Surprising damage from a 380.

[SaxonPig]

The worthiness of the 380 ACP for defensive carry is a frequent topic of discussion. I was reading about a shooting that occurred last year and I was a bit surprised at what a 380 with Winchester FMJ ammo did to the victim.

Seeing the gun leveled at him, the 26-year old man raised his hand in a defensive gesture and the round passed through his hand and into his abdomen. It traversed the torso puncturing the liver, the intestine and other organs before exiting out the lower back. The man was dead before paramedics arrived on the scene.

I didn't expect the lowly 380 to penetrate so thoroughly.

PS: The shooter has a long criminal history including gang associations and numerous violent assaults with at least two other shootings. At 22 years of age he was sentenced to prison for the killing. He will be eligible for parole when he is 65.

 

[glockky]

Yeah but I also have seen a buddy of mine shoot a lawn mower battery with one and we found 380 bullets laying on the ground around the battery.

 

[Zerodefect]

Luck of the draw, I guess.

Pistols sometimes hardly work, at other times they outperform our expectations. Sometimes even a .45 hardly deos anythng to someone, then there are other times it goes clear through your targets chest and kills an innocent bystander way down the street.

Bullets do weird things and are hardly predictable no matter what the jello says. A while ago a police officer was trying to shoot a birdfeeder, he missed, bullet sailed through a wooded area, and nailed a kid in the head a good distance away. What are the odds of that?

 

[Pyro]

Bullets do weird things and are hardly predictable no matter what the jello says.

Unless there is a world invasion of alien gel blocks ammunition will never perform perfectly.
Gel tests give a good idea of how the JHP is to act, not a sure idea of how it will.

 

[Zerodefect]

Exactly, thankyou.

 

[snooperman]

The Lowly 22 LR almost killed president Reagan and..

the 32 ACP was also instrumental in starting WW1 with the killing of the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife in Serajevo, 1914 and ending WW2 with Hitler killing himself. Would I carry one of these today? Not when I can carry something that has a better over-alll track record for one shot stops quickly, such as the 357 magnum , 9mm. or 40cal.

 

[snooperman]

That said, shot placement is far more important than ...

the size of the bullet.

 

[481]

Unless there is a world invasion of alien gel blocks ammunition will never perform perfectly.
Gel tests give a good idea of how the JHP is to act, not a sure idea of how it will.

Gelatin is nothing more than a homogeneous, repeatable test medium that permits an "apples to apples" comparison between rounds. That's why the ammuniton manufacturers use it. Not many folks are willing to serve as "crash test dummies" for ballistic tests.

The amount of penetration described by the OP- through an upraised hand (perhaps an inch or two assuming the FMJ hit the palm and exited the back of the hand) and then through the abdomen (the low right quadrant from the sound of it) which would be somewhere between 9 and 16 inches depending upon the build of the inidvidual- is not surprising.

.380 FMJs (90-95 grs. @ 900-1000 fps) rountinely penetrate about 18 inches (sometimes a little more) of gelatin when tested in gelatin.

 

[Nushif]

Pshaw! Lies! We all know anything short of a .45 will only bounce off a mewling infant. A .45 however will make someone explode.

Brevity aside though I am really not surprised. Ball ammo while reviled as utterly ineffective will punch holes through an awful lot of stuff. And holes in things that are attacking you are indeed a good thing. Especially plastic bottles and vacuum cleaners. Can never be too careful about those. Luckily though my .22 penetrated the motor of the vacuum cleaner before it could make a getaway. Take that, hunters!

 

[MICHAEL T]

Over penetration with ball was one of the reasons that the 380 and 9mm. Both had such bad reputations as a poor man stopper . With the modern HP's this has changed . 380 ball and 9mm ball have a very small frontal area. 45 has large area If traveling at 900FPS that is 600MPH its going to penetrate soft flesh and keep on moving . Move it to 9mm FPS speeds even worst. be glad we have HP today that work made both these calibers better self defense rounds.

 

[heeler]

It really doesnt surprise me from what I have read on penetration tests using a fmj .380.
Scores of street hoods kill each other off as well as regular citizens they are robbing using these pistols yearly and most likely with fmj ammo.
And this is one example of why there are so many debates in mousegun land about what ammo to use for self defense.
Over penetration in a big city setting can cause a legal self defense shoot to become an unending nightmare if an innocent person is the backstop.
I am in the process right now of ordering different brands of hollow point ammo to test in my micro .380 for the very reason of over penetration concerns.

 

[JohnBT]

"I didn't expect the lowly 380 to penetrate so thoroughly."

