Hunting Rhinos

IF A small-time manufacturer from the far east side of lower nowhere called a press conference tomorrow and announced that he had perfected a new “wonder fluid,” derived from common seawater, that could grow hair, run your sports car, cure bad breath, and get your dog elected Queen of the May, it is not unreasonable to assume that the press would greet the announcement with a certain healthy skepticism. But let an unknown chemist from Huntsville, Alabama, venture into the domestic arms race with a new kind of handgun ammunition that allegedly penetrates soft body armor and another said to explode a human body with a single shot, and the ladies and gentlemen of the press become instant believers.

Alas, the fine print went all but unnoticed in the resulting media firestorm. Buried at the bottom of the initial reports was the detail that “Black Rhino” ammo would be marketed—to law-enforcement agencies and licensed dealers only—at about $4 a round. By comparison, a fifty-round box of 9-millimeter conventional hollowpoint ammunition can be had for between $16 and $20, or roughly 32 to 40 cents per cartridge. Considering that the cost of producing the Black Rhino differs from that of other ammo in only one component (the projectile), a few warning flags should have gone up early on. But the facts were not allowed to get in the way of a good story. AP and UPI, the three major networks, hundreds of daily newspapers, and the other dependable allies of the anti-gun movement bit like rising trout.

RL

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Robert A. Lucas

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IF A small-time manufacturer from the far east side of lower nowhere called a press conference tomorrow and announced that he had perfected a new “wonder fluid,” derived from common seawater, that could grow hair, run your sports car, cure bad breath, and get your dog elected Queen of the May, it is not unreasonable to assume that the press would greet the announcement with a certain healthy skepticism. But let an unknown chemist from Huntsville, Alabama, venture into the domestic arms race with a new kind of handgun ammunition that allegedly penetrates soft body armor and another said to explode a human body with a single shot, and the ladies and gentlemen of the press become instant believers.

Alas, the fine print went all but unnoticed in the resulting media firestorm. Buried at the bottom of the initial reports was the detail that “Black Rhino” ammo would be marketed—to law-enforcement agencies and licensed dealers only—at about $4 a round. By comparison, a fifty-round box of 9-millimeter conventional hollowpoint ammunition can be had for between $16 and $20, or roughly 32 to 40 cents per cartridge. Considering that the cost of producing the Black Rhino differs from that of other ammo in only one component (the projectile), a few warning flags should have gone up early on. But the facts were not allowed to get in the way of a good story. AP and UPI, the three major networks, hundreds of daily newspapers, and the other dependable allies of the anti-gun movement bit like rising trout.