My Ruger LCR in 22 Magnum is light-weight revolver that definitely promises a no-recoil solution to a defensive handgun. You can find those results in this post. 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. The non-expanding Federal semi-wadcutter penetrated deep into the second gelatin block. I’m not saying that makes the Hornady load a bad choice necessarily, but it’s a reminder that while gel testing is valuable, any single test only tells part of the story. Penetration has to be just right after passing through a barrier to meet the FBI’s strict standards. I hope you enjoy the video and thanks for watching! Ordnance gelatin isn’t an exact simulation of living flesh. 9mm Carbine Ballistic Gel Testing So let’s look at the gel tests, starting again with the 147-grain HSTs. Choice of caliber and bullet are not the most important aspects of successful self-defense. On average, the .32 H&R Magnum loads clocked in at about 200 fps faster than the .32 Longs. 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). Like the other .32 cartridges, there aren’t many factory self-defense loads being produced for .327 Magnum. Update 7/11/2018: Test results for 11 different 10mm Auto loads are now live in a new post here! Watch the video below for a brief overview of the project and an explanation of how to read the results. Many of the loads that did stay within the FBI 12-18″ range showed excellent expansion, sometimes nearly twice the original bullet diameter. No amount of bullet technology can make up for a miss. 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. We shot the front with a .44 Mag and the back with a 9mm pistol. Today, this type of testing is made even easier with the advent of synthetic ballistic materials. To get an idea of how a bullet will perform under various real world conditions, the FBI tests each load with a variety of barriers placed in front of the gelatin. 1. We also took velocity readings of each load with a chronograph. This is not as much an issue with modern handgun ammunition as it was with older bullet designs, but a few of our test loads did show a tendency to fall apart in the gelatin. 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 … Compared to the rimfire and semi-auto pocket pistol calibers, all of the .32 Long loads demonstrated respectable penetration. But when I mentioned the possibility in a video last year, enough fans of the 9×18 Makarov came out of the woodwork to convince us. Conversely, ordnance gelatin is homogeneous, and free of internal obstructions. Expansion also helps prevent overpenetration, which is when the bullet retains enough velocity to exit the far side of the target and potentially harm a non-threat on the other side. © 2009-2020 LuckyGunner, LLC. We will add it to this chart after it’s officially released. Comparisons. 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. Only a couple of loads managed to show decent numbers for both. Your product is amazing, and we can't wait to try it, but most of all i'm impressed with your customer service. The other advantage of using a consistent medium like gelatin is that it allows for an “apples to apples” comparison between ammo loads. Again, we could have included other calibers like .38 Special and .357 Magnum, but we’ve tested those previously. Because of the velocity decrease from the pistols, none of these three rounds expanded in any of our tests. But part of the rationale is based on the simple reality of three-dimensional anatomy. The centerfire semi-auto cartridges were .25 ACP, .32 ACP, and 9mm Makarov. The FBI announced it was planning to swap out the .40 S and W pistols and ammunition now used by its agents and replace them with 9mm pistols and ammo. The Speer and Hornady ammo are specifically designed for self-defense use with short barrels. The CCI, Fiocchi, and Winchester loads we tested are all conventional .22 Magnum loads designed primarily to be used for small game hunting with rifle-length barrels. There’s a reason that .380 ACP is often considered “underpowered”, but careful ammo selection can help to mitigate its deficiencies to some degree. If you click on the penetration section of the chart, you can see photographs of the actual bullets in the gelatin. It must meet strict calibration criteria before being considered valid as a test medium in the FBI Protocol. One final criteria to consider with self-defense handgun ammo is weight retention. Spoiler: no round ever penetrated the ballistics gel. 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. One excellent example would be the Lehigh Defense max expansion loads in either caliber. The first condition depends on the person operating the gun. This brings us to our first myth that bullet efficacy depends on the size of the bullet. On the other hand, some of the bullets had trouble with the heavy clothing barrier, leading to expansion failure and penetration that exceeded the 32″ maximum depth of our dual gel-block setup. Bullets that deform inconsistently with a fragment of jacket protruding unevenly on one side could potentially measure the same at the widest point as a bullet that expands more uniformly, even though the latter may indicate a better potential for tissue damage. But as for the second condition — how do we know if the ammo we have in our self-defense gun is up to the task? Ammunition selection for my task, tagging a … On the chart below, the barrel lengths have been rounded to 2″ and 4″. We can’t assume that a load with any bullets falling outside of the 12″-18″ range should automatically be regarded as a total failure. Update 8/16/2018: Test results for nine .357 Sig loads are now live. 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. The perfect 9mm self-defense load for sidearms, according to the FBI, must provide penetration depths of 12 inches minimum and 18 inches maximum when fired in 10% ballistic gel. As expected, .380 ACP turned in the weakest overall performance of the four calibers we tested, but a few loads fared surprisingly well. We have a gun to prepare for the worst, and in the worst kind of violent attacks, the bad guy doesn’t give up until he is physically incapable of doing you harm. Only one load managed to land all five bullets past the 11-inch mark and that was the Hornady FTX Critical Defense. This same phenomenon also occurs in organic gelatin, though the result is more difficult to see. We’ve highlighted this range in the penetration graph on our chart so you can easily see which loads came close to this standard, but that shouldn’t be read as a pass/fail test. Yet, when it comes to sports shooting or personal defense, both 10mm and 9mm have their advantages. Clicking on the thumbnails of the expanded bullets will give you a magnified view. The charts below show the average penetration depth of each five shot trial, and the graph displays a representation of each individual shot. Consistent slight over-penetration (greater than 18″) is generally considered acceptable if the alternative is under-penetration, or inconsistent performance. 