Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns .380 ACP Bubba-style Torture Test

Today is a great day to be alive. The sun was shining, the temperature was in the 40s, and the wind didn’t appear to be above 15 mph, so I went out on the prairie to blast some inanimate objects with mighty .380 ACP ammo. People scoff at the round, and most people don’t test it against anything but gel and cloth covered gel. If you want to learn more about the capabilities of the cartridge, you have to do it yourself.

The test gun was a Sig P365-380 with a 3.1 inch barrel. The test target array consisted of a piece of pine 2X6, followed by 2 pieces of 22 gauge steel sheet metal taped together, and a backstop of water jugs. I shot a 100 grain Buffalo Bore Outdoorsman hard cast flat point standard pressure, followed by a Lehigh 90 grain Xtreme Penetrator standard pressure, followed by a 99 grain Federal Hydra-Shok Deep, followed by a 90 grain Federal Hydra-Shok Low Recoil. Try to figure out in advance what happened.

First up, For Bristoe (and me), is the Buffalo Bore hard cast.


I keep my wife’s S&W Shield EZ loaded with this round because she likes the gun and carries it on hikes around the cabin. The load chrono’d at 954 out of the Sig and at 1004 out of the EZ.

Second up is the Lehigh Xtreme Penetrator.


I was carrying this load in my Glock 42 because it was barrier blind and did not overpenetrate when I shot it through some ribs backed by gel, in contrast to the Buffalo Bore against the same media.
I am going to have to test some of these in the EZ now!

Next is the Hydra-Shock Deep.


Given its name, I was a little surprised at this, not that I should have been given marketing hype.

Finally, there is the Hydra-Shock Low Recoil


The Low Recoil round really is a low recoil round. It is pleasant to shoot, especially out of a S&W Shield EZ. It also runs 974 fps out of the EZ, which is higher than what I got out of a Glock 42. (Have not chronographed it out of the Sig.) I was more impressed with this result than with the Deep given what it did to the water jug.

Here is an array of the fired bullets. From left to right are the Buffalo Bore, XP, HS Deep and HS Low Recoil.





Between the Buffalo Bore and the XP, guess which one cut the cleanest hole through the steel.





Lehigh isn’t offering loaded ammo since Wilson Combat acquired Lehigh. I bought some Underwood Xtreme Penetrators in standard pressure. It is faster than the Lehigh factory ammo out of the Sig, at an average of 1048 fps MV, but the ES (5 shots) was 75, much higher than the 16 ES (5 shots) of the Lehigh factory round. I intended to shoot one today, but I didn’t have enough water jugs because of the surprises that I got from shooting the first 2 rounds.

Good work there, Cheyenne!
Reassures my choice of Buffalo Bore Hard Cast ammo I’ve carried for years in my little Ruger LCP 380.

Thanks! If you ever get a chance to shoot one of those rounds into a live or deceased pig, I would appreciate hearing your observations. Tim of Military Arms Channel fired a 9mm Xtreme Penetrator at a nice size deceased pig through the left shoulder from about 3 feet away, and it did not exit the off side.

Update

I wanted to try some Lehigh 68 grain Xtreme Defenders and also wanted to see if I could bust a couple of suspected myths. Here are some tests with different ammo than the first batch.

First up was the Lehigh 68 grain Xtreme Defense. These were purchased off of Wilson Combat’s website. It does not appear at this time that Lehigh is selling loaded ammo on its own website, which is different than before Lehigh Defense was purchased by Wilson Combat.



This penetrated one less jug than the 90 grain Xtreme Penetrators, and penetrated slightly less than the Buffalo Bore hard cast.

Next up was Blazer Brass 95 grain FMJ RN. A lot of people assert that hardball will penetrate just as much as hard cast or Lehigh copper solid ammo. What do you think?



I tried this test twice and got the same result both times.

Next up was Hornady 90 grain Critical Defense. I am skeptical of ammo that is only tested against bare gel and cloth covered gel. Guess what happened.

[video:youtube] [/video]

Here is a photo of the recovered bullets.



