Wall Penetration Testing: 9mm, 223/556, 300 Blk, and a little 12 Gauge.

[SA Friday]

Firemoth (Rob) and I did some wall penetration tests about a week ago and filmed it. The videos give the basic results. I have the 9mm, 300 Blk, and 12 Gauge results packaged and published on YouTube. The 223/556 is going to take a little longer. The wind was awful and as the day got later, the wind got worse. The 223/556 footage is all the later testing and the sound in the video is almost impossible to hear. I'm going to have to figure out how to do voice over and then I'll publish it. I'll probably spreadsheet the number I have on the results.

In a nutshell, you can just assume anything you shoot is going though three inner walls and very likely leaving the house. Vmax rifle bullets in 223/556 and even 300 Blk seemed to deplete their momentum faster as they shed pieces fairly fast. I'm fairly convinced that high velocity and bullet design that allows fragmentation is the best way to minimize potential collateral damage. It's a trade off though. Go too far with the fragmentation and the round loses the ability to penetrate flesh.

Anyway, it's been a long time since I did any testing or write-ups etc, so here are the links

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaabg9tCF48

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADtVzOPr0a8

I'll post part three in this thread when it's done.

[hatidua]

In a nutshell, you can just assume anything you shoot is going though three inner walls and very likely leaving the house.

+1

I witnessed a similar test a few years ago and the notion that .223/5.56 magically stops or tumbles when it hits the first panel of sheetrock is parroted all too often.

[Irving]

I probably still have a few pictures of a .45 ball going out of one house, into the next house, through one interior wall, then finally stopping inside a bathroom cabinet. The round went through an upstairs bedroom, right over the dog's bed.

[SA Friday]

Here is the 223/556 video. This is where bullet design combined with high enough velocity starts to show interesting results.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpYTkq1o6I8

[SA Friday]

What about using frangible ammo? Is that even still a thing...


Yes and no... I think it's feasible with a rifle round. Pretty sure it's a losing proposition with a pistol bullet. I am interested in a few other types of bullets that I will probably test in the future. The Hornady critical defense 223 round looks a lot like a fancy Vmax with the polymer tip blunted. I might try some 75gr TAP in the future too. It's just difficult to find and pay for the various ammo. I raided mine, Mike's, Rob's, and one of our regular customer's ammo stashes and still ended up ordering about $100 worth of ammo for the testing.

[SA Friday]

Oops, Sorry wyome. I tried to delete your double post and it took both out. My Mod skills are awful...

[SSChameleon]

Some retired guys did a video called box of truth a few years back shooting at drywall and brick panels. The round that did the best was a 357 hollowpoint, which follows your finding of a high velocity round that fragments easily (or in this case of the 357 mushrooms/deforms easily).

[SA Friday]

Some retired guys did a video called box of truth a few years back shooting at drywall and brick panels. The round that did the best was a 357 hollowpoint, which follows your finding of a high velocity round that fragments easily (or in this case of the 357 mushrooms/deforms easily).

There are a few decent videos on Youtube on this topic. Box-of-Truth if I remember correctly was his own web site. What really spawned testing was I wanted to see two things; I wanted to do a basic comparison of pistol vs rifle vs shotgun and which hand any advantage mitigating penetration on a missed shot. Second was I wanted to see 300 Blackout results. There weren't any out there to point to and it the basic number for momentum were pointing toward it penetrating more than the rest. It pretty much did.

To the first point, the AR with 223 rounds that fragmented resulted in mitigating the potential danger of shooting through walls. One can tell people this, but having video to point to and prove it is golden.

[Joe_K]

https://youtu.be/PbdmQ5IN2j0


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[mattiooo]

Honest question and not criticism - would all the space between walls in a real house have changed the results of the test? I can certainly appreciate why you did the test the way you did.

[SA Friday]

Honest question and not criticism - would all the space between walls in a real house have changed the results of the test? I can certainly appreciate why you did the test the way you did.
I talk about that in the 223/556 video. I think it actually could be a factor to some extent in the Vmax bullets since they are fragmenting. The projectiles that didn't frag? Na.... I am thinking about doing some more testing with larger pieces more spread out to see what I can see.

[SA Friday]

https://youtu.be/PbdmQ5IN2j0


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Caught you on the youtube convo..

[Joe_K]

Caught you on the youtube convo..

Back at you, good stuff man.

In my experience walls separated normal distances will only serve to deviate a projectile from off of a straight course to God only knows.

So basically safety and liability issues are compounded by errant misses. Even if you have a “good” angle i.e. directly behind the home invader there is nothing you love, or mind paying for, then the bad guy moves, you flinch low and left etc, now that miss is hitting stuff, passing through rooms, deviating off of a straight path and hitting, as the Mohammedans would say “Inshallah”.

Bottom line? Don’t miss. That and Shotguns are stupid. Except for shooting clays, birds, Bears with slugs, or busting down doors.

