Please, don’t for one second think I’m defending Breivik.

And ballistics experts say so-called dum-dum bullets also are lighter in weight, can be fired with greater accuracy over varying distances and are commonly are used by air marshals and hunters of small animals.

This is exactly the sort of bullshit reporting that Fox News would do. “Dum-dum” is what they called hollow-point bullets back in the early 1900s. Iron-clad guarantee: every American police officer carries “dum-dum” bullets in his/her service pistol.

The idea behind the design of a hollow-point bullet is that it should expand once inside its target and stop, thereby 1) dumping its kinetic energy into the target, and 2) not penetrating so as to ventilate unintended targets on the other side.

To be clear: there’s not a type of bullet I’d prefer to be shot with.

It’s just that hollow-point ammunition is as common as coat hangers, not remotely exotic or unusual, and certainly no more accurate over long distances than any other type of ammo. Less so, in fact, particularly in the case of rifle ammunition.

I guess it’s a pet peeve, but I can cast only the most jaundiced of eyes upon reports that focus on a murderer’s weapon.