I wanted to try it with Hornady Custom and American Gunner with the 90 grain XTP bullet (another mythological favorite), but I get bad bullet setback when chambering .380 rounds in my guns. I don’t know if I got a couple of out-of-spec batches of ammo or not, or if specifications have changed since I bought mine, but I won’t shoot them out of my guns.

I've never lacked confidence in .380 ACP, assuming a bullet constructed for the purpose you seek to fulfill. Hard cast is going to drive deep. A well designed hollow point is going to penetrate sufficiently, while also nicely expanding. I have no qualms about carrying a .380 from time to time.

Now, a .32 ACP is another story completely. That's closer to the performance realm of the .25 ACP than it is to the .380 ACP. Even the .32 ACP satisfies the first rule of gun fighting, however.

not dumping on the 380 at all I've had several. but when these micro 9mm's came out for instance in the 365 why would one choose the same size gun chambered in a 380 over a 9mm ? only viable reason I could think of is someone was really recoil sensitive for whatever reason??

but it is always fun to test stuff and have excuses to shoot more rounds I agree

^^ That’s a valid question and a thought that I have seen expressed many times in forums. What seems like an obvious answer to choose the more powerful firearm became more cloudy after I shot the .380 and 9mm versions of the 365 side by side. The .380 weighs 4 ounces less loaded and is better in a pocket than the 9mm version. More important, the learning curve was less and speed was much faster with the .380. When Bluedreaux challenged us to do the 40 yard “Dicken drill” a few months ago, I was much faster with better hits with the .380 than the 9mm, and I had many more thousands of rounds through the 9mm than the near new .380. I also had a red dot sight on the 9mm compared to the open sights of the 9mm. If one can get a decent enough confidence level in ammo that will penetrate some barriers, the .380 can make sense, especially for those who don’t practice much. As for me, the 9mm “standard” version gets carried almost exclusively. But, I have ramped up my shooting with the 9mm in an attempt to better improve my skill level with it. Shooting on the clock can be intimidating and humbling, especially around people, on 24HCF and in real life, who are really good.

I merely throw up these videos so people who don’t have a place where they can goof off and try stuff can get some context other than corporate marketing and Internet forum “truths.” From what I’ve done lately, I don’t see myself carrying conventional ball or the commonly loved JHPs in .380.

Excellent posts, sir - and I think we all appreciate the work you're doing to educate us better in the .380.. By any chance, have you tried the 94gr. 'defense line' offered by Prvi Partazan?

Great post, Cheyenne.

Very well done, thank you.

Thanks for the kind words, people!


No. Sorry. It is hard to find a good selection of factory .380 ammo around here. Most of the hollow points I am shooting these days were acquired prior to the shortages occasioned by the COVID hysteria supply-chain issues and the 2020 election.

sounds like the best answer anyone's ever given..

I missed this thread the first time around. Looks like a lot of fun.

Didn't even know a 380 version existed.

380 LCP Custom is my most carried gun. Easiest gun to conceal that I’ve ever owned.
Here’s a pic of a Federal HST I recovered.




Just wanted to include this link from a previous thread about different carry gun weights. I want to add that it isn’t so much the weight as it is the thickness for me.
https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbt...oad-out-weight-of-carry-gun#Post17106188

Great post, I too missed it!

I've been interested in getting my hands on some HST micro but I can't seem to find any around here. When I see on the box "Extreme bullet expansion for caliber," I get skeptical about penetration, especially if any kind of barrier is encountered. Can you tell us the medium from which this bullet was recovered and any objects through which it passed on the way to its resting spot?

I hope that anyone on 24HCF who is experimenting with modern .380 rounds would share their experiences and results. The ammo companies don't seem interested in doing so other than with bare ballistic gel and cloth covered ballistic gel. Thanks in advance!

Thanks. A lot of time and effort there.

I’ve thought about the Glock 42..for [bleep] and giggles. A kind of go anywhere pistol.

Yea that’s an old box I’ve had for awhile. You are right about the penetration. I can’t even remember what I shot that in to. It would definitely be a good summer carry bullet.
The box I’m showing is listing 1030fps and the newer HST on Federal’s page lists it at 935fps, same part number on both boxes. No idea of what firearm was used for either.

