Is most modern handgun bullet design complete bullshit?
A permanent cavitation cavity is the wound channel a bullet creates by crushing the flesh or bone before it.
A temporary cavitation cavity is the alleged wound a bullet creates by stretching the flesh it passes through.
We seem to have this idea that a bullet doesn't just make holes, it imparts damage to surrounding tissue via the temporary cavitation effect.
But everything I've read about this says this is wrong. All those fancy ballistics gel tests are bullshit. It's all bullshit.
>The tensile strength of muscle ranges roughly from 1 to 4 MPa (145 to 580 lbf/in2), and minimal damage will result if the pressure exerted by the temporary cavitation is below this. Gelatin and other less elastic media have much lower tensile strengths, thus they exhibit more damage after being struck with the same amount of force. At typical handgun velocities, bullets will create temporary cavities with much less than 1 MPa of pressure, and thus are incapable of causing damage to elastic tissues which they do not directly contact.
>In most cases, temporary cavitation is unlikely to cause anything more than a bruise.
I see all these fucking videos on YouTube with people shooting ballistic gelatin and marveling at these massive temporary cavities the bullets are creating, but it's apparently all bullshit.
Lehigh Defense? Makers of those Xtreme Penetrator, Xtreme Defense cavitation rounds that do incredible things to blocks of gelatin? They're really just ball ammo. They won't do anything magic to the surrounding flesh they pass through.
It makes me wonder if hollow points are even vastly superior to FMJ. If all you're doing is poking holes then is a 9mm hollow point that expands to .61 inches really 100% better than a 9mm FMJ that doesn't expand at all? The probability that the extra .35 inch width of permanent wound channel would result in stopping the threat when the 9mm FMJ wouldn't seems like a fairy tale.
>Lehigh Defense? Makers of those Xtreme Penetrator, Xtreme Defense cavitation rounds that do incredible things to blocks of gelatin? They're really just ball ammo. They won't do anything magic to the surrounding flesh they pass through. ...He doesn't know.
William Reed
a wider and more ragged wound channel from a hollow point increases the physical trauma inflicted on the target and decreases the odds they will continue resistance or reduces the amount of time they are physically able to resist
this is still not a guaranteed one-hit kill, but handguns need all the help they can get due to the aforementioned lack of temporary wound cavitation, and JHPs improve the size of the permanent cavity
Caleb Thomas
Yep. All ammo except FMJ is a meme for people who don't know how to shoot and hope a cool enough bullet will make up for their inability to hit the target where it counts.
Blake Young
>decreases the odds they will continue resistance Has that been shown in reality? I don't care about conjecture, is there a demonstrable difference in stoppage rate between JHP and FMJ?
Dominic Kelly
take a .22lr for some grizzly bears, user. It's been done before, why spend money on meme calibers when a .22lr has been shown to be enough?
You bring up some good points. I agree with you on a few of them. I dont understand why people use gel blocks and pretend it's a realistic representative of a human body cause it really isnt. You're correct that real muscle fibers have much higher tensile strength than people realize.
I still think hollowpoints are superior to fmj just cause they dump more of the energy into the flesh than fmj. However, I think the differences in damage between hollowpoints and fmj are pretty overblown in general. They all fall to hardball. I'd have no problem defending myself with fmj.
The discussion is about handguns. The weapon used in your pic was a rifle which gave that round a lot more velocity than it would have out of a handgun.
>I dont understand why people use gel blocks and pretend it's a realistic representative of a human body cause it really isnt Because they don’t. Or rather, only retards do. The point of ballistics gel isn’t to go “this bullet does X in ballistics gel, so it’ll do X in human tissue” It’s to provide a close to identical test, I.e. “this bullet penetrates better than that bullet, but not as well as this other bullet. So this bullet will probably provide better performance than that bullet, but worse than this other bullet”
John King
>doesn't understand what penetration is When will summer end?
Ethan Thomas
All that jelly wiggling does demonstrate something though, getting punched in the gut may not leave a permanent wound channel but its still can double you over in pain and out of contention. You might not even notice fmj icepicking through you cleanly.
