I've heard the reference before but too lazy to look it up. Thanks for sharing.

 

I will sleep a lot better knowing that .....

 

I've never heard the term till just now ... thanks for educating us

 

I didn't realize you were a young whippersnapper. I was going to comment that you have to be past a certain age to remember the term being used. Subtract another twenty then you can add Saturday night special.

 

Yes I’d heard that before. It’s more of a British term. You don’t hear it much here in the US.

 

C'mon man, that's just Dum!

 

The only use of the term I’ve ever heard was describing .38 Spcl wad cutters.

 

Yea that's the hollow base wad cutters loaded backwards.

 

I haven't heard that term in a few years . Never gave it any thought . Probably won't now .

 

And because the French wanted to stick it to the British, who were using Dum Dum bullets in the Bore Wars, they saw to it that expanding bullets were forbidden under the Geneva Convention (so I once heard).

 

Continuing education in this thread; The Hague Convention of 1899, Declaration III, prohibited the use in international warfare of bullets that easily expand or flatten in the body.[1] It is a common misapprehension that hollow-point ammunition is prohibited by the Geneva Conventions, as the prohibition significantly predates those conventions.

 

Yep, that's the one. I'll admit that I was feeling too lazy to look up the specific iteration of the various conventions at which the prohibition was written. Thanks for doing that legwork.

 

Dum-Dum bullets were used by the British in India and Afghanistan in the late nineteenth century. As mentioned by the OP, the name comes from the Dum Dum arsenal in India. They weren't just hollow-points, however, they actually had a deep X cut in the nose.

 

Interesting. You sure some Democrats weren't involved with this? Couldn't resist, those idiots who know nothing about guns and all they can think about is "Common Sense Gun Control" which is nothing like common sense, just what dictators do.

Other than me being off track, the OP's post is informative. Don

 

Sorry to admit I knew. I'm like Cliff Claven

 

They were outlawed for warfare:

The 'dum-dum' was a British military bullet developed for use in India - at the Dum-Dum Arsenal - on the North West Frontier in the late 1890s.
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The dum-dum comprised a jacketed .303 bullet with the jacket nose open to expose its lead core. The aim was to improve the bullet's effectiveness by increasing its expansion upon impact.
The phrase 'dum-dum' was later taken to include any soft-nosed or hollow pointed bullet. The Hague Convention of 1899 outlawed the use of dum-dum bullets during warfare.
During the First World War the Belgian government faced German charges of having used dum-dum bullets in battle. Kaiser Wilhelm II wrote a telegram to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson on 7 September 1914 protesting such use; the Belgians strongly denied the Kaiser's charges.

First World War.com - Encyclopedia - Dum-Dum Bullet

 

No expanding bullets, how barbaric.

Just drop some napalm on the pesky enemy.

 

... or spray Mustard Gas, I believe that I read the Germans, in WWI complained about the use of shotguns in the trenches while using gas as a weapon.

Bruce

 

Learned something new today!

 

I've heard the words before and always associated it with some sort of hollow point bullet but didn't know the history. I've mostly used it when referring more to some shooters than to bullets ...

 

Same here, I've never heard the term before,Thanks for posting

 

I always thought that was people called it when I am shooting 416 Rigby in a pistol. I could be wrong.....

 

Learned this wayyy before Indiana Jones... pronounced "doom doom" as in the region of India.

 

Another aspect I have always wondered about. I have heard that FMJ bullets are in use by the military vs hollow points is because a wounded soldier can take 2 or 3 soldiers out of action(the wounded guy and those helping to evacuate him) vs a dead soldier only takes one out of the battle.

 

This is why the military organizations of MOST nations use only FMJ bullets...
International law forbids the use of expanding bullets by combat troops. Civilians
like me can use them to hunt deer, and they are proven to be effective killers.
But they also make terrible wounds, if you bungle your shot. No one likes to talk
about that.

Supposedly it's just like the ban against using poison gas... "If we use this against THEM, they can use it
against us." The same with torturing POWs to extract information. Common practice until the Geneva
Convention. "If we use it against THEM, they can use it against us..." A strong inducement for nations
to sign the treaty. AND a strong inducement not to deploy such weapons and/or practices when you know
your opponents have the same capability ... This kind of "detente" carried over into the nuclear
era, with the acronym: M.A.D.D. (mutual assured destruction)... or was that "muthuhs against Drunk Drivers..."
hmmm... it was the same time period. Me and my crazy friends all figured we were doomed anyway
so we were like "Sha La Lala Lala, live for today..." ...and we did.

No treaty mention was made of the tendency of FMJ bullets to tumble inside the flesh of one's opponents...
There is an area of silence around that inconvenient truth. For the combat soldier, it's like, "Aim for the
center, fire, and then aim for the center of the next..." Sometimes wounding your opponents is more effective
in combat than killing them, because their leaders must provide care for their wounded heroes,
and it slows the advance. Then you call in air strikes, and artillery... Then you counter-attack...
There it is...

As a young buck growing up in the Vietnam era, I was fascinated and horrified by all of this.
I did read the history. What happened in India during the "Indian Mutiny" of 1857 was horrific.
Atrocities on both sides. British use of "Dum-Dum" bullets was considered justified by the
dreadful actions of Indian "Patriots" who were trying to eject the foreign devils from their native soil.
For the Brits to call this "Mutiny" was nothing but propaganda, as we've seen in Ireland
and as we saw in our own fledgeling nation's fight against them and their imaginary righteousness.

So.... is there any such thing as "international law..." and would any Military outfit that complied with
it be regarded as anything but patsies by their opponents? If you look at 20th century history, when
uniformed troops come up against armed civilians, mayhem ensues...

Official uniformed troops in the service of Nation X must follow "Rules of Engagement..."

(I dunno if this is always true... but it's true for U.S. forces "officially...."). Is it true for
Russian invaders of Ukraine, or for Israeli invaders of Gaza??? I dunno.
So what happens when forces meet...
Civilian partisans attempting to rid their native land of foreign devils are not bound by any such thing
nor are they bound by the Geneva Convention from a hundred years ago or more.
Nor are they protected by any such thing. They fight as they stand, and so do their enemies.
It's horrible, but as General Sherman famously said: "War is Hell..."

 

Correct

 

The last time I heard Dum Dum bullet was in some official memo at a gun club I used to shoot at in NJ and it stands out in my memory because it was weird

All like "No use of prohibited ammunition (hollow points , "Dum Dum Bullets) tracers, or armor piercing ammunition

I remember laughing at it like , who got caught with Dum Dum bullets??