Check out the Kahr P-380... Only .75" wide... It's the slimmest handgun I own and can be very inconspicuous in the pocket..

Of course everyone knows a 380 isn’t any good for self protection. Many times a perp has been shot with a .380 and they will always say “that didn’t hurt”

damn good info, and well presented. Thanks

I have to apologize, the picture of the bullet I posted is not a 380 HST. I have no idea what it is. It is a 9mm and the weight is 133gr. as shown but can’t remember the manufacturer. I’m thinking a 124gr GD with extra weight added from what ever I recovered it from (never owned 147gr GD’s). I was going through more of my bullets and found the real one. Sorry for the mistake.
Here’s a picture of a 380 HST. 99gr. as shown.

If you want to give a .380 a *true* torture test, have a brain fart that causes you to think that the "2" on the 10th beam of the scale means 2/10ths instead of 2 grains.

7 grains of AA#5 under a 100 grain hardcast bullet will make a LCP Max *BARK* (I was looking for 5.2 grains,...which would have been a very warm load in itself. Instead I dumped 7 grains in)

I guesstimate about 41,000 PSI and 1350 fps. Those Buffalo Bore .380+Ps ain't got *schitt* on it.

10 rounds of it didn't blow nothing up. But the little LCP Max rattles a bit more than it did before.

Hence, my purchase of a Glock 43 this morning.

Update

I shot some more .380 ammo. However, it occurred to me that I have not run the same test using any other calibers. So, I figured I would run the same test with “gold standard” 9mm ammo. I shot the same array with a 9mm Speer 124 grain standard pressure Gold Dot. This is a very standard police load fired out of 4-4.5 inch duty barrels. I fired this round out of my 3.1 inch barreled Sig P365. Figure another 50 FPS out of a longer barrel and figure 50 FPS extra velocity over standard pressure out of +P rounds.



Back to the .380 tests.

.380 Hornady Custom 90 grain XTP. This is a darling of the Internet crowd along with the Critical Defense ammo. I had to slowly feed this into the chamber because I get a lot of bullet setback with this ammo.



Another new darling is the 85 grain Federal Punch.



A long time Internet favorite is the Speer 90 grain Gold Dot. I love Gold Dots but not in .380.



crttrgttr sent me this ammo so I tried it. 56 grain Novx.



I recently tried a .380 Lehigh 90 grain Xtreme Penetrator. See earlier in this thread. Since Lehigh was acquired by Wilson Combat, I have not seen this as loaded ammo. Underwood loads the XP, so I bought some standard pressure, which runs about 50 fps faster than the Lehigh version.



Draw your own conclusions. I will share mine at some point.

Very interesting and informative thread, thanks for sharing.

Here are the recovered bullets from the tests I did yesterday.





It should come as no surprise that I prefer the standard pressure hard cast and the Lehigh Xtreme Penetrator bullets in my .380 guns. Aside from the lack of expansion, they were able to hang with the 9mm Gold Dot from a penetration standpoint. (I now will have to try the 9mm Gold Dots from longer barreled guns to see how much more penetration they will deliver.) I was thinking about transitioning to the Lehigh 68 grain Xtreme Defense in my Sig. However, when I was chronographing after I ran the barrier test a couple of weeks ago, I got 1 malfunction in each of 2-5 shot strings. The empty case would not completely clear the ejection port both times. I don't recall exactly what happened the first time, but the second time the next live round was already partially inside the chamber. It appears to be cycling the slide so fast that the case is getting hung up between the rear of the barrel hood and the slide. I may give them a try in the Glock 42 because the recoil spring appears to be stiffer.

Aside from the malfunctions with the XD round, I have had no other malfunctions with the ammo tested in this thread. I did have 1 Sig V-Crown 90 grain hollow point (ironic considering that the gun is a Sig) that did not lock the slide back after the last shot when chronographing. The average muzzle velocity was an anemic 846 FPS. I did not bother to try that ammo in this series.

Stay safe.

I'm sorry for being Late to this party!!!