Justin Rogers
Good on them for being honest. I thought this might be a bullet magic shill video but they straight up say that handgun bullets cannot achieve the necessary velocity to impart true damage with the temporary wound cavity.
They do later imply that the "correct bullet" is of high importance though, obviously advocating for a hollowpoint with good penetration and good expansion.
I'm still iffy on this. Will being shot with a bullet that expands to .61 inches in diameter create a larger wound than a FMJ half that diameter? Sure, but does that mean more stopping power? If so how much? The guy in the video says that if you shoot a guy with a 44 magnum, and the bullet doesn't make direct contact with a critical system, then the bullet might as well have been a 9mm, might as well have been a .45, because all that extra energy from the .44 magnum is not going to result in more tissue damage. You get a .44 caliber hole and that's it.
I'm really starting to think that hollow points are mostly useful to stop over penetration - not to increase stopping power. I see no mechanism that would result in radically higher stopping power.
Landon King
Most people don't understand the point of ballistic gel. They think it's supposed to be some sort of a "simulator" for human flesh. That's not really it's purpose. If you want to simulate flesh and bone then you use....guess what....meat. Real flesh and bone. However real animal carcasses or even human bodies are not *consistent*, and that makes them very bad for doing scientific testing. The point of ballistic gel is that it is consistent. That way when you do your study (which ough to be many, many shots), you are assured that each one occurs under identical conditions.
Most people, especially youtubers, manage to fuck this up. They treat it like a substitute for flesh which it is not, and they compare a handful of shots, if that many.
Logan Diaz
>why is expansion good (to a person who sells expanding bullets for a living)? >because we've talked to people who said they were good Only thing in that video relevant to OP's point. Actually damning with faint praise that it was their best argument.
Christopher Wright
>bullets know if there's a stock and refuse to function without one So if the 120gr .357 bullet works at ~2100fps out of a carbine, explain why the 65gr .355 bullet will act like a ball round at ~2100fps from a pistol? Of course the 120gr will penetrate significantly farther, thanks to almost twice the sectional density (I definitely wouldn't recommend the 65gr on bear, even black bear), but there's no reason the velocity threshold for "works as designed" vs. "just ball ammo" should be radically different.
We can certainly say that an expanding bullet causes a larger amount of direct tissue damage simply because of its larger size. That's basic geometry. That difference in size may not be a whole lot, but it is theoretically possible that it could make the difference between barely missing a vital organ, bone, or artery vs. hitting it. Try a little experiment. Find a pic of the human body showing major organs and blood vessels. Then hold up objects simulating the size of various bullets over it, and move them around to see where you'd get a "flesh wound" vs where you might hit something more important. I think you'll find that there's a pretty good functional difference between, say, a 9mm diameter hole vs. a .6 inch hole.
We can also state that if we were to compare a thru-and-thru shot with a FMJ with a hollow point shot to the exact same point of impact that the latter deposits more energy into the target and thus is more likely to be the more severe wound.
Jace Brown
I mean a hole that's ~0.4 inches wide vs one that's ~0.6 inches wide is still a bigger hole, so more likely (even if only slightly) to hit something important
Thomas Murphy
Checked
Justin Hughes
>if you shoot a guy with a 44 magnum, and the bullet doesn't make direct contact with a critical system, then the bullet might as well have been a 9mm, might as well have been a .45, because all that extra energy from the .44 magnum is not going to result in more tissue damage. You get a .44 caliber hole and that's it.
That's not exactly what he said. What he explained is that when they design a bullet for a certain caliber they take their penetration requirements and design its expansion so that the bullet stays within their parameters. If it expanded more it would have shallow penetration and if it expanded less/slower it would "overpenetrate". So if you give that same bullet more energy, you're not doing anything to increase the damage created - until you actually reach rifle performance and the temporary cavity starts ripping tissue. However, he didn't say that a 44 Magnum = 9mm. The 44 magnum will do more damage than 9mm, just not because of "muzzle energy" and end of argument. It's because it's a bigger bullet that will expand more. Which requires more energy to drive it at the appropriate velocity.
Ryder Brooks
The guy in the lucky gunner video posted a bit ago in this thread says you need to reach 2200 fps in order for a bullets temporary wound cavity to result in actual tissue damage, whereupon it will result in tearing of the flesh and the temporary wound cavity will become a permanent wound cavity.
