Frangible ammo for self defense?

Kleanbore said:

The load that you propose will likely penetrate walls.

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Mitigate, not magic

Hasaf said:

I think we are looking for different things when looking at frangible bullets. It seems that you are looking for maximum damage. I am looking for the best I can do to mitigate collateral damage. I am not going to go further into it because that is an issue of informed choice. People who come to different conclusions are not necessarily foolish, ill-intentioned, or ill-informed, they just weigh the information available against their values and come up with different conclusions.

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I didn't suggest I was looking for anything. You may mitigate some collateral damage, but it comes at the tradeoff of minimal damage from the threat against which you are defending yourself.

Double Naught Spy said:

Which is why this is not great for self defense. So it becomes frangible if you hit dense bone like the femur. Okay. When you are making those COM shots, where is the dense bone going to be to make the frangible ammo come about and tear up a lot of soft tissue?

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Take a look at this Paul Harrel video about this ammo

Hasaf said:

I think we are looking for different things when looking at frangible bullets. It seems that you are looking for maximum damage. I am looking for the best I can do to mitigate collateral damage. I am not going to go further into it because that is an issue of informed choice. People who come to different conclusions are not necessarily foolish, ill-intentioned, or ill-informed, they just weigh the information available against their values and come up with different conclusions.

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This is laudable, but the primary purpose of ANY self-defensive act is to stop the attacker. Obviously there is also a concern for other factors, such as what happens with all the bullets shot which miss the attacker or pass through the attacker.

There are no magic bullets which will only seek out and hit the bad guy and harmlessly self-destruct upon missing before anybody else can be hit. I think we all realize this.

Every decision a person makes with respect to defensive use of a firearm is a compromise of many factors. What caliber? What size handgun? Capacity? What type of ammunition? What circumstances will it be used in? Is the attacker wearing body armor? Is the attacker under cover of some kind? Do I carry extra ammo/magazines? Pistol or revolver? Open carry or concealed carry?

Ultimately ammunition type is one of those things we all have to consider. And like everything else, we all have to consider tradeoffs and balance while doing so.

The fact of the matter is that behind actually hitting your target, the most important consideration is penetration. Stopping an attacker reliably requires you to be able to reliably penetrate to the vital organs to do so. Any compromise you make on this directly impacts your ability to stop an attacker.

If it were me considering this ammunition, I'd try finding where people have actually run some ballistics tests to see how it actually compares to other defensive ammo.

Heck, if I were interested, I might buy some myself and shoot it for just that. If nothing else, shooting is fun.

My advise is to do some research and decide for yourself if this ammunition would realistically be a suitable defensive round. Maybe just buy some and shoot it. If nothing else, you should buy enough to verify it will reliably cycle in your carry piece.

bdickens said:

What LE agencies use it?

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My agency only used frangible ammo for shooting at steel targets.

FWIW I was standing next to a trainee who shot himself with frangible ammo...as he drew his Glock 22 from the holster he put his finger on the trigger and discharged a round. The frangible bullet went through his holster, his belt, his pants, his skin, muscle tissue, and impacted his pelvis. The bullet rode down his femur, exited at the top of the knee, and buried itself in the dirt. Very clean wound from which he recovered with no ill effects. It in no way incapacitated him. Acted just like ball ammo would have.

RetiredUSNChief said:

Maybe just buy some and shoot it. If nothing else, you should buy enough to verify it will reliably cycle in your carry piece.

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In addition to a few hundred rounds to insure operation, I also purchased about a thousand bullets to use in reloads, making practice with it a bit more affordable. As a comment, it is a very hard bullet to use in producing reloads. If there are any imperfections, ones that could normally be ignored, in the case itself, it will crush the case in the crimp die stage.

While I do not have a hardness gauge, I suspect that these bullets are harder than the typical FMJs that I reload with. That said, while they are harder to reload with than FMJ or JHP, they seem to work as reliably. While my 1911-380 initially had a few hiccups using JHP, I never had any trouble with the ARX, reload or factory. The G42 has been reliable with everything it has been given.

Hasaf said:

...It seems that you are looking for maximum damage. I am looking for the best I can do to mitigate collateral damage. I am not going to go further into it because that is an issue of informed choice. People who come to different conclusions are not necessarily foolish, ill-intentioned, or ill-informed, they just weigh the information available against their values and come up with different conclusions.

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Another vote that you are looking at the wrong bullet and not understanding the terminal ballistics mechanism of proper defensive ammo.

Frangible is designed to turn into powder on impact with very hard surfaces. Steel mostly, to not damage, ricochet, or spall on steel backstops or plates. I have mostly used it for shoot houses and similar where you may end up very close to steel plates behind targets, etc so it provides safety. Produced a lot for the European market because for density and noise pollution reasons lots and lots of ranges are indoors. That plastic bullet training rifle ammo is for the same reason.

Frangible doesn't fragment but turns uniformly to a powder when it decides it's hit a hard enough target. It has as close to zero penetration in soft materials (like tissues) as it can after breakup. Old bad ammo like the Glaser Safety Slug were famously shallowly-penetrating and outclass this stuff by a lot.

Further, as stated, it's a ball round until then. It provides NO backstop safety except for specific materials (steel plate). Goes through wallboard, lumber, sheet metal panels (cars, fire doors) and people.

