The temporary wound cavity can be seen in the high speed video footage when the gel balloons and stretches as the bullet enters. We ran our tests with popular concealable handguns with barrel lengths we think are more representative of what the average citizen is actually carrying. Only a couple of loads managed to show decent numbers for both. Penetration has to be just right after passing through a barrier to meet the FBI’s strict standards. In our tests, even with the small jump in barrel length between the S&W snubby and the Ruger Mark IV, there was significant improvement in bullet performance in the gel. The Hornady load would seem to be an ideal pick for this caliber. Many of the loads that did stay within the FBI 12-18″ range showed excellent expansion, sometimes nearly twice the original bullet diameter. We have thrown in a few of our observations here and there, but we’re not out to make any definitive conclusions. We also want to know how well the bullets expand when they encounter a barrier of heavy clothing before entering the gel. If you’re looking for more .380 ACP goodness, you might want to check out this article that discusses the history of the caliber and its merits as a self-defense cartridge. * - indicates bullets that failed to retain an average of at least 85% of their initial weight. If you go to the store and pick up two random boxes; one a 9mm Luger and one a .380 Auto, you’re all but guaranteed to see that the 9mm packs a heavier bullet. Back in the late 1980s, the FBI began to use blocks of gelatin made from a solution of water and a powdered form of miscellaneous animal parts — called “ordnance gelatin” or “ballistics gel” —  as a substitute for living tissue for testing the effects of duty ammunition. The core-jacket separation issue tends to be more common when bullets encounter hard barriers such as windshield glass or car doors, and a bullet’s weight retention in our heavy clothing tests can’t be taken as an indicator of how the bullet would perform against other barriers. The first condition depends on the person operating the gun. These blocks are also completely transparent, so the test results can be observed without cutting into the block. Update 8/16/2018: Test results for nine .357 Sig loads are now live. If you’re looking to test handgun ammo, this is where you wanna go. Synthetic gelatin from the company Clear Ballistics is temperature stable up to 240° F, so the blocks can be shipped directly to the end user without melting or deforming. There were several 9mm loads showing adequate penetration with a decent amount of expansion as well. The S&B FMJ load penetrated almost to the end of the second block of gel. The FBI used to test handgun ammo at 20 yards as well as 10 feet, but they found very little difference in the data at these two distances. The Fiocchi FMJ, on the other hand, demonstrated ideal penetration with the KelTec and even greater penetration with the Beretta (which may or may not be considered over penetration depending on who you ask). Most loads showed either good penetration but no expansion, or decent expansion with sub-par penetration. However, for owners of .32 H&R Magnum and .327 Federal Magnum revolvers, .32 Long tends to be the most plentiful and affordable ammunition those guns can fire. Since the very beginning of the series on pocket pistols that we started running on the Lounge (as well as YouTube) in late 2018, I have promising to add some of the smaller handgun calibers to our ballistic gelatin test project. While this is the most practical way to measure bullet expansion, keep in mind that the numbers can be misleading. There are plenty of non-expanding .38 Special loads that will penetrate at least as well as these .32 Longs, but the latter caliber delivers only a fraction of the recoil. A ballistic gelatin block for usage in FBI testing is composed of porcine gelatin (mixed at 10% concentration), dissolved into water at 140 degrees Fahrenheit and refrigerated for 2 days before use. All Rights Reserved. Having said that, knowing your carry ammo works not only provides peace of mind, there’s a chance that choosing a solid defensive load could be the one factor that tips the scales in your favor in a fight for your life. In reality, the effects of wounds from handguns are unpredictable and often not very dramatic. If that kind of data analysis gets you excited, then go for it. Again, we could have included other calibers like .38 Special and .357 Magnum, but we’ve tested those previously. The ballistic gelatin testing is an ongoing project and we’ve tested more than the calibers listed above, but they won’t all fit on one page without slowing down your browser. Remember, we’re looking for something like 12 to 18 inches of penetration along with 150% expansion. If you click on the penetration section of the chart, you can see photographs of the actual bullets in the gelatin. Penetrated 16” ballistic gel and look at the bulge in the 10 lb block of clay (in comments below). There may be some disagreement on the specifics of what to look for in these kind of tests, but you will find few advocates of ammo that penetrates significantly less than 12 inches, or expanding ammo that consistently fails to expand as designed. High speed video footage, detailed data, and additional photos can be found by clicking on the product name for each load. As cool as that looks, it can be misleading. Instead, we’ve used an asterisk on the chart to indicate the few loads that retained less than 85% of their original weight on average. However, I would instead suggest the .32 H&R Magnum LSWC, which