Thursday, March 28, 2024 -
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‘What do you do for a living?’ — ‘I design bullets’

“My favorite topic: how to kill people, that is, how best to kill people.”

That wasn’t the actual headline, but it could have been.

This bullet vs. that bullet.

Bullet #1 works best at long range. Otherwise, it actually goes right through the person and may shock him, but unless it hits an organ or the spine directly, it hardly hurts a person.

Bullet #2 works the opposite.

Which bullet is best for Iraq?

I read this through.

I shuddered.

I wondered what G-d thinks of His creations.

Some say it’s not the bullet that counts.

It’s the aim.

Doesn’t matter what bullet you use — if you aim well, you kill. If not, well, you yourself might just get killed even though your bullet did hit the person you were trying to kill.

Shop talk.

War talk.

The nuts and bolts, so to speak.

And, yes, probably most of us would agree that sometimes war is necessary, and that, yes, if you send yourself or your child or your countryman off to war, you do want everyone to do his best to make sure he or she has the best equipment.

And, that, yes, therefore, there must be people who make such things as bullets, and who test them, and who devise different kinds, and who measure what’s the best bullet for killing people at short range and what’s the best for killing them at long range.

Necessities, all.

If you believe that self-defense is legitimate.

Which most of us do.

I still wonder what G-d thinks of His creations. Self-defense is of course legitimate, but who says there needs to be an attacker to begin with?

Shop talk:“The M855 round lacks the punch for fighting in today’s urban battlefield, some say.”

Take it from Richard Larner, of AP, in the Denver Post and the Rocky.

Translation: “The bullet does exactly what it was designed to do. It just doesn’t do very well at close ranges against smaller-statured people that are lightly equipped and clothed.”

Say, what do you do for a living?

“Actually, I’m very educated. I design bullets.”

Necessary, yes.

Uplifting, elevated, reflective of the Divine image in man, no.

“The faster a bullet hits the tissue, the more it’s going to fragment,” says a former combat surgeon, who says the problem is the gun, not the bullet. “Bullets that go faster cause more damage. It’s that simple.”

Nice to have our simplicities in place.

It would be nicer, though, wouldn’t it, if our simplicities were confined to life, peace, food, joy, health.

I could live without bullets that go faster cause more damage, it’s that simple, but not everyone can.

Those who can’t require gun barrels to be long enough “to create the velocity needed for an M855 bullet to do maximum damage to the body.”

The current problem with the M855 is that it was “designed decades ago to puncture a Soviet soldier’s helmet hundreds of yards away,” but now, “the M855 rounds [are] prone to pass through a body like a needle through fabric…”

Unless, as noted, the M855 hits the spine or a vital organ.

This is what humanity has come to.

Or, perhaps, has always been.

Something about immersing myself in velocities and shapes and sizes of bullets, and in how they “work” best, made me shudder.

And wonder.

Yes, I would like access to G-d’s mind as He watches all this.



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IJN Executive Editor | [email protected]


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