A bullet design to produce maximum damage through tumbling and/or fragmentation. This is done by creating an empty space inside the bullet with a movable mass behind it. When the bullet impacts, the mass is thrown forward, changing the projectile’s center of mass and causing it to tumble. The name was created for the 5.45X39mm ammunition used by the Soviet Union in Afghanistan; this is the Russian counterpart to the 5.56X45mm ammunition used by American AR type rifles. The Afghan rebels (Mujahideen, now Taliban) found that this relatively small caliber would cause outsize damage wherever it struck, destroying limbs and heads. However, the principle is not new and was used in the .303/7.7X56mm ammunition used for the British Enfield series of rifles in the first half of the 20th century. This ammunition skirts the Geneva Convention, which prohibits exploding or expanding bullets, since the “Poison bullet” design achieves its effects through instability while remaining, largely, intact. The “Poison bullet” achieves the same instability that the 5.56X45mm ammunition sought to gain by mating light bullets with high velocity.