On the other hand, reliable hollowpoints (say, Gold Dot) expand on impact with soft items such as people. We'll avoid the complexity of barrier-blindness for now, but also interesting. If you get hits, then there's a lower chance that the bullet penetrates the target with serious lethal force. Those that do penetrate (vs stopping in the target) will tend to be stopped by very lightweight intermediate barriers, become stuck in wallboard, etc.

Drywall, furniture items, etc will also cause modern expanding bullets to expand and fragment. Not as well because of the materials and wide spaces between items, but pretty well, so that full wall penetration will more often be with only a part of the original bullet mass, and is unlikely to penetrate multiple walls. Unlikely, not impossible. As with stopping performance: hits matter so the safest choice To The OP's Requirements is still:

1. A reliable, modern expanding bullet (no gimmicks) from at least a 9 mm, at normal pressures or higher,
2. In a cartridge and firearm you shoot well,
3. So you get hits.

(If you like proof in the sense of reliable organizations with serious missions: Federal Air Marshalls, last it was talked about openly, use Gold Dots, not magic airplane-proof frangibles, and just practice to shoot as little as possible, and only hit their target, then presume minimal damage on the other side of the bad guys).

There's probably a terminology blurring here in that "frangible" ammo often meant "sintered" projectiles, which would disintegrate on hard target impact.

The ammo OP is referring to does not appear to be a sintered (certainly not in Paul H's video) ammo, but some sort of "composite" ammo of copper and polymer.

Which suggests we have an artichokes to asparagus comparison.

Sintered frangibles are excellent for shoot house use, which is a very specific use situation. Would I trust OP's ammo in a house? Not until I had stood up some gypsum board and studs as a target and shot that with the ammo. Actual walls tell you more than box specifications about such things.

The pictured ammo will disintegrate upon impact on steel. It will penetrate drywall intact. The videos of it passing completely through calibrated gel show it performing as a high velocity lightweight pistol fmj.

My random thought on the ARX round is that it leaves a comparable wound channel to that of an expanded JHP. It's well known JHP has the propensity to clog when passing thru certain clothing diminishing expansion and rendering it into the realm of ball ammo. Whereas the ARX round seems to be barrier blind and cuts thru denim, so etc...shatters bones without fragmentation, rotates 180 degrees when in fluid to apply the brakes thus minimizing potential collateral damage. They define it as a copper/ polymer matrix (a powdered copper/polymer mix injection moulded under high heat and high pressure to form a projectile) that will pulverize when hitting steel, concrete blocks, etc...but will penetrate a 2 x 4 or a windshield with ease. IMHO those are big plus's...and it's lighter weight helps mitigate recoil allowing one to get back on target rapidly.

Kleanbore said:

the permanent wound channel is comparable to that of an FMJ bullet.

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Expand on that.

Kleanbore said:

sell, neither the ARX bullet nor a a traditional FMJ expand to more than bore diameter, and the channel in the tissue that is cut or crushed is therefore no larger than that diameter.

The oddly shaped grove in the bullet do show a somewhat larger temporary channel in gel, but that is of no use to us.

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So by your determination a JHP that is clogged with material is comparable to a FMJ?

Kleanbore said:

Any bullet that does not expand is of course comparable to an FMJ billet.

The loads I carry are tested through fabric.

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Is this a correct statement in your opinion? "In gunshot injuries, the extent of cavitation effects generally depends on projectile velocity and caliber. Different calibers mainly differ in projectile diameter and weight. These factors play a key role in the transfer of energy to the target. When a bullet enters a body, energy is imparted to the tissue via a radial pressure wave and cavitation effects. These physical effects lead to the formation of a temporary wound cavity and the creation of negative pressure. The extent to which this suction effect draws exogenous particles into the temporary wound cavity is yet unclear."

Kleanbore said:

Without dissecting it, here are two key points:

1. At handgun velocities, cavitation or temporary wound cavity is of no material importance RE: effectiveness, and
2. the "transfer of energy" to the target is of no importance except to the extent to which tissue is actually destroyed.

That is primarily a function of what the bullets hit--location and penetration.

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So, what I understand you to be saying is that without velocity there is minimal tissue destruction?

Kleanbore said:

No.

But without velocity, there will be no tissue disruption, as the projectile will not reach the target.

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So... a lighter projectile such as the ARX round traveling at a higher velocity and capable of penetrating to its intended target because of its fluted design has an enormus potential to render greater tissue disruption. Sounds reasonable.

I have a bunch of the OP's Norma frangible in the basement. It's for indoor and other close range steel training:

Fast for handguns is very very much too slow for rifle wounding mechanisms. 5.56 is designed for around twice the velocity of light 9mm bullets. Short barrels reduce your effective range immediately, and massively, in rifles.

Trying to get to velocity only (5.7, 4.6, .224 BOZ, etc) in an even slightly pistol sized gun gives you very light bullets so the velocity is is wasted; there's no momentum for the bullet to do things to the target.

I've never seen the slightest evidence that any cutting or other wounding mechanism is the slightest bit effective.

Kleanbore said:

That does not begin to follow from this:

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Then to debate this is futile...we shall agree to disagree.

I can't say for Norma, but I can say that plastic matrix from other brands causes many problems in many reliable pistols. ARX has been around forever, and I would expect this to work in much the same way.