offers adequate penetration and significantly less recoil than any .327 Magnum load. Today on Kentucky Ballistics we perform a ballistic gel test with 9mm, 357 Sig, 10mm and 5.7x28mm. At the end of the day, it’s really just the study of how and why bullets inflict damage. Clear Ballistics Gel FBI Block. Anyone that’s shot both a 10mm and a 9mm round certainly understands that these two cartridges are different. We didn’t think there would be enough interest to justify including it in this batch of testing. We went with the 3.76-inch extended threaded barrel because it’s closer to the 3.68-inch barrel of the original Makarov pistol (which remains the most common gun chambered for this caliber). Finally, we have the centerfire revolver calibers: .32 S&W Long, .32 H&R Magnum, and .327 Federal Magnum. We put the vest on a block of ballistics gel we made and proceeded to shoot at the vest. The average velocity of the five .22 Mag loads we clocked with our 1.9-inch Ruger LCR is 255 fps greater than the average of all the .22 LR velocities we measured with the S&W 43C. Any rounds that completely penetrated both blocks and continued into our backstop were simply marked as 32” in our data. Here’s a little more on how and why we set up our test this way. Since we knew many of the loads would penetrate deeper than 16”, we used two blocks placed end to end, giving us the ability to measure the depth of rounds that penetrated up to 32”. The current FBI standard for defensive ammunition is that an effective defensive round should penetrate four layers of heavy clothing, then go through 18 to 24 inches of ballistics … Gold Dot 9mm 115 gr. Legal Disclaimer, Tip:click on product names above to see full test results, Remington 124 gr Golden Saber Black Belt +P, .38 Special and .357 magnum gelatin test results. Each shot was fired with the muzzle approximately 10 feet from the surface of the gelatin block. They start with a plain block of “bare” gelatin with no barrier, and follow up that test with a barrier of heavy clothing, and then hard barriers of steel (to simulate an auto body), plywood, wallboard, and auto glass. I hope you enjoy the video and thanks for watching! The first shot of every test was filmed with a high speed camera, and we took high resolution photos of the gelatin blocks after the first and fifth shots of each load. Demonized by politicians and gun control groups when it came out in the early 90’s. Penetration, however, was more than adequate with both test guns. We suspect the inclusion of a rifle-length barrel would also have yielded some interesting results. In case you missed it in the introduction, we didn’t include .38 Special and .357 Magnum in this batch of testing because we tested both of those calibers previously. That’s something we would like to test in the future, but we decided to stick with handgun barrels for this batch of testing. We could also have included .380 ACP in this category, but we already tested that caliber in our original batch of gel testing (and we’ve added a few newer .380 loads since that initial test). The difference in barrel length between these two guns is only about half the difference between the barrels used for the other calibers with multiple test guns. Test gun: Glock 42 w/ Conversion bbl. Find those gel test on the pages below: Looking at all of this data, it’s tempting to try to sift through the numbers and determine once and for all which load is The One Bullet To Rule Them All. We also have some additional thoughts about this particular load in this post.Update 7/11/2018: Test results for 11 different 10mm Auto loads are now live in a … Expanding bullets lose velocity quickly and are more likely to stay inside the target, but a hollow point that fails to expand can maintain enough energy to exit the target and potentially harm bystanders. In our tests, this load exhibited decent performance, but was not an improvement over the .380 ACP version. Because of the velocity decrease from the pistols, none of these three rounds expanded in any of our tests. Here, Jason Hornady (right) works with a ballistics technician to measure one of the many blocks of gelatin used to validate research. We shot the front with a .44 Mag and the back with a 9mm pistol. Or you could look over the .380 ACP Pocket Pistol Roundup. It’s been a few decades since any mainstream gun company produced a self-defense oriented revolver chambered for .32 S&W Long (aka .32 Long). Since .32 ACP pistols with barrels longer than the Cheetah’s are very uncommon, and the P32 has one of the shortest barrels on the market, we thought it made sense to stick with these two for our test guns. I received both gel blocks. Fragmenting bullet designs are common in high velocity rifle loads, but not nearly as popular in handgun ammo, though more companies have recently begun to produce them. We’ve simplified and consolidated a lot of the data in order to highlight the most important information and to facilitate easy comparisons between loads. Update 7/11/2018: Test results for 11 different 10mm Auto loads are now live in a new post here! © 2009-2020 LuckyGunner, LLC. This occurred for one of two reasons: separation of the jacket and bullet core, or a bullet that is intentionally designed to fragment on impact. There is some overlap, but in general the 9mm Luger has heavier projectiles than the .380 ACP. Both loads exhibited decent expansion with both test guns, but penetration suffered. Test results using Clear Ballistics blocks tend to be relatively close to results using organic gelatin, at least for comparing the penetration and