Cosmoline
Member
I've been looking into the data of penetration and expansion for handgun rounds lately, from .25 ACP to .45 ACP. Particularly when heavy clothing is put over the top of BG, the performance ranges from OK to horrible, with no expansion at all. The bottom line is, most handgun bullets simply aren't going fast enough to open in every impact, and if they do open the expanded head acts like a brake and stops the bullet from penetrating much further. Unless you buy into the "energy dump" hogwash, this is not a good thing. 14 to 16 inches of penetration would seem to me a minimum for good stopping power, since it's enough to get through a torso without having too much penetrative power left on the other side.
OTOH, we all know that RN and FMJ handgun bullets are notorious for poor terminal performance. They slip through tissue without always doing sufficient damage. And at handgun velocities they're not producing enough of a temporary cavity or shockwave to cause much secondary damage.
IIRC, Keith came up with the SWC design as a way of increasing the "cutting" aspect of handgun bullets, while keeping a high enough ballsitic coefficient to keep it in the air awhile. Of course, his design was for handgun hunting so a straight wadcutter with it's longer range velocity loss ruled that out. But for close range defense, this isn't a problem.
So why not crank up a wadcutter load to full power and use it for self defense? I'm not talking about flipping the HB ones around, I'm suggesting shooting them flat face first at full power. I haven't been able to find much penetration data on these, but I suspect they would penetrate better than a HP but not as far as a RN, while doing considerable "hole punch" tissue damage. Has anyone ever tested full power wadcutters on BG or even water jugs?
Feel free to kick this around.
OTOH, we all know that RN and FMJ handgun bullets are notorious for poor terminal performance. They slip through tissue without always doing sufficient damage. And at handgun velocities they're not producing enough of a temporary cavity or shockwave to cause much secondary damage.
IIRC, Keith came up with the SWC design as a way of increasing the "cutting" aspect of handgun bullets, while keeping a high enough ballsitic coefficient to keep it in the air awhile. Of course, his design was for handgun hunting so a straight wadcutter with it's longer range velocity loss ruled that out. But for close range defense, this isn't a problem.
So why not crank up a wadcutter load to full power and use it for self defense? I'm not talking about flipping the HB ones around, I'm suggesting shooting them flat face first at full power. I haven't been able to find much penetration data on these, but I suspect they would penetrate better than a HP but not as far as a RN, while doing considerable "hole punch" tissue damage. Has anyone ever tested full power wadcutters on BG or even water jugs?
Feel free to kick this around.