Cheyenne, those are excellent, informative videos. Thank you very much! My g42 likes both the 90 xtp and 90 gr sierra sportsmaster. Hornady factory critical defense has done well in my pistol but I prefer to reload. Yet after seeing those 100 gr hard cast and 90 xp go to work in your tests, I'm needing to up my game.

Thanks again for everyone's comments. If anyone has any of their own testing to share, please feel free to add them to this thread. As of this writing I am not contemplating any more .380 testing unless something new comes along. I do intend to shoot some standard pressure 124 grain 9mm Gold Dots out of my Sig P365 XL and out of a longer barreled 9mm to see how they do in relation to the one fired out of the P365. But, that may not be added on this thread unless the results somehow relate to it.

I don't own a .380, but wow, this was a fun read!

Thanks for all the time and hard work that went into this thread, Cheyenne! You Da Man!

Excellent info indeed! My only issue (personal) is that I do not reload for the .380.. I love those Lehigh bullets though, and reload those into my 9mm stuff..

Thank you for all your work!

Thanks a bunch for the info you posted and the videos!

I settled on Lehigh for my 9mms and the 380s also. I wish they still made their 32 caliber bullets.

OK. I said that I was not going to post my follow-up shot with a 9mm Sig P365 XL unless it had some relevance to the .380 tests. Well, I think it did. Here are two shots from today.

Sig P365 XL loaded with 9mm Speer 124 grain standard pressure Gold Dot. Sorry about the wind noise. It's Wyoming, what can I say.


I also did one more. This one is for SargeMO. Sig P229DAK loaded with a .40 S&W 180 grain Gold Dot.


Notice the jug separation between the 4 jugs.

I later found some slivers of metal in jug 3 or 4 (can’t remember) of the 9mm jugs. On closer inspection, I think they are probably pieces of the sheet metal because they appear to be cutouts. Here are pictures of the front and back of the sheet metal and what I recovered from the two shots. Like Paul Harrell says, you be the judge.





When you consider what a 9mm and a .40 S&W from a compact barrel will do even after hitting a stout barrier, it appears that concerns about .380 “overpenetration” with hard cast and solid copper projectiles are a bit overrated. I shot the 9mm and 40 S&W rounds today because the Buffalo Bore hard cast and Lehigh XD did about the same as the Gold Dot from the mini-nine P365 in terms of penetration while the Lehigh XP and Underwood XP exceeded the penetration from the P365. They did not best the penetration of the Sig P365 XL or the 229, and even those guns do not have barrel lengths as long as full-sized duty guns.

Finally, although this is not a 9mm thread, an extra .6 inch of barrel on the P365 XL appears to have made a big difference in penetration. That should not come as a big surprise, though. Oh, and the .40 S&W results were impressive!

Hope I haven’t bored you. Also, thanks to the people who posted positive thoughts after my last post.

Stay safe.

Thank you Cheyenne for your work. I’m thinking the wood 2 pieces of steel are skewing the results for hollow point defense ammo. Maybe a couple shirts or a blue jean leg would be more realistic for that. Of
Course unless you’re just looking for penetration results. Anyway, thanks again for your efforts!

Ron

Thanks! Yes, the test was skewed toward penetration over expansion. Here is my thought process. I have said parts of this in some other threads over the years, so I may as well put it all in one that I started.

As I understand the FBI protocols used for testing LE duty ammunition, 70% importance is given to penetration and consistency of penetration, 20% to expansion, and 10% to weight retention. Source: https://www.brassfetcher.com/FBI%20Ammunition%20Protocol/FBI%20Ammunition%20Protocol.html
The test involves five separate shots at 6 different sets of media, namely, bare gel, cloth covered gel, and cloth covered gel placed behind each of plywood, wallboard, sheet metal (heavier 20 gauge, not the stuff I used) and windshield glass. The results are weighted based on criteria deemed important by the FBI and are cranked into a formula used to assign a number score to the ammo. In looking at the criteria in the above link (Note that the criteria are stated to be for 9mm Luger, which may be read to imply that there are different weightings for different calibers, but I do not know this.), penetration under 12 inches for any shot is assigned a point value of 1 per shot under 12 inches, while penetration over 18 inches is awarded 5 points per shot. Penetration between 12 and 18 inches is awarded points in the 8-10 range, with 14-15.99 inches getting 10 and 16 to 18 inches getting 9 points. There is no disqualification for penetration over 18 inches-it is awarded exactly half credit.

