The Ammo with the best stopping power may not be the best for home defense.

[sirrduke2010]

When you fire a weapon at home you could risk missing the intruder and/or attacker and hit your neighbor or their child. The highest velocity ammo may not be the best for home defense especially if the ammo will go easily through the walls. It is preferable to find loads that if fired will impact and stay within the walls instead of going through. One good example is a 44 Magnum versus a .38 Special or even a .45 ACP and the chances of going through the wall are greater with a hotter round. Of course the kind of bullet makes a difference as well. Full metal jackets have more of a tendency to go through walls whereas soft points, hollow points, etc have a greater tendency to impact and stay within the wall.

Part of any home defense program should be one of selecting the type of ammo that may be used. Liability and the potential for collateral damages will be a result of missing the target and going off into space. If you are shooting big game a .44 Magnum may be superior but if you are defending yourself in your home a .44 Special would be preferable.

 

[papajohn428]

Show me a 44 Special load that won't go through the average wall. Please.

I've been testing bullets for 30 years, and have yet to find a standard cup-and-core bullet that won't easily penetrate two sheets of drywall, a sheet of paneling, and a wad of insulation. Even plaster and lath walls don't offer much resistance. Shotguns with small shot are about the best choice for not perforating walls, but they suck at stopping determined attackers. The quest for the Magic Bullet continues...........

 

[boomer686]

I guess also what type of structure you live in. Out here in Oklahoma there are mostly brick homes so a bullet would have to go thru drywall insulation and then about 6-10 inches of brick to get out, unless it goes thru a window of course. Now if its a mobile home.....

Also, what about noise if its say a .357 and you take a shot at an intruder without notice to others. Might be some hearing lost, but on balance might be a trade off.

 

[APS]

A defensive 38 spec load will go through at least 2 walls (4 layers of drywall).

You have to be careful of where you fire ANY load that has a decent chance of penetrating a perpetrator deeply enough.

I don't think wall over-penetration is why the large bore magnums aren't as popular for home defense against humans. It's because of muzzle blast, recoil for follow up shots, and cost of practice ammunition.

 

[off road]

Uh..... Glaser Safety Slug at Dakota Ammo - COR®BON/Glaser Self Defense and Tactical Gear

 

[Lost Lake]

This is kind of a ridiculous argument. Any round that will penetrate a bad guy will penetrate two layers of drywall. There, it goes through walls.

You load your gun with cotton balls if it makes you feel like Mr. Safety. I'm using a big bullet.

 

[seagill]

My ammo is better than your ammo!

 

[David Sinko]

The compassion in some of these posts gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside but the statistic that interests me most is how many good men have been killed because their intentionally underpowered bullet was properly placed on target but failed to adequately penetrate their assailant.

Dave Sinko

 

[Water-Man]

Better concentrate on stopping the intruder rather than anything else.

 

[raven818]

The hallway to my bedroom, looking from my bedroom, ends right in front of my very large HD T.V..I have never given thought to the projectile going thru the bad guy, but I have thought often of killing my T.V.. I have made the decision to fire anyway, if the need arises..

 

[slumpy]

My tv is in the line of fire also, but it understands now that it will be sacrificed if the need arises.

 

[papajohn428]

Bad guys range from skinny little 115-pound crackheads to 400-pound bikers. You gonna ask him to stand by while you grab the best gun and load for the job? Not me. 45ACP is my starting and ending load, if it's up to me. Overpenetration is a concern, but what's the cure......using a spear?

Marksmanship and tactics, combined with an adequate caliber for the job at hand, will win the day. You can't plan for every possible contingency.

 

[vytoland]

i like 148gr DEWC in my S&W J & K frames.

 

[blujax01]

The hallway to my bedroom, looking from my bedroom, ends right in front of my very large HD T.V..I have never given thought to the projectile going thru the bad guy, but I have thought often of killing my T.V.. I have made the decision to fire anyway, if the need arises..

Funny but true! And a good tactic. Personally, I think we would all be better off if we killed our TV'S!

