Difference between Hollow Points and FMJ's, Recovered Bullets - Pics

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JoeGibs

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No, sorry, no bloody torn apart bodies here. I was out doin some heavy target practice, firing about 100 rounds into an old empty freon keg. It was pretty shredded up when I was done with it, enough so that I was able to shake out some of the slugs and shrapnel left inside the tank. I thought i'd post a picture for those who can't visually understand what the difference is between hollow points and full metal jackets after hitting an object.

.40 caliber out of a Sig Sauer P229
On the Left- Hollow points. On the right- Full metal jackets.
DSCF1604.jpg
 
Next time some dude tries to take a shot at me from inside a freon keg, I'll know to load up those FMJ's.

Seriously though, there's a reason why shooting metal plate is a poor test for self defense and hunting rounds. It's just not a good approximation for the intended use.
 
The jacket fragment on the left is from a FMJ. A hollowpoint would have an enclosed base - that fragment clearly shows an open base, which means FMJ.

The ones on the right appear to be hollowpoints - when hollowpoints hit metal, the open cavity usually collapses somewhat instead of expanding. Did you accidentally reverse your right/left?
 
Interesting. I had an enlightening experience. My now ex brother in law wanted to try my 458Win mag on piece of 1/2" boiler plate he had propped up behind a large round hay bail as a bullet stop. We stood it up straighter and got behind his truck and fired a 400 gr Barnes HP( solid copper hollow point)

We never did recover that bullet but it punched a clean hole through the boiler plate an engraved the rifling/lands outline in the hole as it passed through This was from a bullet launched at about 2300fps.
 
A hollowpoint would have an enclosed base - that fragment clearly shows an open base, which means FMJ.
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Not necessarily, sir. Many hollowpoints have exposed bases and many FMJs have a total jacket (TMJ).
 
Yeah, steel is pretty dense and it can be pretty strong in terms of tensile strength. Both these combine to make a heady resisting force against that little bullet trying to go through, and quite a few just don't make it. Some handgun bullets are only good enough to make a dent in even thin steel, and it's sometimes hard to predict which one can do what.
 
Interesting results of plinking, but has no relevance to terminal effects of bullets inside humans.

I'll stick with ballistic gelatin wrapped in denim.
 
Just a thought, but if you want even more accurate results, you might want to throw some sort of animal bones and something that would equate different density (i.e. organs) in your ballistics gelatin wrapped in denim.

The human body isn't made up of just one density and bullets do strange things in the body when they come into contact with different materials.

Just a thought.
 
Hmmm, quite interesting. I had just assumed the shrapnel pieces were the hollow points, and the pieces left in one large solid chunk were the slugs. It does make sense though in saying shooting metal makes a bullet react much different than a body would.
 
This reminded me of a really bad stunt some of my County Cops pulled about 7 years ago.

Cops raided a trailer full of meth ingredients, including a number of old propane and freon tanks full of anhydrous ammonia. Our heros decide that the best way to properly dispose of said contraband was to take it to the firing range and shoot them with their handy-dandy Glock .40's and newly purchased AR15's.

They told the Sheriff, while being treated at the hospital for respiratory distress, that some "DEA Guy" told them this was safe!
 
I had just assumed the shrapnel pieces were the hollow points, and the pieces left in one large solid chunk were the slugs.
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Can't assume nothin' my friend. For a test like that you should fire Ammo A, collect all the fragments and put them in a labelled container, then fire Ammo B and do the same. As it is, we can't be sure that you have not mixed the fragments from the FMJ and JHP.
 
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