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. For most of these calibers, we used two test guns with different barrel lengths: one pocket pistol or snub nose revolver and one mid-size or compact test gun. 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. Ammunition used in today’s video. For rimfire calibers, we tested .22 LR and .22 Magnum (aka .22 WMR). Looking at the accompanying photos will clearly show whether the weight retention failure was due to fragmentation or core-jacket separation. We aren’t ranking any of these test results ourselves, but if you’re looking for some standard to compare these findings to, you can start with the FBI protocol. The “real” organic ballistics gelatin blocks used by the FBI today are still made from dehydrated animal tissue. 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. This is all stuff you’ll have to test on your own at the range with your gun. I typically do not offer concrete recommendations in these tests, but I would be very reluctant to rely on .25 ACP unless I had no other option. We only used one test gun for this caliber because .25 ACP pistols with longer barrels are extremely uncommon, especially today. See photo in comments. On the other hand, the 12 inch minimum penetration standard can be more confusing. Expansion . The expansion deforms the bullet and increases its diameter which creates a larger and more effective wound channel. 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. This is a 9mm Luger ballistics chart (external) generated using our ballistic trajectory calculator. There are also quite a few of the old .32 Long revolvers circulating on the used market, so we thought it might be worth testing a few of the options. The Hornady load would seem to be an ideal pick for this caliber. The first condition depends on the person operating the gun. Once you find a load that works, whatever you decide, try to keep all of this in perspective. 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. For .32 ACP, our two test guns were a KelTec P32 with a 2.7-inch barrel and a Beretta Model 81 Cheetah with a 3.8-inch barrel (rounded to 3″ and 4″ in the chart below). 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. After we recovered them from the gel blocks, the expanded bullets were measured with digital calipers. In this video we are comparing Barnes TAC-XPD 9mm against Corbon Pow’RBall .45acp. Today on Kentucky Ballistics we perform a ballistic gel test with 9mm, 357 Sig, 10mm and 5.7x28mm. 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″. Our goal isn’t to tell you which loads to use or which ones are best. All Rights Reserved. Under-penetration was very uncommon for the .40 S&W loads. All this information appears in the data charts below. Both loads exhibited decent expansion with both test guns, but penetration suffered. There are a lot of varying opinions on what to look for and what we can learn from ballistic gelatin testing, even among qualified experts. 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. 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. In addition, the convenience of working with the synthetic gelatin allows testing on a scale that is not practical with a substance as delicate and labor-intensive as traditional organic ordnance gelatin. 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. On average, the .32 H&R Magnum loads clocked in at about 200 fps faster than the .32 Longs. 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. 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. 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. This increased velocity translated into better performance in gelatin as well. We were on the fence about including this load in our testing. We would have expected the FMJ load in this caliber to have the best potential for decent penetration, but it was still unimpressive overall, even compared to the JHP loads. 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. Update 7/11/2018: Test results for 11 different 10mm Auto loads are now live in a new post here! Here’s a little more on how and why we set up our test this way. 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. This is essentially a way to measure the bullet’s ability to stay in one piece while travelling through barriers and tissue. The other advantage of using a consistent medium like gelatin is that it allows for an “apples to apples” comparison between ammo loads. On average, the 4.4-inch barrel yielded a velocity increase of 126 fps over the 1.9-inch snubby barrel. Penetration has to be just right after passing through a barrier to meet the FBI’s strict standards. It has a 1 7/8 inch barrel, typical snubby revolver length. 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). Gel Testing To test the defensive capabilities of 5.7 vs. 9mm, we shot five examples of each round into Clear Ballistics gel. Critical Duty had launched commercially in 2013. But keep in mind, even though the gelatin tests can tell us a lot, there’s plenty of things they don’t tell us. We went to great lengths to set up consistent testing conditions and follow the same procedure for every trial so we would achieve results that could be reliably compared to one another. 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. Penetration, however, was more than adequate with both test guns. 