.45ACP FMJ, GEL TESTS, AND OVERPENETRATION.

Roberto Renauld said:
Best self defense load ball 230gr FMJ .45ACP!!!! In my Country it is not legally allowed to use any expanding point bullets for self defense , they are ok only for hunting.
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See if you can get your hands on some Lehigh Defense/Underwood Xtreme Defender or Polycase/Ruger ARX Inceptor ammo. They're solid projectiles which apparently still result in larger diameter wound tracks as a result of hydraulic fluid displacement, and they don't overpenetrate.
 
There is no such thing as over penetration with a straight wall pistol cartridge. Only under penetration. Do you honestly want your attacker to carry around a bullet? That's a recipe for infection. That's downright inhumane and maybe a little masochistic. ;)
 
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Is this a good compromise?

Just bought two boxes of these Winchester USA Ready FMJ Flat Points in order to lessen the chance of pass throughs. My 45 will be used for home defense only. The flat nose creates a sizable meplat less likely to push tissue aside and hit an unintended target. Is my thinking valid? Would like to hear your thoughts.........

RED45 | Winchester Ammunition
 
noshow said:
Just bought two boxes of these Winchester USA Ready FMJ Flat Points in order to lessen the chance of pass throughs. My 45 will be used for home defense only. The flat nose creates a sizable meplat less likely to push tissue aside and hit an unintended target. Is my thinking valid? Would like to hear your thoughts.........

RED45 | Winchester Ammunition
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No. If you want to lessen the chance of pass throughs, use a good hollowpoint, like HST, Gold Dot, Winchester Ranger, etc. The rounds you bought would make for good range ammo, as it says in the product description.
 
I personally always liked something with good penetration for defense. People worry about the round passing through and hitting an innocent bystander but your probably going to miss your target at least once anyway. Statistically I think the chances are over 90% one or more of the rounds in a gunfight will miss. Here's a "what if" scenario for grins and giggles. There are two perps and you kill one and the other guy grabs him and uses him for a human shield. He's got you cold if your bullets won't penetrate through his shield:)
 
I do have HPs for my .45s for carry but generally if I only had FMJ / hardball available I wouldn't be overly worried about it. Standard .45 ACP running about 830 fps is not exactly a lightspeed laser. Nice big holes either way. Over penetration is not high on my list of concerns. Like the old saying 'They all fall to Hardball'.
 
Farmer17 said:
I personally always liked something with good penetration for defense. People worry about the round passing through and hitting an innocent bystander but your probably going to miss your target at least once anyway. Statistically I think the chances are over 90% one or more of the rounds in a gunfight will miss. Here's a "what if" scenario for grins and giggles. There are two perps and you kill one and the other guy grabs him and uses him for a human shield. He's got you cold if your bullets won't penetrate through his shield:)
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In other words, we should all throw caution to the wind and carry FMJ regardless of the risk of collateral damage because we might miss and cause collateral damage anyway and because a thug might try to use an accomplice as a human shield?

Honestly, really think about what you just said. Because the possibility of error exists, there's no reason to attempt to avoid or prevent it from occurring?
Right, well... Good luck with that. As for me, I'll just continue using JHPs because in the event in which collateral damage should occur as a result of discharging my firearm in self-defense, I would like to be able to tell the jury, my conscience, and eventually Saint Peter that I did everything in my power to prevent it from happening. To do anything less would make me negligent, irresponsible, selfish, and a terrible person in general.

As for the whole human shield scenario, I suppose I'd just do the sensible thing and shoot the guy in any exposed area, such as the arm he has wrapped around his human shield or any other part of his body which remains exposed from behind his shield.
 
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Lucky gunner has some good ballistic tests on hp that did not expand. It’s reasonable to assume FMJ will behave similarly.
 
RoyOdhner said:
I keep hearing that .45ACP FMJ is a bad idea for self-defense due to over-penetration issues. However, I've never actually seen gel testing to support this.

Considering that .45ACP FMJ dispatched many an amped-up native warrior in the Philippines, cleaned numerous trenches in WWI, kicked butt across multiple continents in WWII, dropped innumerable commies in Korea and Vietnam, and stopped a multitude of other nefarious characters in a multitude of other conflicts are there any actual gel tests out there to show that over-penetration is actually all that big a concern? Or is is all just speculation based on 9x17, 9x18, and 9x19 gel testing results?
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As an addendum to the Phillipine stopping problems, I came across a couple of contemporary After Action Reports written after the Phillipine Insurrection by ordnance officers stating that the .45 caliber rounds performed similar to, or marginally better than the .38 rounds against the tribesmen not drugged up.
When dealing with the occaisional tribesman on drugs, the only weapons that would put them down most of the time with solid hits were the Krags, trapdoors, and 12 gauge shotguns loaded with buckshot or slugs at very close range.
This part of the story is almost never mentioned.
And I say this as a huge .45 fan.
 
