In the 1960s; Paul Kopsch (an Ohio coroner), Daniel Turcos (a police sergeant), and Donald Ward (Kopsch's special investigator), began experimenting with special purpose handgun ammunition. Their objective was to develop a law enforcement round capable of improved penetration against harden targets, such as windshield glass and automobile doors. Conventional bullets, made primarily from lead, often become deformed and less effective after striking hard targets, especially when fired at handgun velocities.
The inventors named their company KTW, after their initials. KTW had begun commercial production in the late 60s to early 70s and came up with an armor piercing loads for a number of cartridges including .30 Carbine.
Their claim to immortal fame was the fact that they coated their projectiles green Teflon. This had nothing to do with making it armor piercing. That was simply a solid slug of mostly hardened brass with a steel core. The Teflon was applied to protect the barrel's rifling, nothing more and nothing less.
Original KTW ad circa 1982.
In 1980, continued production of the ammunition was turned over to the North American Ordnance Corporation. Business was fairly well and at the time, they were selling their products to both law enforcement and commercial sectors of the market.
Original sales price list circa 1981.
They sold their special loads in various chamberings from as small as .25 ACP, and .32 Auto all the way to .30Â Carbine and .44 Magnum.
Original sales price list circa 1981.
Their most popular product was the Safety Pak. A small hard-shell plastic wallet with ammunition.
9mm Safety Pak
I had a few back in the day as a left over from when my Father toyed with them. He was a Firearms Instructor for his agency and he got a case or two to test and see the feasibility of the ammunition and its claims.
So what was the big deal? Well, it was the height of the Cocaine Drug War and the Crack Epidemic was spreading like crazy in the 1980s. Cops were just starting to wear body armor and bad guys were out gunning the cops because they packed more semi-auto pistols and rifles.
What type of armor were the cops wearing? Horribly thick, unconformable body armor that sucked for the most part on stopping anything let alone one of these rounds. Back then, most soft panel body armor was not rated to stop loads like the 125gr SP .357 Magnum or even 124gr 9mm FMJ. They provided protection, but not what the uneducated believed they provided.
Remember, that KTW had their ammo marketed towards law enforcement and the military to defeat barriers like auto glass and period car bodies which were still made out of steel. It was never intended to defeat body armor since most body armor in that era was defeated by most common commercial loads.
Original KTW sales ad.
The Gun Grabbing Authoritarians in the media caught wind of this and took off like the drunken retards they are and made it a problem that never existed. They claimed that the Teflon Coating is what made them armor piercing and that via magic, it allowed the hardened slug slip through the kevlar fibers of the then crappy vests that couldn't stop a .357 Mag or .44 Mag let alone a 9mm. But they went hardcore stupid with it.
Hollywood went hardcore with their anti-gun message in Lethal Weapon 3. The entire plot was that gangs were getting machine guns and armor piercing ammunition and that lead to a rash of LAPD cops being killed. They went so far as to make fake ammunition boxes and marked them similar to what KTW looked like.
Scene from Lethal Weapon 3 when the crate of armor piercing ammunition was discovered.
Close up of the box lettering.
The production of KTW-branded ammunition eventually ceased in the 1990s.
But at the time, that didn't end production of Teflon coated ammunition.
Olin Corporation, under their brand Winchester got into the came with their famous/infamous Black Talon JHP line. The bullet was designed in 1991 under the supervision of Alan Corzine, who at that time was VP of research and development for Winchester.
They used a molybdenum disulfide coating (black Teflon). And that caused all hell to break lose because of an alleged armor piercing capability. The result came because of media hyperbole. They believed that the Teflon made it an armor piercing round, just as they believed that the Teflon coating on the KTW ammo made them armor piercing too. The media then was too high off their own ego to test or review field data from actual shootings.
Back in the day, cops like Col. Leonard J. Supenski of the Baltimore County Police Department love it.
"It has the stopping power that police officers need and it is less likely to ricochet or go through the bad guy." - New York Times, November 7, 1993.
Gun Grabbers hated it of course. When the 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting occurred. The gunman, Colin Ferguson used a Ruger P89 loaded with Black Talons. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy's (D) husband was one of the victims killed by Ferguson when he snapped.
Rep. McCarthy actually took Ruger to court for making the pistol that Ferguson used and also went after Winchester Ammunition in the suit (McCarthy v. Sturm, Ruger and Co., Inc., 916 F.Supp. 366 (S.D.N.Y., 1996). In the suit, the claims against Olin Corp. were dismissed because it was held that the plaintiff could not prevail because there were no defects in manufacturing, design, or in warnings - the bullets "functioned exactly as designed".
But to bow down to pressure, Winchester pulled the Black Talon line off the market in 1993 and released it in 2000 as the Winchetser Ranger SXT line.
The running gag is that SXT stands for Same eXact Thing. Since the Ranger line and Black Talon line are the same except for labeling and coloring.
A number of states banned the possession of Teflon coated ammunition due to the hysteria caused by the media.
[li]Alabama state law provides that "the possession or sale of brass or steel teflon-coated handgun ammunition is illegal anywhere within the State of Alabama".
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[li]Hawaii state law prohibits the "manufacture, possession, sale, barter, trade, gift, transfer, or acquisition of ... any type of ammunition or any projectile component thereof coated with teflon or any other similar coating designed primarily to enhance its capability to penetrate metal or pierce protective armor."
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[li]Kansas state laws states possessing, manufacturing, causing to be manufactured, selling, offering for sale, lending, purchasing or giving away any cartridge which can be fired by a handgun and which has a plastic-coated bullet that has a core of less than 60% lead by weight, whether the person knows or has reason to know that the plastic-coated bullet has a core of less than 60% lead by weight is unlawful
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[li]North Carolina state law specifically forbids persons in that state to "import, manufacture, possess, store, transport, sell, offer to sell, purchase, offer to purchase, deliver or give to another, or acquire any Teflon-coated bullet".
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[li]Oklahoma - Teflon-coated bullets are illegal in Oklahoma under some circumstances.
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[li]Oregon state law forbids the possession of any handgun ammunition, the bullet or projectile of which is coated with Teflon while committing or intending to commit a felony.
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[li]Pennsylvania state law provides that "It is unlawful for any person to possess, use or attempt to use a KTW teflon-coated bullet or other armor-piercing ammunition while committing or attempting to commit" certain enumerated "crime[s] of violence".
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[li]South Carolina state law specifically bans "ammunition or shells that are coated with polytetrafluoroethylene (Teflon)".
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[li]Virginia state law specifically bans "bullets, projectiles or other types of ammunition that are: coated with or contain, in whole or in part, polytetrafluoroethylene (Teflon) or a similar product" while committing or attempting to commit a crime.
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Amazing that such insanity prevailed then when the entire premise was laughable and showed the lack of understanding of how things actually worked. But then again, authoritarian law makers and gun grabbers do the same today and simply never let a crisis go to waste.
Anyways.... there's your old school trip down memory lane. Hope you enjoyed.
