| Jeff Higgins |
03-05-2011 06:39 PM |
The Myth of "Over Penetration"
No, you perverts, not that kind - we're talking firearms here. I started out posting this as a reply on another thread, but it started to take on a life of its own, so I figured I would give it a life or its own. Anyway...
"Over penetration" has got to be the most over used term of all time in the defensive handgunning world. I would be surprised to learn of a documented case where a handgun bullet went through the bad guy and went on to injure anyone else in a self defense shooting. I believe the chances of this actually happening are effectively zero.
In sharp contrast, there are far too many documented cases of failures to penetrate sufficiently to stop the fight. Too many good guys have lost their lives over this one. Over no more than marketing hype and disinformation.
"Over penetration" is no more than a bull shyte myth perpetrated by the ammo manufacturers and their cheerleaders in the gun press. It's marketing, pure and simple, directed at the less than savvy ammo buying public. They understand most folks will never shoot anything more threatening than a piece of target paper or a pop can, so they will never get to (or have to) see for themselves just how well their chosen brand of designer ammo performs on live targets.
Bottom line is, there is no such thing as too much penetration. The idea that a bullet design can somehow be matched to its intended cartridge to provide just the right amount of penetration, not too much now (but at the same time not too little), and somehow be made to stop when it reaches the vitals (but not before) is laughable. There are simply far too many variables. Size and weight of your adversary, what they are wearing, what angle you hit them from, and more all conspire to make it impossible to predict just how much penetration is "enough" vs. how much is "too much".
Add to that the fact that any particular designer hollowpoint is more than likely loaded in a number of cartridges that share the same bullet diameter and launch them at widely varying velocities (.38 Special and .357 Magnum, for example). How can the same bullet possibly perform to the same level of "ideal" penetration when one cartridge starts it at 800 fps, and the other starts it at 1,300 fps? They simply cannot.
In light of all of this, it is never a mistake to load up with ammo that provides maximum penetration for the caliber in question. This usually means the heaviest bullet the caliber will handle. It never means hollow points, no matter how pretty the mushroomed bullet in that ad may look, or how nasty the "wound channel" looks in ballistic gelatin. Neither represents real world bullet performance. It's all directed at the vast market comprised of shooters that will never never gain any first hand experience, nor be likely to meet anyone who has.
Like I've mentioned in other threads, I have never shot a human being and hope to God I never will. I have, however, long since lost track of how many game and non-game animals I've shot. Most with rifles, of course, but dozens and dozens with hand guns as well. A good number of those animals are about our size, some smaller, some much bigger. I've tried hollow points of various pedigrees, every one of which was touted as the "latest and greatest" of the time. Damn near every one of them failed to penetrate sufficiently to put the animal down quickly. Even .357 and .44 mags loaded to the gills, even on critters as small as coyotes. At least these kinds of animals run off when hit (some of them for miles...), so I was never put in danger by any of those failures. But, I'm here to tell you - I have seen some pretty heavily loaded hollowpoints from magnum revolvers simply go "splat" on the sides of mule deer, coyotes, pronghorns, and such, providing no more than an inch or two of "penetration".
In sharp contrast, the ones I hit with non-expanding bullets (typically my own hard cast semi wadcutters) at even moderate velocities go down very quickly. They go down quickly because the bullet goes all the way through, therefor reaching the vitals every time. That is what kills, and more importantly, incapacitates quickly. In my personal experience, a moderately loaded 250 grain hard cast semi wadcutter at, say, good stiff .44 Special or .45 Colt velocities (under 1,000 fps), kills far, far more effectively than a lighter hollowpoint going 500-600 fps faster. I've seen it myself on too many occasions.
Granted, my hunting experiences encompass revolvers only, as there really are no auto loaders that I feel make suitable hunting handguns. But the same principles apply. Probably more so, with the average auto loader giving up so much in terms of case capacity, and therefor bullet weight and velocity, to revolvers with similar bore sizes. With these "capacity challenged" chamberings, the auto loader becomes even more critical with regards to achieving enough penetration to be reliably effective. In these guns, nothing beats the heavy, truncated cone, flat point FMJ. The round noses are a distant second behind them, but the designer hollowpoints aren't even in the race. I won't even consider the damn things.
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