Originally posted by: 1911 guy
The result was that velocity was not high enough to fragment the round, but penetration was very high.
EXACTLY!
And despite what some people seem to think, all bullet wounds are not created equal.
As I've already stated, just about any high power rifle bullet is going to penetrate a concealable vest.
What they do to soft tissue after penetrating the vest is going to be highly variable.
M855 has a fairly robust bullet, even in a 16" barrel it doesn't tend to fragment as reliably as M193 does.
Obviously nobody wants to be shot with anything, but M855 out of a pistol length barrel would probably be one of the LEAST destructive of any modern high power rifle, cartridge/bullet combination. At handgun velocities it would almost certainly be less destructive than virtually ALL .223 expanding hunting bullets at similar velocities. They'll all penetrate the vest anyway, the difference is that the hunting bullets are likely to expand and cause more tissue damage than the tougher M855 which at low velocities is likely to either pencil through, or at the most, swap ends once before exiting.
Truth told, a ban on M855 wouldn't save the life of a single Police Officer, if anything, it'll have a negative effect on officer and victim survivability, just like the stupid ban on mild steel core 7.62x39 "armor piercing" (NOT!) ammo did.
Soviet M43 7.62x39 ammunition was designed with a steel core for only one reason, steel is far cheaper than lead and using it lowers production costs quite a bit. The steel used is soft and bears no resemblance to the higher grades of hardened steel or tungsten carbide used in true AP ammunition.
It is probably the least terminally effective full power ball ammunition ever made for a modern assault rifle.
In the Stockton California schoolyard shooting back in 1988, a crazy "man" shot 35 kindergarten kids with an AK loaded with steel core ball ammo. Only 5 died, all from direct hits to the CNS, heart, or major blood vessels.
I'm not trying to downplay the tragedy of five kids being murdered, but If that guy had been using more terminally effective hollowpoint, soft point or even lead core FMJ ammunition (as REQUIRED by law these days). the death toll probably would've been three or four times as high.
It's even more idiotic than the Canadian government banning AK's but allowing the better (in my opinion) VZ-58 to stay on the market. It shoots the exact same ammunition, at the same velocity and with about equal reliability to the AK. The only differences are that it's lighter, has better ergonomics and is more accurate than the average AK.
It appears that both government's have officials that're equally idiotic. They assume that every person with a gun is a potential mass murderer, and then REQUIRE BY LAW that they have more effective tools for the job!
M855 is not a particularly effective antipersonnel round anyway. That's one reason why the Army has dropped it in favor of the M855 A1. Marine riflemen no longer use M855 in combat either, they've adopted the Mark 318 for combat use.
They replaced M855 because the new rounds (particlearly MK 318 which looks like an unbonded Speer Trophy Bonded Bear Claw) are much more effective at quickly making bad guys stop doing bad things.
So the military (the Marines anyway) have dropped M855 in favor of a design that looks like a civilian bullet because M855 was ineffective.
At the same time the ATF is trying to say civilians CANT have M855 because it's TOO effective.
Does this make sense to anyone else here?