I think a lot of the stuff Lehigh Defense puts out there is fake or embelished. They've used impressive ballistics gelatin tests to dazzle people into thinking their bullets are these amazing new things that have revolutionized .32 ACP, 9mm, etc.
There is no mechanism for this to work.
As to your question, "if you can get a pistol bullet up to 2200 fps, shouldn't the temporary wound cavity it creates result in real damage?"
To that I would say the round will create a temporary cavity that results in real tissue damage until the bullet falls below 2200 fps. And how fast will that be? One inch of penetration? 2 inches of penetration?
A 5.56 bullet is only 55 grains but it's going at over 3,000 fps. It can lose a lot of that velocity and still be causing real damage via the temporary wound cavity.
I think a .357 at 2200 fps will fall below that threshold almost instantly. At least that's how I'm reading it.
Christian Kelly
Checked and make those bullets go faster so they do overcome the 1 to 4 MPa (145 to 580 lbf/in2)
Well expansion DOES help in that it a handgun bullet can only damage tissue it touches then a larger diameter will touch more tissue. Penetration is #1 goal. Expansion is just a bonus.
Jose Fisher
Then use a glock 40 in 9x25 Dillon and push that 65gr bullet to 2500fps
>bullets know if there's a stock and refuse to function without one Are you literally retarded? The carbine has a much longer barrel length and thus much higher velocities than the same cartridge out of a handgun. Has nothing to do with the stock, has to do with the length of the barrel.
Mason Phillips
Yes but he also seems to be making the point that the actual difference in stopping power between pistol calibers is very low, and that you should carry the caliber you shoot the best and not worry about it.
To me this is implying that the difference between a .44 magnum wound and a 9mm wound in exactly the same spot just isn't enough to be a big deal. And if that's true, then the difference between a 9mm hole and a .61 inch hole shouldn't be a major game changer either.
More damage is always better, of course. I'm not advocating for people to stop carrying hollowpoints. But I bet you a whole dollar a hollowpoint is only 25% better than FMJ. At most.
Ethan Young
>Will being shot with a bullet that expands to .61 inches in diameter create a larger wound than a FMJ half that diameter?
A bullet twice as large in diameter will touch twice as much tissue as it passes through so yes it will damage more. Also the rounded nose profile of a FMJ will likely be less damaging then a flat cross section like a wadcutter or an expanded HP as it will want to part tissue instead of cutting it. Back when cops carried wheelguns and hollowpoint performance was a new science many opted for wadcutters.
Owen Ward
>you should carry the caliber you shoot the best and not worry about it.
This exactly. Hits count. First hits count most. After that capacity is king.
Those liberty defense bullets are garbage compared to the Lehigh XDs
Lincoln White
Acceleration (and negative acceleration) is what kills. You want an extremely fast bullet, like a 5.7 for maximum dmg per second If you want to see a scaled up version of this principle, look at videos of varmint hunting.
Jose Cooper
>the tensile strength of muscle Guns don't kill by damaging muscle. They kill by damaging organs. Pop the lungs, shred the liver or kidneys, pulverize the intestines. Render the cardiovascular system nonfunctional, and cause massive internal hemorrhaging everywhere else you can. Ballistic gel is a good analogue for how soft organs behave.
Dominic Moore
The Ellifritz study is fantastic but not the end all be all study.
For instance there were very very few cases involving .25 ACP, .22 LR, and .32 ACP so those results got skewed. In his study the .32 ACP actually has a higher one shot stop % than .357 magnum, which is obviously an erroneous result.
This also throws into question the terrible incapacitatation failure rate of the .22 LR, .25 ACP, and .32 ACP.
I bet you that with enough data every single caliber right down to .22 lr would even out to be +/- 20% as good as each other in a self defense situation.
>citing the Lucky Gunner video Just because the company that makes the slowest ammo on the market said velocity doesn't matter does not mean that decades of ballistic research is null and void. Saying that bullet design and caliber have nothing to do with temporary cavitation is insulting to the gun community's intelligence. Federal has come out, on record, saying that a needle moving 2300 fps will cause temporary cavitation damage and a 30mm round moving 2100 fps will not.