9mm Ballistics Chart There is such a variety of pistols in public use that we will not determine what guns are compatible with which loads. 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. If the self-defense load you use is listed here, and you’re not confident in the results you’re seeing, just pick another one that performed at a level you’re more comfortable with. The 85 gr American Eagle soft point and the Hydra Shok are somewhat lower recoil loads for this caliber that might be tempting options for anyone looking to make their snub nose slightly easier to handle. 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. Clear Ballistics Gel FBI Block. A bullet that can penetrate only 9 inches might lodge in the guy’s rib; unpleasant for him, but not the definitive fight-stopping shot we want. Some of the reason for the 12 inch minimum standard is simply “playing it safe” and allowing for the possibility of attackers possessing greater than average girth. No matter what else may happen during the course of a lethal confrontation, if you shoot the guy in the right spot with a bullet that penetrates deep enough, the threat will go down. There is some overlap, but in general the 9mm Luger has heavier projectiles than the .380 ACP. Over the last few months, I’ve been working with the rest of the Lucky Gunner team on another one of our epic experiments, which we’re proud to finally unveil: ballistics gelatin testing for over 100 self-defense handgun ammunition loads. The goal of our project is to test as many loads as possible in order to determine how they compare to the FBI standard recommended penetration depth of 12-18″. Looking at the accompanying photos will clearly show whether the weight retention failure was due to fragmentation or core-jacket separation. Blunt Force Trauma. The first round fired for each load was recorded with a high speed camera at 10,000 frames per second. 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. Remember, we’re looking for something like 12 to 18 inches of penetration along with 150% expansion. I hope you enjoy the video and thanks for watching! Bullets will not always provide the same results on living tissue that we see in gelatin, but we can expect bullets that perform poorly in gelatin to have a lower success rate on humans, and bullets that perform well in gelatin are more likely to overcome some of the unpredictable variables encountered in the real world. They provide accurate results, but they’re time consuming to make and they have to be refrigerated until almost immediately before they are used. Firing bullets into the gelatin gave them some idea of what the bullet could do inside a person — in particular, how deep the bullet could penetrate, and the degree to which the bullet might expand or deform. Or this review of the Smith & Wesson Shield 380 EZ. All Rights Reserved. Our testing of this caliber really demonstrates the potential superiority of FMJ loads in small handguns. Because handgun bullets typically travel at relatively low velocity, they possess little to no capacity to induce this phenomenon. 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. 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. This is essentially a way to measure the bullet’s ability to stay in one piece while travelling through barriers and tissue. Both loads exhibited decent expansion with both test guns, but penetration suffered. 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. While this is the most practical way to measure bullet expansion, keep in mind that the numbers can be misleading. With the 4.3-inch barrel of the KelTec PMR30, the .22 Magnum loads gained an additional 135 fps on average. Hornady has announced a Critical Defense load for .327 Magnum, but as of this writing it is not yet available. After some velocity pre-testing, we decided to use these guns anyway because we were seeing a velocity increase of at least 100 fps with the Cheetah (with our gel test loads, the average increase ended up being 129 fps). Only a few loads completely failed to expand on all five shots, and the fragmenting bullets were among the few to fall shy of the FBI’s 12-inch penetration depth minimum. The short version is that we fired five rounds of each load into blocks of Clear Ballistics synthetic gelatin from a distance of 10 feet. If that kind of data analysis gets you excited, then go for it. Update 8/16/2018: Test results for nine .357 Sig loads are now live. 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. 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 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. The heavy clothing test simulates a scenario in which the target is wearing four layers of clothing: two cotton shirts, fleece, and denim. As cool as that looks, it can be misleading. That’s where ballistic gelatin testing comes in. And if you still want more info, you can click on the name of the load to go to its product page where we’ve published a detailed breakdown of the data and a high speed video of that load as it impacts the gel block. At least, relative to the other kinds of ordnance mandkind has invented. When the mere sight of a gun in the hands of a would-be victim doesn’t do the trick, an assailant will frequently give up once fired upon, even if they haven’t sustained any wounds that would immediately force their bodies to shut down involuntarily. Regardless of whether it’s a good idea, if one were to go this route, ammo selection should be based on achieving as much penetration as possible. However, I would instead suggest the .32 H&R Magnum LSWC, which offers adequate penetration and significantly less recoil than any .327 Magnum load. It's time to look at the real-world performance of 9mm and .40 S and W rounds in terms of wound ballistics. No signs of over pressure at all. 