Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns My unscientific 9mm ammo test

You mean all of those highway patrolmen carrying .357 Magnums all those years - they will crack an engine block! - were wrong?!

I may be confusing things, but isn't the reason Clyde Barrow preferred the .30-06 BAR was because it would shoot through a car?

I have notes on better than two dozen OIS's that I have reviewed where the officer's handgun bullet struck the bones of the eye socket or forehead and were deflected, involving 9mm, 38 Special, 357 Mag and SIG, 40 S&W, and 45 ACP. I have heard of (but not personally reviewed the cases) of 44 Magnum bullets being likewise deflected, one case of which was related to me by the officer who shot the suspect and saw the "failure" personally. (He put the next 5 bullets into the brain pan, however, so all's well that ends well!) I have heard of such failures happening in the non-OIS realm quite a bit, too.

When people hear about these OIS failures, they almost invariably point at the caliber/bullet/gun in question as the reason for the failure. This is utter nonsense. I know of two agencies that were so dismayed by this phenomenon that they switched to a "more powerful" caliber as a result, at very high cost to the taxpayer.

But people who do this don't take into account two very important facts: 1)all police service caliber handgun bullets are slow and ballistically inferior to rifle bullets, and 2) the bones of the face (particularly the eye sockets) are extremely dense and hard, and are sloped like the armor on the front of a battle tank to deflect injurious blows. If you fire any handgun bullet against these sloping bony surfaces and the angle of incidence is more than a few degrees off perpendicular to the bone surface, the bullet will slide off and tunnel under the skin.

The simple fact is that ALL service caliber handgun bullets are relatively weak missiles, and you have to place your shots into vital structures if you want to stop a felon's violent actions. All manner of circumstances can cause one or two (or even 4) of your bullets to fail to finish the job.

This is why we teach our guys from the Tao of Connor: "Don't shoot your opponent until you think he's dead; shoot him until he thinks he's dead."

No question! Heavy non-JHP bullets will probably do better than JHP's. High velocity 5.7mm bullets will penetrate much better than standard-velocity JHP's.

And you have to keep in mind that LEO's don't have a "bullet choice". They get to shoot what's been issued to them, which will be standard velocity JHP's and which were not chosen for their ability to perforate car doors.

I've edited my earlier post to reflect this realitiy.

Jim, as I understand it the early 357 Magnum rounds were hard-cast bullets at obscenely high velocities and pressures (by current SAAMI standards) which were ostensibly designed to shoot through car doors, as a means of addressing the new-fangled bank robbers' modus operandi (escaping from the crime in cars equipped with heavy steel doors of the day!).

And yes, I had heard the same thing about Barrow's choice of the BAR. Apparently, he was not impressed with the ability of the 45 ACP Thompson's ability to shoot through automotive sheet metal, and he was certainly experienced in that field!

The Thompson indeed did and would shoot through car doors of the era.
The only 357 loads that I have chrono'ed of modern manufacture that will match the speeds of 60's and 70's manufactured 357 ammo is by Buffalo Bore. Most factory loaded 357 ammo today shot out of my 357's send the 158 grainers out in the 1200 FPS range. The Buffalo Bore 158's that I chrono'ed are in the 1400 FPS range. A significant step up IMHO and experience

Yes, a step up indeed! I bought a few boxes of Buffalo Bore's "low flash" 357 Magnum ammo a couple years ago and it's stoutly loaded, all right.

I have about half a case of Super Vel 158 gr 357 Magnum ammo from the early 70's that I shoot a bit of now and then. Out of my 3" M65 it does 1200 fps and out of a 5" 586 it pushes 1400. Fire it in the dark and you're blind for a while!

According to Elmer Keith's writing, the early 357 Mag ammo exceeded even the Super Vel numbers and would shoot a triple-lock 357 MAGNUM revolver loose in relatively short order!