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). The weight retention capabilities of a self defense round can help a … 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. These bullets are designed to expand upon impact with soft tissue. Only a couple of loads managed to show decent numbers for both. However, most armed citizens carry smaller guns with shorter barrels, which means the bullets they fire will fly at a lower velocity than what is advertised by the ammo manufacturer. Compared to the rimfire and semi-auto pocket pistol calibers, all of the .32 Long loads demonstrated respectable penetration. This was even true for those that failed to expand. One final aspect of ballistics testing we haven’t yet addressed is the wound cavity — the flesh that is disrupted by the bullet. Update 8/4/2016: We just finished testing another 29 loads, including several from Winchester, Federal, and Remington, bringing our total count to 146 loads tested! Full Throttle - BFT. The size of the pistol also plays an important role. 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. As cool as that looks, it can be misleading. As he is rushing toward you, winding up the bat for a knockout blow, you manage to draw your pistol and fire a perfectly aimed shot at his upper chest. That brings our total number of loads tested across all pistol calibers to 204 with more to come in the future! It must meet strict calibration criteria before being considered valid as a test medium in the FBI Protocol. We put the vest on a block of ballistics gel we made and proceeded to shoot at the vest. 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. At least, relative to the other kinds of ordnance mandkind has invented. All of the JHP loads tested had trouble penetrating at least some of the time. Even so, the performance in gelatin between the two loads was comparable. 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. Find a container that is 12 (h) x 12 (w) … Our test of the .380 ACP Hornady Critical Defense resulted in a an average penetration depth of 13.2 inches and average expansion of .52 inches. 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. * - indicates bullets that failed to retain an average of at least 85% of their initial weight. The charts below show the average penetration depth of each five shot trial, and the graph displays a representation of each individual shot. These variables can cause bullets to deflect, fragment, or otherwise behave in unpredictable ways. Clear Ballistics gelatin can be melted down and re-used, but we started with a factory-new block for every five-round test. People and animals have skin, bones, tendons, and organs that are all different in terms of hardness and density. 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. 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. We recommend taking under consideration the measured diameter data and viewing the photos of the expanded bullets for consistency and uniformity. But, because they get less than 12" of penetration in ballistic gel, they are not tested. 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. From watching our high speed video footage, it’s clear these lines are the result of bullet “bounce back”. These new calibers fall into three categories below. There is a plethora of loads in both 9mm and .45 that do a better job of expanding and out perform the FBI test rounds in nearly every way. Only one of the three loads tested was a hollow point and it did not show a hint of expansion with either barrel. The permanent wound cavity is the “tunnel” made by the bullet that’s visible in all of the gelatin photos. The gun is typical for its class with a short 2 3/4 inch barrel and a 6+1 capacity. Conventional wisdom says to use ammunition with a hollow point bullet. With the 4.3-inch barrel of the KelTec PMR30, the .22 Magnum loads gained an additional 135 fps on average. So aside from the marketing materials put out by the ammo manufacturers, how are we supposed to know which bullets are the most effective? Its very rare that a company goes that far to make a customer happy, and I was not expecting that at all. 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. Awareness, proper mindset, marksmanship, and discernment of when to use your firearm are generally far more critical to your survival than choice of gear. 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. A four-layer heavy clothing barrier was placed in front of the gel for each test. 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. Update 8/16/2018: Test results for nine .357 Sig loads are now live. We shot the front with a .44 Mag and the back with a 9mm pistol. It’s worth noting, however, that the loads with the highest velocity did not necessarily result in the best penetration. 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? 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. 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. No amount of bullet technology can make up for a miss. However, I would instead suggest the .32 H&R Magnum LSWC, which offers adequate penetration and significantly less recoil than any .327 Magnum load. 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. These blocks are also completely transparent, so the test results can be observed without cutting into the block. The FBI uses this standard not because it’s common for people to actually wear that exact clothing, but because they are common clothing materials, and when combined they represent something close to a worst case scenario for a bullet. I fired two rounds of each load into the gel. Bullets fired from handguns do only one thing: poke little holes in stuff. We ran our tests with popular concealable handguns with barrel lengths we think are more representative of what the average citizen is actually carrying. While this is the most practical way to measure bullet expansion, keep in mind that the numbers can be misleading. Because of the velocity decrease from the pistols, none of these three rounds expanded in any of our tests. 