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. At the end of the day, it’s really just the study of how and why bullets inflict damage. The 18 inch maximum penetration depth standard makes sense to most people — too much penetration and the bullet can go clean through the target (possibly changing direction slightly before exiting) and onward to harm an unintended target. 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. 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. If you’re looking for a JHP 9×18 Mak load that actually has any serious chance of expanding and penetrating, the only real contender on the market right now is Hornady Critical Defense. Both guns are chambered for .327 Federal Magnum, which means they are also compatible with .32 S&W Long and .32 H&R Magnum. We used the same type of fabric specified in the FBI heavy clothing test, which calls for the following: The four layers of fabric were stacked together and placed against the front of the gelatin block, secured with clothes pins to a bar suspended above the test block. Penetration depth is right in the middle of the zone, great expansion, and … If someone wants to kill you, and the only way to prevent that from happening is to shoot them, a handgun is not the ideal firearm to use — they just happen to be the type of firearm we’re most likely to have immediate access to. Anyone that’s shot both a 10mm and a 9mm round certainly understands that these two cartridges are different. Adequate penetration: The bullet must have the ability to penetrate whatever is between the muzzle and those vital organs in order to disrupt their function — for non-uniformed civilians, this typically includes clothing, tissue, and bone. The size of the pistol also plays an important role. In the photos of the gelatin blocks, you can see lines that appear to be a continuation of the wound channel that extends beyond the resting place of the bullet anywhere from 1/8″ to over 2″. AmmoLand Giveaway – 5,000 Rounds of CCI Blazer 9mm Ammo FREE! I was able to lay my hands on a small number of the controversial Winchester 9mm Black Talons. 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. 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. 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). .25 ACP ammunition is known for its modest penetrating capability and our tests seemed to confirm that. All Rights Reserved. Clear Ballistics gelatin can be melted down and re-used, but we started with a factory-new block for every five-round test. However, even that test showed inconsistent penetration from shot to shot. A Taurus Curve served as the test platform for the 380 ACP. But it should come as no surprise that this is not how gunfights usually go down. © 2009-2020 LuckyGunner, LLC. 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. Medium recoil with no appreciable drop out to 25 yds with max 7” spread. Bullets that expand or tumble will leave a bigger wound cavity than bullets that fail to expand. 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. A four-layer heavy clothing barrier was placed in front of the gel for each test. 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. Its very rare that a company goes that far to make a customer happy, and I was not expecting that at all. But keep in mind, even though the gelatin tests can tell us a lot, there’s plenty of things they don’t tell us. There are a few other basic JHP loads out there for this caliber that are similar to the Silver Bear load, and I would expect them to have the same kind of performance. Update 4/4/2017: We now have test data for 38 revolver loads in .38 Special and .357 Magnum! I’ve become a big fan of the almost-forgotten .32s for reasons I explained in this post. 9mm Luger ballistic test The 9mm Luger, also know as the 9 x 19 Parabellum, was introduced in 1902 by Georg Luger and Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken (DWM) for the German Luger semi automatic sidearm. The Hornady Critical Defense had decent penetration and modest expansion. One commonly used threshold is an expanded diameter at least 1.5 times the original diameter, but that’s far from universal. Bullets fired from handguns do only one thing: poke little holes in stuff. There were several 9mm loads showing adequate penetration with a decent amount of expansion as well. 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. If you’re having a hard time picturing why this would affect the penetration depth necessary to reliably stop an attack, imagine you’ve just been ambushed by a 275 pound dude wielding a baseball bat. The Clear Ballistics synthetic gel has more elastic properties than organic gelatin, so the temporary wounding effects tend to appear more dramatic and aren’t a very good representation of the effects on living tissue. This is … The weight retention capabilities of a self defense round can help a … This usually means the heart or the brain/spine. That brings our total number of loads tested across all pistol calibers to 204 with more to come in the future! Clothing can present a challenge for some hollow point loads because the opening in the bullet can become clogged with clothing material and fail to expand once it reaches living tissue. Like we mentioned back in the introduction, we did not include .380 ACP in this batch of testing because we’ve actually already tested it. All of the JHP loads tested had trouble penetrating at least some of the time. We recommend taking under consideration the measured diameter data and viewing the photos of the expanded bullets for consistency and uniformity. Preparing the Mold Obtain a large plastic storage container. Today on Kentucky Ballistics we perform a ballistic gel test with 9mm, 357 Sig, 10mm and 5.7x28mm. Rifle bullets travel at a much higher velocity and can create temporary wound cavities that tear and disrupt tissue not even touched by the bullet itself (sometimes called “hydrostatic shock”). This is a 9mm Luger ballistics chart (external) generated using our ballistic trajectory calculator. Unlike penetration, there is no widely accepted minimum standard for expansion. And after all of that, the fired bullets are sometimes difficult to see through the cloudy, mud-colored organic gelatin. In reality, the effects of wounds from handguns are unpredictable and often not very dramatic. 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