That's the trick with handgun cartridges, barring maybe the most powerful magnum handgun cartridges which hit with upwards of 2500ft-lbs of energy, they cannot drop an attacker with 100% certainty unless they score a direct hit to the Central Nervous System. In fact, the only times that an attacker does stop without being hit in the CNS is because he dicided to, which makes up the vast majority of self-defense shootings, hence why I've often stated that psychological stops are underrated, and criticize the folks who are constantly cherry-picking reports of the freak occurrences in which somebody tanked dozens of shots to push their agenda as if these headline-worthy reports are in any way common.

In fact, that's actually most-likely why bigger, more powerful cartridges have developed the amount of anecdotal evidence to support their superiority in the field in the past which has since been narrowed down. Because obviously the loud report and blinding muzzle flash of a .357 Magnum is far more intimidating than that of a traditional 115gr 9mm Luger load, but nowadays Law Enforcement is carrying 124-147gr +P+ which is more intimidating.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those people who believes that there's no benefit whatsoever to carrying a .40 or a .45 over a 9mm because they're all completely equal but 9mm recoils less and holds more ammo in the magazine. Any hunter can tell you that bigger, heavier bullets tend to do more damage to bone, so that's a tangible benefit. The point is that none of them are going to stop a fight without hitting them somewhere that either resultes in paralysis or instant death, and that includes darlings like .357 Magnum and 10mm Auto, unless they just plain decided to surrender/flee/play dead.
 
I handled an investigation of a shooting done by a neighboring PD. At that time their city leaders mandated only FMJ to be carried by their LEOs. It was one of the easiest shootings I have done.
One of their Sgts who was also a range officer and on their SWAT carried a Glock 21 with the 230 gr FMJ. One night one of their patrolmen makes a stop and everyone in the car bails. The patrolman found a loaded gun left in the car. The Sgt was responding when he saw a male running across a street a few blocks away. The Sgt gave chase on foot. As he was chasing the guy the Sgt was on his radio giving his location and description. As he was talking the male ran around a house. The Sgt ran around the corner of the house and just a few feet away there stood the male pointing a 9mm at him. The male fired 1 rd and the Sgt almost simultaneously fired 8 rds from his Glock 21. We had it all on tape as the Sgt had his mic keyed. The Sgt's 8 rds were as fast as he could work the trigger and took a bit of tech work to slow the tape down so we could get an accurate round count. Of the 8 rds the Sgt fired 5 hit the male. We were only able to recover 1 bullet. 4 of the 5 rds went thru the male in his torso area. The bullet we recovered hit the male as he was falling backwards. It entered his pelvis on the right side, clipped his hip bone, continued up thru this body cavity and came to rest just under the skin at his collar bone near his neck. Penetration thru his body was about 30".
 
smoothshooter said:
As an addendum to the Phillipine stopping problems, I came across a couple of contemporary After Action Reports written after the Phillipine Insurrection by ordnance officers stating that the .45 caliber rounds performed similar to, or marginally better than the .38 rounds against the tribesmen not drugged up.

When dealing with the occaisional tribesman on drugs, the only weapons that would put them down most of the time with solid hits were the Krags, trapdoors, and 12 gauge shotguns loaded with buckshot or slugs at very close range.
This part of the story is almost never mentioned.
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That information is never mentioned in all of the material I have read over the years. Thanks for posting it. I have always suspected that the Army dropped the subject because they found there wasn't much difference between the two cartridges. The troops at least got a morale boost by re issue of the larger caliber cartridge. Even if there were more complaints, there was not much more that could be done other than design wadcutter or hollow cavity bullets similar to the ones issued by the British Army for their .455 revolvers. One thing is certain, the U.S. Army was not going to develop a .50 caliber pistol cartridge to please any bigger bullet advocates.
 
Arguing with the old timer "harball drops 'em all" mentality is a waste of time. They've made their choice, let them deal with it if/when they get over penetration.

FMJ in anything larger than 380 ACP is questionable at best.
 
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