with probably half the cases that I work on, and it confirms or disputes what I’m being told about what the dead person was doing. Bullet path can help me figure out where the gun was by determining if the path is horizontal, but if the bullet path is angled down, then you can say that the gun was up here [gestures indicating high angle].
But what if the gun wasn’t up there? Logically, then, this is how it occurred: the guy was leaning forward when he was shot. You need to be able to determine the path that the bullets take once they hit the body because that will tell you where the gun was, where the shooter was, and how the bullets came to strike the body. What was the person doing? Were they leaning forward? Were they standing erect?
Another of the issues is explaining bullets that hit in the back. We know from testing and research through the Force Science Institute that a person can spin and turn in a quarter- to a half-second. How long does it take a person to fire more than one shot? If you’re shooting rapidly, it takes about a quarter of a second between shots. A lot of people are prosecuted for shooting their attacker in the back when they shouldn’t have been prosecuted because the shooting started facing the front and the assailant turns as the shots hit – bang, bang, bang – and then the person stops shooting. We need the bullet path through the body to be able to s
how that. That means not carrying frangible ammunition.
I’m sorry, a lot of frangible ammo is really great stuff, but I can’t use it myself. The only time I would use it would be if I had to make sure it didn’t penetrate through interior/exterior walls in a house.
eJournal: There are a lot of variables influencing the ammunition selection decision and I just don’t think we can go to an expert and say, “Tell me what to carry!” Do they know enough about your personal circumstances to address all the factors? Understanding that most probably aren’t going to drop $59.95 on a shooting incident reconstruction textbook, what resources would you suggest?
Hayes: It would be well worth it to go to one of Dr. James Williams’ Tactical Anatomy courses, and he is, in fact, certifying instructors to bring his knowledge out into the general public. Search out one of his instructors and take a course and learn this stuff. They’re going to have ammunition recommendations in class, and you can draw some conclusions for yourself.
eJournal: As one example, I’m seeing a Tactical Anatomy Summit with Chuck Haggard, Andy Anderson, and Steve Moses, all three of whom are influential instructors in the armed self-defense space (https://defenderoutdoors.com/courses/tactical-anatomy-summit/). For our members today, what’s the bottom line? What do you want us to take away from this interview?
Hayes: Training. You need to be trained well enough that under extreme stress you can put bullets right here [taps top of sternum]. You need to be trained well enough that you don’t shoot all over the place. That’s really the bottom line. Any of the good reputable handgun ammunition brands will do just fine if you hit them right there. That’s really the bottom line.
If you’re not trained that well, get some training. I don’t want to hear of one of our members shooting an assailant in the leg and shooting him in the gut and shooting him in the shoulder in a defensive shooting. We’ll still help you out, but you could have really helped yourself by being a better shot. That’s really the bottom line for me.
eJournal: Thank you for coming in here today and sharing your knowledge and experience as an expert and showing where that knowledge comes from. People love to argue about the bullet wars in shooting clubs and gun stores and sometimes lose sight of the fact that it’s a multifaceted study, and more serious than just a heated discussion on social media, for example.
Hayes: It is a serious study, and I should thank Evan Marshall and Ed Sanow, the late Jim Cirillo, Massad Ayoob, John Farnam and all the others I studied with over the years who really helped me learn and understand this topic, too.
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Marty Hayes, J.D. is president and a founder of Armed Citizens’ Legal Defense Network. He brings 30 years experience as a professional firearms instructor, 30 years of law enforcement association and his knowledge of the legal profession both as an expert witness and his legal education to the leadership of the Network.