Unless his liver was hard as a rock, the bullet didn't hit anything that was very solid. I'd bet he was a skinny little fella too.

Jonh

 

[mrbro]

A .45 however will make someone explode.

Well, MINE will.

 

[1SOW]

I admit to little .380 experience.

I have on several occassions seen the following regarding ".380 energy". In competition a "popper" is a steel target hinged at the bottom and adjusted so it will fall when impacted by a 9mm bullet with a load that will barely cycle the pistol----115gr bullet at 1020'/sec.

I have seen numerous .380's "bounce" off poppers and not make them fall.

What does this mean? Probably not too much, but it is not an impressive performance by a defensive handgun.
Can a .380 do the job? Sure, depending on where it hits; and so can smaller calibers.

I would't expect through and through penetration from one, other than a chance exception.

 

[WinThePennant]

I have 100% confidence in the .380 for defensive use in a pocket carry gun.

I'd prefer to have a 9mm, but the .380 is just fine.

Sometimes, gun folks get a little carried away and think that anything less than a howitzer is of little use.

 

[Shear_stress]

I have seen numerous .380's "bounce" off poppers and not make them fall.

What you saw wasn't energy, but momentum transfer. The leap from "doesn't drop plate" to "doesn't penetrate soft tissue" is a long one. 380 and, hell, even 32 ACP, ball rounds offer decent penetration.

Handguns are fairly low energy weapons and wound mainly through blood loss. You increase blood loss mainly through shot placement but also by increasing the penetration and/or expansion of the projectile. The drawback of the 380 is not that it can't penetrate or expand well, but that it often has trouble doing both at the same time compared to more powerful handgun rounds. Regardless, it can often get the job done, as the OP's anecdote demonstrates.

 

[1SOW]

Shear stress: I'm sorry I used the wrong term. My only source for "energy" was Einstein.

My other comments agree with yours.

 

[philoe]

"Punctured the liver" ... whether its 9mm short or 22lr placement tells all. Get hit in the liver and you are all but done.

 

[Cactus Jack Arizona]

Honestly, gelatin tests all sound good and it sure makes for interesting reading when you can't sleep. However, unless the bg is named Adam and is half man and half machine , I kind of feel that shot placement is of greater concern than caliber size.

 

[481]

Honestly, gelatin tests all sound good and it sure makes for interesting reading when you can't sleep. However, unless the bg is named Adam and is half man and half machine , I kind of feel that shot placement is of greater concern than caliber size.

Shooting into calibrated ordnance gelatin tells us nothing of the effects of "shot placment". It does not represent the varying structures of the human anatomy.

To believe so, is to misunderstand what testing in calibrated gelatin demonstrates. (terminal penetration depth, volume and mass of the permanent wound cavity produced by the projectile in a repeatable, homogeneous test medium)

 

[Cactus Jack Arizona]

Shooting into calibrated ordnance gelatin tells us nothing of the effects of "shot placment". It does not represent the varying structures of the human anatomy.

To believe so, is to misunderstand what testing in calibrated gelatin demonstrates. (terminal penetration depth, volume and mass of the permanent wound cavity produced by the projectile in a repeatable, homogeneous test medium)

I understand. I admit that I often overlook certain aspects of the testing, usually just focusing on penetration depth. This would be a byproduct of reading such things as FBI testing protocols for depth. This was where I was going with my above statement. Thanks for bringing all that to my attention.

 

[Murple]

While I generally avoid these threads like the herpes, I just have to gush on this sentence:

We all know anything short of a .45 will only bounce off a mewling infant.

Anyway, I guess while I'm here, I'll be the dick who points out the inherent contradiction in these two sentences:

I have 100% confidence in the .380 for defensive use in a pocket carry gun.

I'd prefer to have a 9mm.

Okay, off to practice holster draws with my MKIII

 

[ccsniper]

Unless there is a world invasion of alien gel blocks ammunition will never perform perfectly.

Literally made me laugh out loud. Thank you sir, funniest thing I have read all day.

 

[clutch]

This is a bit more re-assuring. My only ballistic tests of a .380 was to see it barely gets to the other side but not through a piece of dried Douglas fir which at 1.5" thick didn't seem like much. Someday I should repeat that experiment with my 442 and 38 spl. +p.

Clutch

 

[WinThePennant]

Anyway, I guess while I'm here, I'll be the dick who points out the inherent contradiction in these two sentences:
Quote:
Originally Posted by WinThePennant View Post
I have 100% confidence in the .380 for defensive use in a pocket carry gun.

I'd prefer to have a 9mm.

I don't see the contradiction.