COuntzerO, I have just the gun you are looking for. My Kahr P380 is rated for Buffalo Bore +P 95 gr HP ammo that I use. It is LCP size and will give you 12" penetration with .53" expansion through 4 layers of Denim and ballistic gel. Look at the results from "mousegunaddict.com". Yes, it is a lowly 380 that you do not like, but the results are there.
This is just my opinion on this but I'll put it out there.
In the late 80s and early 90s the FBI was driving bullet design and development for the 9mm and 40 S&W, and we saw tremendous improvements in bullet designs and terminal performance. IMO though, the ammo manufacturers didn't put nearly as much research or development effort in the 380 ACP. They did however, slap their name brands on the 380 cartridges, which gave the impression that 380 rounds like PDX and Golden Saber were going to perform as well as their big caliber cousins. What we saw though is that many of these name-brand cartridges don't do any better than any of the other 380 loadings out there, and don't do that well in general.
Now we've seen a boom in the 380 ACP pocket pistol market with many owners who are intelligent shooters with good knowledge of terminal ballistics now looking for 380 cartridges that perform well out of the 3" barrels.
I think that is creating a market for someone to create bullet designs and loadings that penetrate 4 layers of denim and penetrate to around 13" of gel with some (controlled) expansion,
out of 3" barrels.
I think we will see improved 380 ACP performance in the future. We're already seeing interesting designs like the Lehigh Xtreme Penetrator.
But when I bought my R9, all of the tests that I could turn up showed 380 JHPs only penetrating from 9 to 11 inches or 380 FMJs zipping through 18 inch blocks of gelatin.
I might pick up a Kahr 380 someday, it is very tempting.