The manufacturers, social media influencers and hobbyists frequently conduct bare gel and cloth covered gel tests with .380 and proclaim that their tested ammo “meets FBI specifications.” Well, that is not true. They may perform well in 1/3 of the tests, but the reviewers are not performing the other 4. Ballistic gelatin “match[es] the low-velocity flow characteristics of living muscle tissue and have very similar density to mammalian muscle tissue.” See above article. It does not represent things like bone, pocket clutter or barriers.

Why are the testers ignoring the other 4 tests? Because .380 ammo that barely makes 12 inches in plain gel or cloth covered gel will suck when put through the barrier tests, losing a lot of points per shot and also on the score for number of shots per test under 12 inches. So, they focus on pretty mushrooms, which the FBI thinks is substantially less important than penetration. Now, a lot of reviewers imply that barrier penetration is not important because non-police people carrying .380s are only going to be getting in “best case scenario” shootings at 3 yards against someone facing them squarely out in the open. I also see people on forums say that their strategy with their .380 is to dump a couple of rounds and run away. Well, those ideas contain huge assumptions upon which I am not willing to rely. How does one know that there won’t be a side shot, or one through any kind of barriers? How does one know that getting away from a bad guy will not involve running over him? So, I shoot any ammo that does not receive the benefit of massive taxpayer funded research against a variety of stuff to see what it will do.

If someone would expend the effort to run the full FBI protocol tests with .380 hard cast flat points or mono-metal solids, I suspect that those rounds would perform fairly well for a pipsqueak caliber and substantially better than any .380 hollow point out there. I also don’t think they would overpenetrate on the gel based on some other gonzo testing I have posted here in the past. There would be excellent weight retention, which would help on that 10% metric. Expansion would be minimal, but that is only 20%.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. I welcome debate and input from anyone who can add context on the basis of knowledge, training and experience. I know we have tons of it on this forum spread across a number of fields of study, occupations and avocations. Also, if anyone has more detailed knowledge about the FBI testing protocols that may differ from what I found on the Internet, please share that information.

Stay safe.

Thanks Cheyenne! I’m sure those tests were fun, but tedious too.

Ron

Gotta wonder what the .380 ACP performance would be like from a 4-1/4” barrel, such as on this pistol developed for the Mexican market:

The difference would probably be about 50-100 FPS.

http://www.ballisticsbytheinch.com/

OK, OK, just one more. After having some bobbles with the Lehigh branded 68 grain XD rounds, that were starting out in the low to high 1000s, I handloaded some XDs that were in the mid-1100s and, so far, give good functioning. I bought some loaded, allegedly standard pressure, Underwood 68 grain XD ammo. With only a few downrange, they function well and eject well and give good results. Notice the back of jug 2.



It dented jug 4.

I think I can live with these or the XPs. I will report if I have any issues.

After cogitating on the video posted just above this, I decided to see what kind of penetration I would get when shooting only water jugs with the same round. I did it twice, once a couple of months ago and once recently. Here is the most recent one.



I got into jug 4 with a dimple on jug 5 with the earlier shot. But, there was too much wind noise and a narration error, and I didn’t publish it. In contrast, note that a Speer 9mm standard pressure 124 grain 9mm Gold Dot fired out of a Sig P365 XL stopped in jug 3. The Gold Dot expanded nicely, which, obviously, the XD round will not do.

I had a couple of water jugs left and decided to add another piece of 22 gauge steel in front of the wood and see what happened.



I am guessing it would have gotten into the third jug.

My little Sig is loaded with this round. I need to shoot some more of it in my Glock 42 to test for functioning, but it's fine so far. Note that I can only chamber rounds once in the Sig before putting them in the practice pile because a slight bit of setback starts with the first chambering. That's not great, but I can live with it.

I carry a shield ez .380. I really like all the testing you’ve done, thanks for posting your findings!