I‘m not a big fan of arms control agreements for the simple reason that, more often than not, their effect is mainly cosmetic and they do nothing at all to rectify the problem they are meant to address. Thus, to go back into “ancient” history, the 1896 Hague Convention banned the use of unjacketed bullets by military forces. There was a good an humane reason for this–the slow, large-caliber, soft lead bullets used in the age of black powder did horrific damage to human bodies, crushing bones and mushrooming in soft tissue to tear up vital organs. The ban was an attempt to force the use of weapons that would only cause “clean” wounds.

But the ban did not have the intended effect. Shortly after it was signed, most of the world’s armies switched over to more powerful nitrocellulose-based propellants, which in turn caused muzzle velocities to increase from around 1,000 feet per second to close to 2,700 feet per second. All modern armies shortly thereafter adopted copper- or steel-jacketed bullets–not because of humanitarian concerns, but because at higher velocities, lead bullets tended to melt in the barrel. At the same time, most armies went to much smaller and lighter bullets which, when they hit human flesh, tended to crush tissues by the supersonic shock waves they created. The resulting wounds were as bad, if not worse, than those caused by the recently banned soft lead bullets.