In response to police agencies all over the country, Eldorado Cartridge is offering the Starfire hollow point bullet. Police agencies were reporting street problems from their use of 147-grain subsonic ammo. These problems included poor stopping power, excessive soft penetration, too little vehicle or bone penetration and poor functioning with a variety of police automatic pistols. In a number of surveys with police departments it was found that they needed a 124-grain, 9mm hollow point bullet that would penetrate like a 115-grain hollow point and expand more than any 147-grain hollow point. Enter the Starfire hollow point, enthusiastically described as a bullet for the Space Age.
The ribbed design of the Starfire hollow point cavity enhances bullet expansion and penetration. Upon impact, the interior bullet ribs split the incoming fluid forces and they concentrate these forces within the flutes. Since two ribs force fluid pressure into one flute, the expansion force nearly doubles. At extreme velocities, the Starfire does not fragment like other hollow point loads. Fully utilizing its mass, it expands to the base of the bullet; no other bullet does this.
The ballistic advantage of the bullet is the shape it forms after expansion. As it passes through tissue the Starfire expands and flattens, producing a wadcutter style crush cavity. Conventional hollow points end up shaped like mushrooms. The ribs inside the Starfire expand and remain sharp, fully exposed to soft tissue, because of this the Starfire will produce more actual wounding.
High-speed photography has proven that these ribs actually cut tissue ahead of and around the bullet to make bullet penetration easier. Wound ballistic tests show the Starfire to have one-shot stopping power of as high as 80.2%. While too new on the market for a large compilation of statistics from real street shootings, the 10mm MV Starfire has already established a good hunting record.
One reported shooting involved a 170-pound Whitetail buck and a 10mm Starfire shot from a Colt Delta Elite. The bullet entered the muscle of the left shoulder, shattered a rib, penetrated both lungs and lodged under the skin on the far side of the chest cavity. On impact, the deer stumbled, made four leaps and fell. The lung damage was impressive and the blood loss was great. Another shooting involved a 140-pound Whitetail buck and a 10mm Starfire hollow point. The bullet penetrated the shoulder, ricocheted through the chest cavity, penetrated both lungs, tore through one rib, and finally broke the leg bone. The deer fell immediately, scrambled back to its feet and collapsed 20 yards away from where it had been originally hit.
As we move into the 21st century, more sophisticated ammunition is available on the street. The need for effective, technically advanced bullets to enforce serious defense is greater than ever before.
(compiled from Handguns for Sport and Defense, Sept. 1992)
