law enforcement hollow points

[dirk911]

I bought a box of 50 federal law enforcement tactical hollowpoints for my 45 and when practicing today I found one of them sticking out of a 7" tree and to my amazement it did not expand. I pulled it right out by hand and it was full of wood and was in the exact condition as when it left my gun. Maybe im missing somthin here but I thought a premium hollow point is supposed to EXPAND on impact? They didnt even leave bigger holes then my winchester white box fmj's from wally world. Anybody who may be able to explain why this is, I welcome your response and hopefully can bring some understanding to me as why a bullet may not be doing its job. Thanks in advance!

dirk

[g4l]

The tree is solid, it plugged up the hole, thats probably the reason. Try firing into some wet newspaper or water jugs and see if theres a difference.

[jdeangelis99]

thats kinda weird dirk. I use those hollow points in my gun and they are my favorite.. I have never shot a tree I took a dead deer and tried it out on that to see how it worked and it worked great

[dirk911]

what is the best target to shoot and retrieve bullets? I know sand works ok but it can be hard to find em once you shoot em. Thanks

dirk

[dirk911]

I thought that they were gonna be high quality expanding bullets and since our local agency uses them I get a decent price on em(around 20 bucks for 50. Anyway, further testing will tell the truth and I will report my findings hopefully by next weekend if anyone is interested in what they do.

[radio_relay]

That's why I quit carrying hollow points. I've read a lot of test data and field reports from incidents where hollow points didn't do squat in stopping bad guys. All the raz mataz about not hitting somebody else, if the bullet goes through the body, or a wall, is pretty much gun mag hype.



Under optimum conditions, where the attacker is shirtless, HP's work great. However, the hollow points have a tendency not to flair and fragment, if they get tangled in pieces of clothing before entering the body. Also, if a hollow point bullet hits a rib, arm bone, or hand, it probably won't penetrate deeply enough to do enough damage to stop an attacker who is drugged or charged up on adrenalin.



I read an FBI study and report that pretty much made up my mind. They were studying the case of some FBI Agents who were killed in a shootout with drug dealers in Florida. The Agents were using hollow point ammunition, which did little to stop the drug thugs, who were hit by the Agents but not incapacitated enough to stop fighting. It concluded that heavy FMJ rounds are the best for self protection.



I now load 145 grain Winchester, flat nosed, full metal jacket, "wad cutter" ammo in my XD9SC for self defense.

[Patrol]

Our department invited a speer gold dot guy in for a ballistic workshop to see which round we wanted to go to for duty. Shooting a tree isnt an accurate way to see what a round will do to a human at all. I learned a great deal from this class about the important factors in shooting people versus thing such as wall board and auto windshield glass. We used ballistic gelatin which is the most accurate way to determine what a round will do when hitting a human. You can als recover the rounds and see how much trauma they caused and in shooting into glass with gelatin behind the glass to catch the round you could see what effect the glass had on various rounds. Glocks4life made an excellent accurate comment in that "hollowpoints" tend to fill up the cavity with what they hit which effects the expansion and even more important the penatration. What I basically learned from this class was that hollow points dont penatrate near as well as about any type of round nose or full metal jacket round but penatration isnt all there is there is initial blunt tramua and wound cavity trauma as well. The formula basically that works best on humans is atleast 12 inches of penatration is needed to successfully reach vital organs on a human. The two most important factor in stopping a threat are trauma with relation to shock and causing great bleed out which can happen faster with good penatration versus good trauma. Also we learned that the urban legend and Myth buster type of concern with "over penatration" does not truely exist with a handgun round regardless of all the ill informed administrator types cry for liability issues on over penatration and hitting innocent others because of this action..In other words its a bunch of crap especially with a handgun and any hollow point round. Short answer, Hollow points cause great trauma and shock to a human body and full metal jacket causes excellent bleed out with superiour penetration but a handgun of ony caliber is never capable of the stopping power you see in hollywood where a mans feet leaves the ground and they flip backwards. That effect would happen with a 12 guage at close ranges but not a pistol. We also covered many frangible rounds such as magsafe and glaser and they cause very nasty trauma wounds and severe wound cavities for bleed out without hardly any penatration but are useless on most windshield glass and wall board if your target is behind such a barrier. Believe it or not, in a handgun. 230 round ball is hard to beat. Guess the military kind of knew a little about what they were doing when they issued 1911's in the past with standard 230ball.

[Patrol]

Something else I failed to touch on is speed or velocity. Feet Per Second. The faster a round travels especially a hollow point the greater the trauma but the worst the penatration. A heavy slow moving bonded or jacket round will penatrate better than a fast hollowpoint and cause a deeper wound channel and hit more vitals that a fast hollow point. Think of it like taking a sword with a fat broad blade and as fast as you can swinging it with the flat side at something like a sharp slap. Then take the same sword and at a steady strong forward speed stab the same object. The slower harder consistent stab is going to cause greater damage.

[radio_relay]

Yeah, Patrol. Shooting a tree doesn't prove much. However, the information you got in the class is pretty much what I've concluded from my independent reading.



I also decided against hollow points, because of the short 3" barrel in my subcompact. The +P hollow points need a long barrel to achieve the velocities required for them to be effective. They work better in full size pistols. I've decided to just use them in my 9mm carbine.



I think I'm going to start saving my pennies. So I can get a small .45 for carry.

[g4l]

Seems like your set on ball ammo radio, but if interested check out Corbons Powerball ammo, the polymer ball helps feed like a hardball and also won't get plugged with clothing, on impact the ball then promotes expansion.

http://www.dakotaammo.net/index.html