Understanding Firearm Ballistics: Basic to Advanced Ballistics, Simplified, Illustrated and Explained. [Paperback]

Structurally, the book seems to attempt to provide sufficient information for the scientifically educated while remaining understandable for the reader with less than a high school education. It fails on both fronts; the technical information is lacking, and the narrative is often poorly written. "Clear only if known" was a frequent reaction while reading. MInor sections, such as self defense, could have been better presented, redundancies and cross references could be improved, and the savings of space could be used to improve both layout and presentation.

Regarding the dual audience, the narrative could be written for the less sophisticated with complete scientific formulae and explanations set off for the more astute reader. In addition, these sections could even be labeled as to the level of mathematics required for mastery.

Mr. Rinker needs an editor. My experience in engineering and in academia leads me to believe that Mr. Rinker, for whatever reasons, resists, or is denied, collaboration with a competent editor; the book, the author, and the audience deserve better.

Notes from my reading indicated over fifty errors, including at least 9 errors in logic, 7 mathematical errors, and 37 grammatical errors. I assume that these are only representative of what a closer reading would reveal.

I doubt that the book has ever been competently edited; it has simply been reprinted. With current printing technology, this is inexcuseable.

Even so, it is the best source I have found for a comprehensive treatment of firearm ballistics. It is unfortunate that the publisher is unwilling to do better.

However, this treatise is a big disappointment namely in three areas:

First, Mr. Rinker undermines his credibiity as an "expert" with his ignorance and misuse of the most basic of firearms nomenclature. For example on pages 372 & 373 he refers to a 9mm semi-automatic pistol's 'magazine' as a "clip." Not once but twice he calls it a "clip." There is a substantial mechanical and empirical difference between a 'magazine' and a "clip" and one would think that an expert like Mr. Rinker would know the difference. The differences are clarified in every basic handgun safety class taught across the country. So, if he is sloppy with such a simple "easy" reference here, then one must question where else is he sloppy in his work?

Second, in the Terminial Ballistics section/chapters, he gives us some insight into his complete lack of understanding of defensive small arms tactics & training for law enforcement and what transpires on the street when someone is under extreme stress fighting for their lives. He also obviously hasn't attended a credible defensive handgun training course in recent years or he would have know what was being taught in 1999 (Third Edition) as far as judicious use of deadly force and what is required to "stop" a threat. For someone who has allegedly "displayed" a firearm to stop a threat one would think the author fully understands the Tachy-Psyche Effect and what happens to a person who is being violently attacked. For example on the one hand he explains, in detail, the ineffectiveness of handgun rounds in stopping a motivated human being who is threatening another. He invests almost a full page to a 1977 officer involved shooting when a rookie female police officer is killed by a drug crazed man who took 10 rounds from 38 Special +Ps from her revolver and her partners. During this altercation the threat kept fighting and fighting with her partner even though he had mulitple "life threatening" hits from the +Ps .38s. He comments about how ineffective handgun rounds are in stopping motivated human threats. Then he goes on to make an unsupported statement: "Now-days, it is commom for an officer to empty a 13 round clip (sic) toward someone generally spraying the area . . ." criticizing police officers for shooting multiple rounds (from an "ineffective tool") in order to stop a threat. Amazing! He just got done telling the readers how ineffective handgun are and then he critizes officers for shooting multiple times trying to stop a threat. Also, he should have backed his off the cuff statement with actual data! Had he consulted and quoted actual officer involved shootings such as is recorded in the NYPD SOP #9 to ascertain what is actually going instead of making blanket statements that officers are doing "this or that." Mr. Rinker would have served us better had he consulted an expert on the dynamics of a gunfight or had he attended a school such as Gunsite, Thunder Ranch, Defensive Training International, Oregon Firearms Academy, or Lethal Force Institute before writing this section.

Finally, his often writes in riddles and circles causing serious frustration as one is trying to comprehend "weighty" forumlas or concepts. Several times he flat out contradicts himself in an attempt to make the concept easier to grasp. Part of the problem is he isn't consistant with his prose. He tries very diligently to introduce a concept then state it and re-state it to make it clearer. Often he just "muddys" thing up making it worse. For those of us who are not a "cranial powerhouse" it may take several readings of one page to fully grasp what it is he is trying to make clearer.

Overall, this is an fine resource and is a handy text for those who reload or are curious about an indepth introduction into ballistics.

There is insufficient information in the book to derive a basic trajectory table from a few given parameters which are normally available to a reloader i.e. ballistic coefficient, muzzle velocity, sight height and zero range. I have since found what I need, which is very simple set of formulae by Professor Pejsa. I am not saying this book is worthless, it has a wealth of interesting information. However it is described on the cover as "Basic to Advanced Ballistics" - I think the middle two words of that phrase are inappropriate.

I am not sure what Mr Rinker's mathematical abilities are, but he certainly doesn't have much confidence in his readers' maths. I would have thought that most people with an interest in ballistics would have an interest in maths and physics, so am not sure who the target audience is.