Two firearm experts from the ATF were at the scene of the shooting.  By afternoon they completed their work.  They visited with Chief Barley. 

“Chief, thanks for taking the time to see us.  We looked over the scene, the reports of the wounds of the officers and the scene of the shootings.”
“I was hoping for some help.”

“We sent one of the bullet fragments from each of the injured officers to our lab for analysis.  Right now we have no idea what bullet is being used but we are checking some leads.”

“Are there bullets that have this explosive punch?”

“Yes.  Remember the shooting of President Regan?  The bullet was a homemade explosive round.  It failed to explode.  Regan nearly bled to death from the small wound, had that gone off he would almost certainly not have made it.  And that was a .22 pistol.”

“So what is this?”

“A 30-06 probably.  We looked at the curve on the fragments, it looks like a .30 caliber.  That bullet is more than one and one half times as large in each direction, so the volume is more than four times that of the .22.  That leaves a pretty big space and weight for an explosive charge.  And this slug looks like it may be even a little longer than the standard slug. That gives a whole lot of space to hollow out and insert a charge.”

“A 30-06 round?”

“And there are a lot of guns out there that fire them, good guns with good accuracy and with a high muzzle velocity.  It has a lot of energy when it hits without the explosion.”

“So we probably can’t trace the ammunition and the rifle?”

“Well, let’s not rule out things yet.  Wait till we get the information back.  The rifle will be hard to trace but the ammunition is either military or special made.”

“Special made ammunition?”
“It could have been hand made by some gunsmith.  If so it will probably be nearly impossible to trace.  He sure isn’t going to tell us he made the rounds.”

“Who could make something like this?”

“There are tens of thousands of hand loaders in the country.  Many are guys that load only a few hundred rounds a year for themselves and friends.  You don’t have to load a lot, the equipment is less than a hundred dollars.  Even the IRS doesn’t know about many of them because they either don’t sell any or they don’t file income tax on the money if they do.  The only handle we might have is the powder sales.  And there are hundreds of loaders that use less than a couple of pounds of powder a year.  They may only buy powder every three or four years.  And then we would need some reason to bust the guy.”