What, exactly is a dum-dum bullet?
Basically, hollow points.
The 'dum-dum' was a British military bullet developed for use in India - at the Dum-Dum Arsenal - on the North West Frontier in the late 1890s.
The dum-dum comprised a jacketed .303 bullet with the jacket nose open to expose its lead core. The aim was to improve the bullet's effectiveness by increasing its expansion upon impact.
The phrase 'dum-dum' was later taken to include any soft-nosed or hollow pointed bullet. The Hague Convention of 1899 outlawed the use of dum-dum bullets during warfare.
Goes back to the Boer War. Esentially a hollow tip round. Back then it was the .303.
The were outlawed and replaced by the full metal jacketed round.
**What, exactly is a dum-dum bullet?***
It is a soft nosed bullet manufactured by the British government at the Dum-Dum arsenal in India.
Only a journalist or a fiction writer refers to a sawed or filed off tip of a full metal jacket bullet as a "dum-dum.