We've all seen threads here about the best weapon for home defence. The question of over penetration keeps coming up with proponents of handgun, rifle, and shotgun all claiming the least penetration for misses. I decided to find out for myself how much of a problem it is.
I figured I would test common SD loads in 9, 45, 12 gauge, and 223 to see what did what. But I only got to the first step before encountering a problem. I wanted to get an idea of how much penetration there was so I could build a test fixture to simulate a series of walls. I set up eight pieces of drywall (four walls worth) with about two inches of seperation between them. I used a 124 gr. Gold Dot and it blew right through all of them. Not sure if it was expansion but the holes got bigger in each board.
So my question is what should be a reasonable standard? I live in a small to mid sized home, and it's hard to imagine a miss hitting three walls without leaving the house, much less four. I intend to put some sort of siding on the "outside" wall when tested, but how many walls should that be? Are missed shots destined to get out unless they hit studs, furniture, etc? And most importently, has anybody done enough testing to know what the results will be? I would hate to do this and have somebody point out some already existing source of the same data.
Thanks, Griz
I figured I would test common SD loads in 9, 45, 12 gauge, and 223 to see what did what. But I only got to the first step before encountering a problem. I wanted to get an idea of how much penetration there was so I could build a test fixture to simulate a series of walls. I set up eight pieces of drywall (four walls worth) with about two inches of seperation between them. I used a 124 gr. Gold Dot and it blew right through all of them. Not sure if it was expansion but the holes got bigger in each board.
So my question is what should be a reasonable standard? I live in a small to mid sized home, and it's hard to imagine a miss hitting three walls without leaving the house, much less four. I intend to put some sort of siding on the "outside" wall when tested, but how many walls should that be? Are missed shots destined to get out unless they hit studs, furniture, etc? And most importently, has anybody done enough testing to know what the results will be? I would hate to do this and have somebody point out some already existing source of the same data.
Thanks, Griz