Negligent discharge should be anticipated. (And any round missing a bad guy could be considered negligent).
The door to my den opens to the hall with a refrigerator on the other side of the facing wall. A round penetrating the wall will be stopped by the fridge.
The door to my bedroom faces the guest room. There are only 3 sheets of drywall and a sheet of stucco'd OSB between it and the neighbors house. This was a problem until I put a book case in the guest room against the subject wall and loaded it up. That should act as an adequate backstop. A shot fired from my wife's office would need to go through 4 walls and a layer of ceramic tile in the bathroom before exiting the house. Good enough? I think (hope) so ...
Tactics are indeed what self defense is all about. Everyone should assess their abode and concoct as many invasion scenarios as they can imagine. You'll never think of all of them, but you can and should prepare to the best of your abilities.

1) Can I defend myself from here? If I can't, how do I get to where I can and how long will it take?

2) If I am forced to discharge my firearm and miss, where will the round end up?

 

[off road]

I haven't seen any statistics, but I wonder how frequent the 'intruder in the house/something goes bump in the night' scenario really is? I live in an area where hot college girls routinely jog down the street at 10:00 at night, so maybe I am sheltered? (But...one should always prepare for the worst!)

 

[imjin138]

I know from personal experience that a 158 grn 357 magnum fired from a 6 inch Trooper went three inner walls a Mr Coffee and the outer walls of a home. A 230 grn hardball 45acp went through 2 inner walls and 1 outer wall into a truck and stopped there.

So pretty much any ammo will have a chance of over penetration.

 

[papajohn428]

I haven't seen any statistics, but I wonder how frequent the 'intruder in the house/something goes bump in the night' scenario really is?

The last figures I saw (maybe a year ago) suggest that Home Invasions are on the rise, and not just by a little. Bad guys seem to be getting more desperate, or bolder, or both. The only treatment I know of for that kind of attitude is an injection of lead, repeated as often as is necessary.

 

[38-44HD45]

Amusing thread. Not sure how many folks have actually tested handgun ammo on building materials, but I have. I had a small house on my property that had once been used for farm hands to stay in, and before I demolished it, I shot a few handgun rounds through it. Everything (save for target wadcutter .38 Special) I shot it with went all the way through the little house and exited, unless it hit a stud, and some passed through studs. The wadcutter went through at least two layers of drywall, after penetrating the wood siding, as I recall, and I think it went through three and lodged in the fourth.

It has been several years, and I don't recall all the rounds I used, but the one I do recall was Cor-Bon 115gr. JHP (a Sierra bullet, lightly constructed), fired from a Browning Hi-Power. I remember it because "conventional wisdom" said that it was the round least likely to overpenetrate building materials, of all I tried. It penetrated thusly: Wood siding, insulation, drywall, drywall, drywall, drywall, drywall, insulation, wood siding. It made a little 9mm-size hole on exit, showing no sign of expansion or fragmentation, and kept on truckin' cross country. (I live way out in the country.) Few substances do as good a job of plugging a JHP as does sheetrock. Once plugged, it behaves like ball.

If you want to avoid building material penetration, the best way is to use the body of the home invader to stop the bullet. Failing that, hot, light JHPs or soft-points in .223/5.56 are the best bet. Any handgun round worth anything for self-defense will penetrate multiple layers of sheetrock. Until you get velocities up over 2000fps. or so, bullets don't break up in sheetrock, except maybe the Glaser variety. I have not tested Glasers on building material.

 

[38-44HD45]

I haven't seen any statistics, but I wonder how frequent the 'intruder in the house/something goes bump in the night' scenario really is? I live in an area where hot college girls routinely jog down the street at 10:00 at night, so maybe I am sheltered? (But...one should always prepare for the worst!)

"...hot college girls..." I think I may want to move to your neighborhood!

 

[edprof]

I've done some of the same kind of planning and prognosticating. If I were defending our bedroom, looking down the hall, the path of a bullet from a 9mm would go through several sheetrocked walls and a brick wall before passing over the heads of my neighbors. We are up on a small rise. As long as I am not aiming down at an intruder, and don't get a bad ricochet, things should be okay. At any rate, I have made a pre-determined shoot decision under certain likely circumstances.