There’s a hollow ring to reports that the leadership of the Philippine National Police (PNP) is inclined to ban the sale to civilians of “special ammunition” like jacketed hollow-point bullets (JHPs).

If that course of action should materialize, licensed civilian gun owners would be limited to using so-called “ball ammo” or full-metal-jacket bullets (FMJs) that most Filipino cops use because they are cheap or less prone to jamming.

In the United States, ball ammo is good only for target shooting and no self-respecting law enforcement officer would be caught with anything less than JHPs, at least in their pistols and, yes, even their backup revolvers.

Call it partly marketing hype, yet ballistic tests tend to show that JHPs have better “stopping power” than FMJs. For the legal and moral use of firearms, like for self-defense whether by a cop or a civilian facing imminent danger, there’s no logic to using FMJs when JHPs can stop a threat better.

More importantly, being fully shrouded in copper, FMJs have been shown to over-penetrate. As such, there’s always the danger of such projectiles hitting the intended target, exiting the same and hitting somebody else, like an innocent bystander.

JHPs, on the other hand, have been proven to transfer their kinetic energy to the intended target (thereby, their vaunted stopping power), mushroom because of their hollow cavities, and not readily pass through.

For these reasons, the PNP should ensure that its personnel use the infinitely more expensive JHPs to minimize collateral hits from over-penetrating FMJs. At the same time, it should shoot down any move to ban the sale of JHPs to law-abiding civilian gun owners, if only for their tendency not to over-penetrate.

Still, I tend to believe there’s no impending JHP ban for civilians, a thought shared by officials of the Association of Firearms and Ammunition Dealers (AFAD), who brought together select news editors last week to hype the 30th Defense and Sporting Arms Show from 21 to 25 August at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City.

As pointed out by newly installed AFAD president Edwin Peter B. Lim of Magnus Sports Shops, the PNP has already allowed licensed civilian gun owners, who must regularly pass drug and neuro-psychiatric tests, to qualify to possess AR-style, but semi-automatic only, rifles like those chambered in cal. 556 or 223.

True enough, while the 556 and 223 basically sport mere cal. 22 projectiles, they have such higher velocities than pistol rounds (9mm, cal. 45, 40, etc.) for the arguments against JHPs to matter or to even make sense. This is especially so since the Philippines, facing very serious external threats, needs to have a well-trained citizenry, like Israel’s and South Korea’s, for any eventuality.

As in the experience of Israel when Hamas attacked on 7 October 2023, citizen soldiers are useless when they are without their arms. Having learned the bitter lesson, Israel has relaxed gun ownership requirements for its civilians, and so we see women in civvies going about carrying their ARs as they shop or go about their daily business.

In our talk with Armed Forces of the Philippine chief General Romeo Brawner during his visit to DAILY TRIBUNE, it was brought up that the ideal state would have citizens that, as described by AFAD spokesperson Aric Topacio, can serve as “force multipliers” in the event of conflict.

Nobody wants war, but there are nations out there, like China and Russia, that are hell-bent on their expansionist designs. Amid that, no country should be caught sleeping when it comes to projecting a credible self-defense posture. There should be no half-baked measures, too.

On that matter of allowing civilians to own rifle-caliber firearms, the PNP should once again issue permits to transport (PTTs) for firearms, including for those ARs and pistol-caliber carbines so their owners can train in their proper use. Without the PTT, the rifles civilians would buy would just gather cobwebs in their homes.

Firearms are inherently dangerous, but more so in the hands of people who are deprived of the opportunity to train with them.