Holy Gel Tests Batman

[Erik88]

I'm fine with 11" of penetration in .380acp. For years I've been a vocal opponent of hollow point rounds in this caliber but I recently bought a bunch of Gold Dots. 11" of penetration with that much expansion will ruin someone's day.

[jtmaze]

I have always shot WWB JHP 180 grain in my xd40. It has always been accurate and fairly cheap. It has bigger exspansion and almost same penetration as Ranger T's. Looks like I will be shooting the same.

[gl19gobang]

Looks like I'm gonna have to go back to my gold dot 180's since the 165's have no expansion, unless I'm not reading the results right.

[ReeferMac]

 11" of penetration with that much expansion will ruin someone's day.

 

That's what she said!!! LOL!

 

Actually, looking at the expansion and depth on the charts, I'm not at all put off by the .380's as some folks seem to suggest. There were a couple brands of ammo that fared well enough for the FBI's book (12-18" or more), and having shot the 9's and .380's side-by-side (fine folks @ Frontier Firearms let my wife and I test the G42 and G43 on the range at the same time)... I could play w/ .380's all day long and not get sore.

 

While there may be a few mm's difference in overall area of the wound channel... as you say, you get popped w/ one or two of those, you're going to have a bad day! :lol: It may not push you back, or cause someone to instantly drop to the ground, but I believe it will achieve the goal of causing sufficient damage to the hydraulics to make further motion challenging at best!

 

It's been well established that shot placement is by far more critical than size of the puck (a .22 in the coconut will drop a horse!) So if I (or my wife) can spend more time practicing w/ the .380 and achieve better shot placement than w/ the larger 9 (let's not even get into +P, et. al.), I'd rather put a smaller, less expansive and penetrating round right in the sweet-spot, than blast away w/ a monster hoping I make contact with my target. If nothing else, my odd's of a follow-up shot are dramatically improved. I was able to empty that G42 pretty quickly... The 9 took a moment to re-acquire the target.

 

I'll leave the hand cannon's to those that feel the need to prove something to the other guy's at the range, I just want to survive the encounter!

 

That's something I really think gets lost in all these discussions. While penetration statistics are great, ask yourself what's the reason you're carrying? To look Badass (do you hold it sideways one-handed, too?) Sound cool w/ a thunderous clap every time your booger-hook pulls the bang-switch? Sure, they're great fun at the range, but... ballistics gel doesn't matter if your round lands in the dirt-pile or backstop.

 

Personally I'm worried about the criminals and wingnuts prowling everywhere these days. Merely displaying personal protection will run them off 99 times out of 100, unless they're on something, at which point, I believe based on what I've seen here, a single .380 in the bread-basket will give me enough of an advantage in the encounter to tip the odd's in my favor. Ditto for my wife!!! I don't understand why so many people downplay the effectiveness of this personal-protection round. You get that hole in your body... That's a bad day! :LOL:

 

- K

[Omega]

I am not a fan of the .380, not because of effectiveness, just much rather have a round which is officially adopted by enough government departments to keep it on the shelf. That has been my strategy since I started buying guns. I do own other calibers like the 300Blk which need reloading to be worth it, and the .270 which I only hunt with so I have enough components to last a lifetime, but all other calibers have been military or PD rounds at some time or another. Even the venerable .22 is the choice of many departments as practice rounds; though seeing how availability has been in the past that might change. For some time it was almost cheaper shooting 5.56 than .22.

I have always been an advocate of shot placement, and knew early on that most SD guns could be effective with the right cartridge. The bad thing is that we had to do our own tests with wet phone books, and Denver books are great for that, to confirm what the "experts" were pushing. I collected a few studies such as the one linked above throughout the years and they all helped solidify my beliefs. The bottom line is that it's better to have something than nothing, and you need to practice with that something so you can consistently hit a target where you want.

[musicman]

Sorry. Pointless post. I should stay off TGO when I'm this tired, lol! Edited October 25, 2015 by musicman

[Appalachian]

All those folks that say .40 does no better than 9mm should take a look at this test.

[JReedEsq]

Looks like I'm gonna have to go back to my gold dot 180's since the 165's have no expansion, unless I'm not reading the results right.

[JReedEsq]

This is interesting since the Tnoutdoors9 YouTube test had much different results for the 165 grain Gold Dots. His test showed as good results as I have seen for a .40 Edited October 26, 2015 by JReedEsq

[gl19gobang]

Yeah, I saw those tnoutdoors9 video's and liked the results. I'm gonna stick with my opinion from his test.