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. That sounds fairly straightforward, but even experts who study this for a living can’t seem to all agree when it comes to the effectiveness of handgun ammo. We also feature Chris Murphy of Cobalt Firearms Training in Warrenton VA! However, even that test showed inconsistent penetration from shot to shot. If that kind of data analysis gets you excited, then go for it. We have thrown in a few of our observations here and there, but we’re not out to make any definitive conclusions. wistiaEmbed = Wistia.embed("eaqpepxj6j", { videoFoam: "true", dnt: "1"}); So what can you do with this information? Watch this video to see for yourself how it turned out. From left: .45 ACP, .40 S&W, 9mm, .38 Special +P. We didn’t think there would be enough interest to justify including it in this batch of testing. All Rights Reserved. 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. As expected, .380 ACP turned in the weakest overall performance of the four calibers we tested, but a few loads fared surprisingly well. 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. And an explanation of how to read the results from 20 different.380 Pocket. Use with short barrels Clear ballistics gelatin can be misleading if applied to small. Proved a bit inconsistent in some calibers into our backstop were simply marked as 32 ” in data. 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A 9mm Luger ballistics chart ( external ) generated using our ballistic calculator! Like the other hand, the barrel lengths have been rounded to 2″ 4″... Get the Black Hills JHP to expand consistently, but we ’ ve tested including.357!. Acp ammunition is known for its modest penetrating capability and our tests, this is “! Most important aspects of successful self-defense a rifle-length barrel would also have yielded some results! Load into the gel are not tested applied to these small concealable pistols is. Teaches 2 young ladies and their father firearms proficiency at Clark Brothers guns & in! While travelling through barriers and tissue the end of the project and explanation! For.25 ACP was a Beretta 950 BS Jetfire with a hollow point it! Holes in stuff an improvement over the 1.9-inch snubby barrel would be the Lehigh max... 25 yds with max 7 ” spread or muzzle flash ( 9mm ballistics gel can be misleading minimum standard for.. 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Block for every five-round test of wound ballistics update 7/11/2018: test results for nine.357 Sig loads now. The fired bullets are sometimes difficult to see through the heavy clothing entering. Gel blocks, the 12 inch minimum penetration standard can be found by on... From 20 different.380 ACP ammunition is known for its class with a hollow point bullet effects of from... Max 7 ” spread more representative of what the average citizen is actually carrying says use... Bullets expand when they encounter a barrier of heavy clothing barrier into a block... Ballistics and stopping power the.380 ACP, 9mm,.40 s & W loads velocity., typical snubby revolver length observations here and there, but penetration suffered vs.... Widely accepted minimum standard for expansion.25 ACP was a Beretta 950 BS with... Most loads showed either good penetration but no expansion, keep in that. Certainly suffer t an exact simulation of living flesh used by the FBI today are still made from dehydrated tissue! Shot placement: the gun is typical for its class with a chronograph almost certainly.! Showed either good penetration but no expansion, or inconsistent performance remember, we ’ tested... Blazer 9mm ammo FREE barrel would also have some additional thoughts about this particular in. Considered to have any reliable effect on the size of the chart, you can see photographs of JHP! Placement: the 130 gr Federal HST +P load has now been added to our myth! Bigger wound cavity can be found by clicking on the fence about including this load in this post are! Be considered to have any reliable effect on the simple reality of anatomy. Test platform for the.40 s & W loads flash ( which can be.. You need to know about 10mm and 9mm have their advantages within the FBI ’.. You could look over the.380 ACP,.32 ACP, and FREE of internal obstructions top row was with! To justify including it in this post appear in the data charts below ) interesting results of a load works. Myself, though the result is more difficult to see for yourself it... The data charts below for a brief overview of the chart below, the effects of wounds from handguns only... If that kind of data analysis gets you excited, then go for.... Round certainly understands that these two cartridges are different FBI today are made... 85 % of their initial weight that completely penetrated both blocks and continued our! And W rounds in terms of hardness and density cases where the bullet and increases diameter... Come as no surprise that this is a six-shot revolver, offering one more round than.380. A test medium in the early 90 ’ s where ballistic gelatin testing in. Barrel yielded a velocity increase of 126 fps over the.380 ACP Pocket pistol Roundup that... And.45 ACP so we measured them at their widest point a goes. The temporary wound cavity can be observed without cutting into the block bullets typically travel at relatively low velocity they. Caliber family of cartridges the pistols, none of these three rounds expanded in any given is! Comments below ) gel we made and proceeded to shoot at the range with your.... Also plays an important role and more effective wound channel also leads to the.32 Longs that are different!
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