IMO a good selection for test ammo would be a control, for rifles say 5.56x45mm M193 55gr, handguns 9x19 NATO 124gr ball, or Federal .40 S&W 165gr ball then compare against what the FBI HRT, Denver PD SWAT, NYPD SWAT, OCSD SWAT, LAPD SWAT etc. are using. For room entries you will have the same, if not more, considerations for finding the balance of lethality and over penetration.


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[SA Friday]

So, I did two basic charts on the data and it's pretty clear 15 boards is the cutoff. 16 is the average but only because a couple rounds shot through a small neighborhood's worth of boards. Of all the test firearms, there was little deviation between 9, 223, 300, and 12 Gauge with basic rounds. 15 boards or more. The ARX and Vmax bullets penetrated below the 15 board numerical mean. They have very high velocity and fragmenting bullets in common.

So, for a different perspective, I calculated how much power factor (PF) per board for each shot also. (Power factor is used in a lot of competition sports to compare and separate ammo based on their momentum, and therefore their recoil.) It is an interesting way to compare how efficiently the bullet itself was shedding momentum through the boards. I omitted the shotgun and one of the 300 blackout bullets from the review. The shotgun numbers just didn't correlate as they simply operated differently. The 200gr FMJ 300 Blk round was stopped by a 2x4 and so the numbers were skewed and it was obvious in this analysis. The PF/B Showed anything from 8.5 to 10.5 was fairly normal. Below 8.5 was very inefficient, the 300 Blk 205 Gorilla and the bi-metal bullets fell into this category. The efficient bullets, over 10.5, were the three Vmax bullets tested. Kind of an interesting way of looking at the bullet construction and how it influenced the testing.

[Irving]

Would you mind expanding on how power factor translates into efficiency, and also how you were able to arrive at a power per board figure?

[izzy]

I'm curious about how much of a difference insulation between the walls would make. I suspect it'd make quite a difference. Cool videos!

[Irving]

I think that several layers would, but most interior walls aren't insulated. Houses will also have some sort of siding as well. Most common is hardiboard, vinyl, aluminum, steel, stucco or a brick veneer. I'd suspect the vinyl and aluminum to have the least effect, maybe even the same amount as that batt insulation.

[izzy]

Makes sense. Like previous posts, not trying to criticize just curious.

[Jeffrey Lebowski]

Cool project & info. [Beer]



Edit: I'm mostly interested in the G19, and that is FAR more penetration than I'd expected.

[SA Friday]

Would you mind expanding on how power factor translates into efficiency, and also how you were able to arrive at a power per board figure?
Sure. Power factor is mass times velocity and then divided by 1000 to make the number more manageable. It's basically a numerically stunted version of momentum (originally mass times velocity -->grains feet per second, which is awkward at best). Then I took the power factor and divided it by the number of boards the round penetrated. This gives you how much momentum the bullet lost per board on average. Obviously the earlier boards probably reduced momentum more than the later boards, but for a general comparative analysis, this was easy enough.

[SA Friday]

Cool project & info. [Beer]



Edit: I'm mostly interested in the G19, and that is FAR more penetration than I'd expected.

One of the BIG take-aways from all of this so far is; in general, pistol, PCC, SBR, rifle, shotgun.... 15 boards of penetration or more. So, if they are all penetrating about the same or slightly more, without trying to mitigate collateral damage from a miss by switching ammo to specialized bullets, why choose anything but the rifle? Even after the tests, the rifle was easier to mitigate damage with by choosing a Vmax bullet, why use the other gun platforms for home defense? I get rifle damage on a person and can still optimize the potential for collateral damage all from an AR-15. It gives me more rounds, easier aiming, better control, and better ammo. I'm carrying a lot of 40 and 55gr Vmax bullets in mags now, I'll tell you that for free.

[Irving]

Thanks for requested break down, and entire test overall.

[Jeffrey Lebowski]

One of the BIG take-aways from all of this so far is; in general, pistol, PCC, SBR, rifle, shotgun.... 15 boards of penetration or more. So, if they are all penetrating about the same or slightly more, without trying to mitigate collateral damage from a miss by switching ammo to specialized bullets, why choose anything but the rifle? Even after the tests, the rifle was easier to mitigate damage with by choosing a Vmax bullet, why use the other gun platforms for home defense? I get rifle damage on a person and can still optimize the potential for collateral damage all from an AR-15. It gives me more rounds, easier aiming, better control, and better ammo. I'm carrying a lot of 40 and 55gr Vmax bullets in mags now, I'll tell you that for free.

Yep, I think that is a very reasonable conclusion.
I’ve thought similarly for a while when I saw a website making a case for the AR in home defense - and it came back to aiming and control largely. The thrust of the article was basically how the shotgun was a horrible choice.

I’ve thought that for a while, and all that Joe Biden shotgun and “shoot through the door” stuff was a total head-shaker. I’m really going to leave that to my 130lb wife? C’mon. I like shooting clays, but c’mon.

-But to your question, why choose anything else? For me personally, it is because I have a toddler so as much as I love ARs (and even more the AR builds), they are locked in the basement. And far and away most of my range time is the G19. But under other circumstances I agree completely with your findings.

Super interesting stuff. Great work.