I don't know what that has to do with what I said, but you have to be some kind of a dildo baggins to think that a .38 is as capable of killing as a .357 or that a .38 specific gun isn't inherently smaller than a .357 due to the lower pressures requiring less material in the cylinder.
Liam Wright
Actually it will tear through 4x as much flesh by area. Pi r squared. So basically large diameter bullets are Chadly
Logan Anderson
>The guy in the lucky gunner video posted a bit ago in this thread says you need to reach 2200 fps Literally nobody else says this; it's a total asspull. Maybe read the literature instead of listening to someone trying to sell you ammo?
Carson Davis
>trying to sell you ammo >point of video is literally anything made by anyone that penetrates deep enough is fine
wut?
Josiah Lee
Plus they sell all kinds of ammo so it wouldn't even matter which kind of ammo they're shilling for
Daniel Ross
>It makes me wonder if hollow points are even vastly superior to FMJ There's an advantage to hollow-points in that the expansion permits greater energy transfer to the target. Force = mass * acceleration: since mass is held constant, generating more force in an impact requires higher deceleration.
Jordan Smith
Let me make this as simple as I can, since you have a hard time understanding.
Short barrel = go slower Lighter bullet = go faster Shoot lighter bullet in short barrel The effects cancel and you get the same velocity as the heavy bullet in a .357 Magnum carbine, albeit at lower sectional density.
While I don't know the exact velocity you get out of that Underwood load in a carbine, I guarantee you it's possible to match it with light-for-caliber Lehigh XDs in a full-size or long-slide pistol.
So pretending it has nothing to do with a discussion of handgun ballistics is bullshit.
Colton Flores
Different user but ignoring all of that one of the major benefits of hollow points is reducing the amount of energy the exited bullet has.
Cooper Flores
Pistols are crap for lethal wounding, you’d be better off throwing the handgun and hope it hits someone in the head. I use a 30-06 for home defense in my one bedroom apartment. If the goons stand in a straight line I can hit them both with one shot, good look doing that with a pistol.
Energy transfer is arguably second only to shot placement in importance when youre talking about incapacitating people. You get far more energy transfer with other bullet designes than fmj. That and it helps to cut down on overpenetration.
Noah Jenkins
dont underestimate bullets that tumble and leave a larger than expected temporary cavity. 5.7 always rips my targets apart.
>It makes me wonder if hollow points are even vastly superior to FMJ
short answer: no
TL:DR answer: the point of JHP ammunition is that there is a better chance of overpenetration, and the expansion of the ammo cut's a larger cavity. If you aren't worried about what is behind your target, there is literally no reason NOT to carry FMJ.
Also I believe in fair chase of the Negro. If he somehow clings to life after being struck by 8 rounds of 9mm FMJ without going to the ER, he earned that second chance.
>Common “One Shot Stop” and “Knock Down Power” are both myths perpetuated by the uninformed. The actual impact of the projectile onto a target is less than the recoil of the weapon.
>Energy transfer is often quoted and is completely immaterial. First, the transfer of energy is represented by the Temporary Stretch Cavity and as stated is insufficient in rounds
Ethan Ross
.357 magnum gets an enormous boost in velocity out of a carbine or rifle compared to a handgun
Zachary Nguyen
>muh energy transfer
I didn't know the conversion of kinetic energy to heat through friction is what actually killed the target.
That's why teenagers die every time they are tackled in football. Because a tackle with 2700 ftlbs of energy doubled up is 20 times the energy of a 9mm. And none if it is wasted since neither player deforms.
Carson Nguyen
>.357 gets an enormous boost in velocity Yes, typically 300 to 400 fps, pic related. Hence my estimate of 2100fps for the carbine velocity: Underwood's listed 1700fps, plus 400fps for carbine.
Underwood's 65gr .357 SIG is already over 2100 fps in a 4.5" barrel, and well over 2200fps in a 6" barrel.
If the 120gr .357 Magnum is exceeding some magic velocity threshold from a carbine, then so is the 65gr .357 SIG from a normal to large handgun.