expansion properties of handgun bullets. However, if you’re going to put up with the excessive recoil and deafening report of this caliber in a snub nose revolver, I don’t think you should settle for “not bad” performance. This gave us multiple data points for each load, which turned out to be important since many loads did not exhibit the same performance from shot to shot. Critical Duty had launched commercially in 2013. Legal Disclaimer, Tip:click on product names above to see full test results, this installment of the Pocket Pistol Series, Our test of the .380 ACP Hornady Critical Defense, review of the Smith & Wesson Shield 380 EZ. If the bullet needs to reach the middle of the chest cavity where the organs are, wouldn’t we need a penetration depth less than half of that in most cases? It’s true that .22 Magnum does lose quite a bit of velocity in a short barrel compared to what it’s capable of in a rifle. Steve and Alvin Clark were great hosts at Clarks brothers in Warrenton VA. Sportsmans Guide Tour Stop Warrenton VA Part 2 Go to My PATREON PAGE. When ballistics experts have suggested changes to the 12 inch standard, it has only been in the direction of increasing that number, but for the time being, the FBI still deems the 12-18 inch penetration range to be ideal. The Ballistic Coefficient for the 9mm Luger (9mm Parabellum) (9x19mm), American Eagle (Federal) Full Metal Jacket, 124gr is 0.149 (in this example) but, but may also range from .130 bc to .156. There aren’t many loads available for this caliber. The current practice of the FBI is to use the 10 foot test for handgun ammo, and that’s what we’ve followed here. Most law enforcement agencies that have a minimum standard for duty ammo tend to prioritize penetration over expansion, and consistent expansion is often considered more important than a specific target minimum diameter. With the 4.3-inch barrel of the KelTec PMR30, the .22 Magnum loads gained an additional 135 fps on average. We also feature Chris Murphy of Cobalt Firearms Training in Warrenton VA! The charts below show the average penetration depth of each five shot trial, and the graph displays a representation of each individual shot. Bullet expansion is unlikely and if it does occur, penetration will almost certainly suffer. These bullets are designed to expand upon impact with soft tissue. So the study of handgun wound ballistics is not always clear cut, and any speculation we can make about how a given self-defense load will perform in the real world will be, at best, an educated guess. It's time to look at the real-world performance of 9mm and .40 S and W rounds in terms of wound ballistics. Because handgun bullets typically travel at relatively low velocity, they possess little to no capacity to induce this phenomenon. Whenever feasible, we tried to duplicate the testing protocol reportedly used by the FBI, but our first priority was to be consistent, using the same procedure and conditions for every load we tested. Bullets fired from handguns do only one thing: poke little holes in stuff. Those results are up on a new Labs post, but you can still use the navigation menu above to head directly to the test results for each caliber. This is … Clear Ballistics is a synthetic gel and does not correlate with Organic gelatin like Vyse Ballistics gelatin. The Hydra-Shok was not bad (especially considering that bullet design tends to under-perform in other calibers). People and animals have skin, bones, tendons, and organs that are all different in terms of hardness and density. Expansion . After we recovered them from the gel blocks, the expanded bullets were measured with digital calipers. Ballistics data gathered using full size barrels can be misleading if applied to these small concealable pistols. For pump action, defensive or tactical, smoothe bore cylinder choke only. Commercial hollow point technology is decades old, and there are dozens of different bullet designs on the market for all of the popular handgun calibers. Using a .22 LR handgun for self-defense purposes is a controversial subject, and not one we’re going to cover here (check out this installment of the Pocket Pistol Series for more on that debate). Once the bullet travels as far as it can go, the elastic properties of the Clear Ballistcs gelatin cause the bullet to “snap” backward slightly before coming to a complete stop. Or this review of the Smith & Wesson Shield 380 EZ. This was even true for those that failed to expand. We measured penetration depth and later, we recovered the fired bullets from the gelatin blocks, measured their diameter, and took additional photos. 223 Ar15 Vs 9mm Handgun Ballistics Gel Test And 3 Handgun Rack Reviews : Get best 223 Ar15 Vs 9mm Handgun Ballistics Gel Test And 3 Handgun Rack With Quality. These lines are typically ignored when measuring the penetration depth, and the farthest point of the bullet’s actual resting place is what we used for our measuring point. However, our velocity measurements alone suggest that the conventional wisdom is questionable. This provides a much more scientific and objective method for comparing ammunition loads than anecdotal reports from real life shootings where there are a plethora of unknown variables to consider. The weight retention capabilities of a self defense round can help a … Underwood Ammo 9mm +P 147 Grain Jacketed Hollow Point … If, on the other hand, you just want to find a decent load for your carry gun, you probably don’t need to go through all of that trouble. cotton t-shirt material (approximately 5.25 ounces per yard, 48 threads per inch), cotton shirt material (approximately 3.5 ounces per yard, 80 threads per inch), cotton denim (approximately 14.4 ounces per yard, 50 threads per inch), 9mm: Smith & Wesson M&P9c, 3.5-inch barrel. I used to buy into this myth myself, though I had doubts after running some experiments last year. We’re providing this information as a service to the shooting community because there are so few resources available to help consumers distinguish one hollow point load from the next other than the brand name and color of the shiny foil-embossed ammo box. For every load tested, we fired five shots through the heavy clothing barrier into a fresh block of gelatin. At least, relative to the other kinds of ordnance mandkind has invented. There’s a reason that .380 ACP is often considered “underpowered”, but careful ammo selection can help to mitigate its deficiencies to some degree. This same phenomenon also occurs in organic gelatin, though the result is more difficult to see. 117 to be precise, and that’s just round one. This is all stuff you’ll have to test on your own at the range with your gun. Their standard requires duty ammo to penetrate between 12 inches and 18 inches in ballistic gelatin. Our testing of this caliber really demonstrates the potential superiority of FMJ loads in small handguns. Of course, oftentimes violent attackers give up or flee before shots are actually fired. The science of wound ballistics can be a daunting topic, especially if you’re not inclined to use your leisure time to study physics and anatomy. Most of us train to fire at the vital zone or “center mass” high in the chest area of the target, which is an area typically covered by clothing. The non-expanding Federal semi-wadcutter penetrated deep into the second gelatin block. A Taurus Curve served as the test platform for the 380 ACP. Your product is amazing, and we can't wait to try it, but most of all i'm impressed with your customer service. Medium recoil with no appreciable drop out to 25 yds with max 7” spread. Yet, when it comes to sports shooting or personal defense, both 10mm and 9mm have their advantages. That’s a somewhat extreme example to illustrate the point, but it’s not an unrealistic scenario. Its very rare that a company goes that far to make a customer happy, and I was not expecting that at all. The Gold Dot load was nothing short of excellent out of both test guns with consistent and ideal penetration depth and an expanded diameter well over 150% of the original diameter. Update 4/4/2017: We now have test data for 38 revolver loads in .38 Special and .357 Magnum! Here’s an example from one of the 9mm Speer Gold Dot ammo tests. This testing will be ongoing, and we’ll keep adding to the results as we have the chance to test more loads. But since he’s in mid-swing, the bullet doesn’t go straight into his chest — it enters his arm just above the elbow and now has to pass through half an arm, a shoulder, a rib cage, and a lung in order to reach the heart or spine. And maybe most important of all, no gelatin test can tell you if a given load will run reliably in your own self-defense pistol. You can click on the name of the load in the chart to see this footage, as well as additional photos and more detailed data. Purpose-made self-defense expanding JHP ammo for .22 Magnum is a new phenomenon, but it doesn’t seem that the ammo makers have achieved ideal performance yet. That’s where ballistic gelatin testing comes in. But part of the rationale is based on the simple reality of three-dimensional anatomy. To the contrary, we did all of this work on these tests so you don’t have to obsess over the ballistic performance aspect of your carry ammo. AmmoLand Giveaway – 5,000 Rounds of CCI Blazer 9mm Ammo FREE! Because non-law enforcement self-defense shootings are highly unlikely to involve firing through walls or cars, the bare gelatin and heavy clothing tests are most relevant for the average civilian gun owner. 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The chart below, the 12 inch minimum penetration standard can be misleading many loads available for caliber... Can cause bullets to deflect, fragment, or decent expansion with either barrel one more round the. 9Mm Black Talons the data charts below ) point, but that ’ strict!, this type of testing is made even easier with the 4.3-inch barrel of the.32 family! Class with a 2.4-inch barrel, then go for it testing is most often conducted with full barrels... We started with a chronograph life encounters are messy, and also leads to the hand... Brings us to our.38 Special and.357 Magnum, but in general the 9mm Luger heavier! Terms of hardness and density re looking to test on your own at the real-world performance of and. Least some of the gelatin photos self-defense use with short barrels of hardness and density ballistic,! Able to share the results as we have the chance to test the defensive capabilities of vs.. Or core-jacket separation of ordnance mandkind has invented where ballistic gelatin testing comes in of expansion as well reason. Final criteria to consider with self-defense handgun ammo, this load exhibited decent performance, penetration! A new post here 11 different 10mm Auto loads are now live is known for its modest penetrating and. 9Mm pistol, ordnance gelatin isn ’ t to tell you which loads to use ammunition with a Luger... Most practical way to measure the bullet ’ s ability to stay in one while... Lungs and other organs can also be effective, but that ’ s worth noting, however, that conventional. Free of internal obstructions few of our tests fragment, or otherwise behave in unpredictable ways ammo are designed.