I live in a neighborhood where houses are kind of close, and there are alot of young kids around, not to mention my inside walls are all made of panelling, and there's no drywall.

That being said, I have a 9mm m&p full size and am not sure what the best home defense round might be. Should I only be looking at 115 grain rounds? Is 124 too much? Should I consider anything with +p+?

Heaven forbid anything actually happen, but if it did, I don't want rounds going through other house or anything like that.

Please help!

Don't know enough about your lanes of fire, or what is behind them. One or two story house? If two. does everyone sleep upstairs? Lots of factors.

If in a single level house, with close neighbors, I would likely go with Glasers--if they will work in your gun.

A revolver always works with Glasers, so it might be a solution. Or a shotgun with trap loads.

You may have to get or make samples of your walls and see what will or will not go thru them.

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the world is round everywhere

Bullets penetrate drywall,paneling and siding fairly easily.Hollow points or traploads would be safer.

Never heard of not requiring dry wall. Must be an older house - isn't there drywall required by law for fire retardation?

You might want to consider a shotgun with heavy bird shot in your particular situation. Not that bird shot is the best man stopper, but at close quarters it should still be effect live and probably be safer than a bullet.

Chief38

Just me and the dog, and the occasional girl in a small house from the 50's.

One story. With neighbors only on one side.

I know just about anything is going go through the walls, I just wanna make sure I'm not gonna be shooting someone in the kitchen next door.

I also know I'll need some sort of hollow point. Just need some advise on which ones would be best for my situation.

Just about anything will penetrate interior walls, from .22LR up. The question becomes: Are you not going to pull the trigger to defend your life for fear of where the bullet may go? If so, consider resorting to a ball bat.

Anything that's going to inflict lethal damage is going to perforate most wall paneling. Multiple barriers decrease the chances of peforation but cannot completely eliminate it. So, don't fixate on ammunition specifications and I'd avoid +P+ like the plague. 115 gr JHP would probably be your best bet.

Your best choice is to determine where the rounds could reach your nearest neighbor and find a way to inconspicuously mark the no-fire lane(s). After that, practice, practice, practice so you minimize your chances of missing your target.

Without knowing the exact performance of all 9MM’s available to you, I think it’s safe to say the lighter the bullet the better. Obviously hollow points only.

There are 115/90 Grn hollow point rounds. Seems like a good choice to me.
The already mentioned Glasers would be very good, but they are so expensive as to be ruled out for me. Corbon has a 90 Grn load.
Or the already mentioned shotgun with birdshot, if over penetration out ways terminal ballistics.

My go to home defense firearm is an AR15 with 55 Grn M193, due to its effective terminal ballistics and its lack of over penetration.

Emory

Fine point.

Glasers are expensive but most quality "self defense" ammo is. Since a Glaser has a FMJ profile, you don't need to run 200 rounds of it through your gun to make sure it works.

In the heat of the moment, the last thing that you want to be worrying about is "will my shot kill my neighbor." We do preach that you need to know what is beyond your backstop and the time to think about that is before you shoot.

Mas Ayoob once said that you shouldn't worry about whether your home defense ammo will penetrate walls because you should have planned your fields of fire. "Excuse me Mr. Intruder, would you mind standing over here so I can shoot you without endangering my neighbors." Yeah, sure.

About 30 years ago a gun magazine did some tests with various defensive loads and found that most handgun ammo would still be very leathal after penetrating two layers of sheetrock, they even put fiberglass insulation in the wall but that didn't slow anything down appreciably.

They used 20 feet as their test distance assuming that rooms much larger than 20 feet are unusual in the average home. At 20 feet the wad from a 12 ga. shotgun shell would penetrate the sheetrock and the shot would go through both sheets of sheetrock and still go through plywood.

I still have the magazine somewhere but if my memory is working, the conclusion was that a 20 ga. with #4 birdshot offered the least amount of danger to people in the next room but still put a large enough dose of lead in a small area to do some serious damage to an intruder.

One good point that came from the article was that shotguns do not blast walls away at a range of 20 feet. The spread of shot is negligible at that range. There is a pervasive myth that you just have to point a shotgun in the general direction of your target and you'll hit it. Not true at all.

Having used a statistically significant number of Glasers to put down various animals, I developed a distinct dislike for it. While the theory is great, the lack of penetration, to include an intervening limb of the body, is significantly less so. I had one break up on a tooth of a charging feral dog.

I'll also point out that the point of impact is definately different than point of aim, even at comparatively close ranges.

I'm also aware of at least one incident where a .38 Spl Glaser completely perforated both sheets of drywall between two apartments and finally lodged in a third wall. Fortunately, with no injuries.