Author Archives: Shooting The Bull

Bullet Size – The Other Major Factor In Bullet Effectiveness

In my previous article I discussed at length about ballistics gel testing and penetration. In this article I’d like to look at some other factors that have a substantial impact on the effectiveness of a given shot being able to produce an incapacitating hit.

Is Penetration “Everything”?

There are several factors that work together to create an effective incapacitating hit. Those factors include (in no particular order) placement, penetration, bullet type, and bullet size. All are important factors, and isolating one over the others would be foolhardy. It’d also be quite common! But it’s not wise. All of the factors need to be carefully considered.

Penetration is important, but it is not all-important. It is just one of many factors you must consider. If your bullet cannot penetrate deeply enough to deliver an incapacitating hit, then you cannot rely on it to produce incapacitating hits — no matter how good your placement, no matter how big the bullet expands, if it doesn’t penetrate deeply enough, it’s all for naught. So adequate penetration is important, and avoiding overpenetration is also important. As mentioned in the previous article, a shallow-penetrating bullet isn’t worthless, it may still be very effective in discouraging an attacker from continuing an attack, but it likely can’t force the attacker to stop.

What About “Placement Is Everything”?

Hang around any gun forum and it won’t be long before you run into people repeating the mantra “Shot Placement – Shot Placement – Shot Placement”. The argument goes that a good hit with a .22 beats a miss with a .45 any day. And that’s true, obviously. But is placement everything? Definitely not!

(I can hear the keyboards revving up now, with people preparing to blast me for daring to say that placement is not everything, so … hear me out…)

Shot placement is important. It is vital. A poorly-placed shot is not going to be effective. So shot placement is highly important. But it is also, of all the other factors, the only factor you CAN’T control. You can buy deeply-penetrating ammo. You can buy widely-expanding ammo. You can test for reliable performance of your ammo. Those are things you can control. But shot placement, that’s almost certainly going to be completely out of your control! Consider that the NYPD has been compiling shooting statistics for decades, and they find that when their officers are involved in a shooting, only about 1 of every six shots fired actually hits the target. At all. Meaning five out of six shots miss completely! Not that they just missed getting perfect shot placement, it’s that they missed the target entirely! The above-linked article is just a recent news report on the most recent decade’s statistics, but the NYPD has been compiling statistics for many decades and the results are reasonably consistent. Other police departments occasionally release their shot-to-hit statistics, and some of them are comparable, some a little better, but the best I’ve ever seen reported was 49%. Meaning that trained police offers are still missing the target ENTIRELY more than they are hitting it. When people assert “shot placement” as the primary factor, it’s difficult to reconcile that against trained police officers missing five out of six shots. Clearly the factors of stress, adrenaline, danger, panic, and other factors all combine to make hitting a living target a substantially more difficult factor than range practice!

We WANT to place the shots perfectly. We all have that goal (including, I dare say, every one of those police officers who were involved in those shootings!) But we may not be able to place those shots perfectly. And that’s why we need to have the best ammo on hand, to help us out, and to hopefully turn some of those not-quite-perfectly placed shots into good incapacitating hits anyway.

Now, this isn’t to say that you can’t train under stress to get better and better — you should, of course. The more trained you are, the better you’re likely to perform if you’re ever unfortunate enough to actually have to participate in a defensive shooting. Just don’t confuse training and target practice with equaling great shot placement in a real-life shooting scenario. I think sometimes those who advocate shot placement so heavily, are likely hunters, used to targeting their prey with a scope, and being able to precisely pick the spot where they intend to shoot. That may work for hunting, but against humans that type of target selection would be called “first degree murder.” If you have that much time to carefully select where you’re going to hit a person, then a prosecuting attorney may very well be able to argue that you weren’t in immediate danger of substantial injury or loss of life, and that your choice to shoot was premeditated and calculated (even if the choice was made in the course of a few seconds). Having time to carefully select your shot placement isn’t too likely in a defensive shooting situation. It is far more likely that when the bullets start flying you’re going to be drawing and shooting as quickly as you can, as best you can, but there won’t be any careful aiming, and deliberate shot placement may be an elusive goal. You always want to aim as carefully as you can, of course, and you are morally and legally obligated to be as responsible with your shots as possible, but when you’re experiencing the Mother Of All Adrenaline Dumps along with the tunnel vision and other physiological effects that occur during this most stressful period that most any human will ever face, precision targeting is likely to be difficult to attain.

Besides, you can have the very best shot placement and still be totally ineffective. If you are able to place a shot directly on an attacker’s heart, but the bullet stops an inch short of the heart, then — what have you accomplished? Your attacker can keep attacking. Shot placement can be perfect, yet completely ineffective. Shot placement alone will not guarantee you success. But shot placement, combined with adequate penetration, and enhanced by a larger bullet size, will greatly increase your odds of achieving an incapacitating hit.

About Bullet Size

Ah, caliber wars — the stuff internet gun forums are made of. People love to argue about which calibers are “effective” and which aren’t. The FBI’s report on Handgun Wounding and Effectiveness determined one simple rule — all other things being equal, the bigger bullet is more effective. Period.

That’s a definitive statement, yes. But it’s also reasonable. The bigger the bullet is, the more tissue it crushes during its journey through the attacker, and the more likely a larger bullet is to hit something vital. That’s not to say smaller calibers aren’t or can’t be effective; obviously they can be. But if all other things are equal, the bigger bullet may hit something vital that the smaller bullet misses. Imagine a situation where you have two bullets, one from a .22LR pistol, and one from a .45 ACP. Both of them have been tested to deliver 12″ of penetration in ballistics gelatin. Why wouldn’t the .22 be considered just as effective as the .45? It penetrates deeply enough, after all, so — what’s the big deal?

The deal is in the “big”. A .22LR full metal jacket round has a diameter of just about 1/5 of an inch. It may penetrate deeply, and if it hits a vital organ or major artery it may very well cause an incapacitating hit. But the odds of it hitting something vital, are lower than the odds of a bigger bullet hitting something vital. Imagine a case of where a major artery is near the spinal column. It’s entirely conceivable that the tiny .22LR bullet might slip right between the artery and spinal column, exiting out the back and hitting nothing substantial. Whereas using a .45 ACP hollow-point (which expands to a maximum size of around 1″ across), it is approximately 20x larger than the 22LR bullet! If it was fired to that exact same spot (between the artery and spine), the bigger bullet might smash through the spinal cord on its left side and also cut through the artery on the right, whereas the .22LR went right between them hitting nothing. Size, in this case, does matter, and the bigger the bullet you have can compensate (to some degree) for less-than-perfect shot placement.

That’s not to say that only a .45 ACP will be effective! Any of the major calibers (9mm, 10mm, 357 Sig, 357 Magnum, 40 S&W, 44 Special, 44 Magnum, 45 Colt, 45 ACP, etc) all are capable of creating deeply penetrating wounds with expanding bullets. All are capable of being effective manstoppers, and the choice among them shouldn’t be about “only a .45 is good enough” or other such absolutist dogma, rather it should be about capacity, recoil, reliability, familiarity, affordability, and other such factors. The gun you practice with, the gun you can shoot well, the one you can carry conveniently, the one you can reliably hit your target with and the one that works with 100% reliability, is the one you should consider for your primary defensive weapon, and only after you’ve satisfied those requirements should you worry about the caliber (assuming, of course, that it’s chambered in one of the above-mentioned calibers or comparable).

Also, different bullets expand to different dimensions. Some bullets are tuned for “maximum expansion”, some are tuned for “controlled expansion.” It’s possible that you could find a 9mm hollowpoint bullet that expands to a larger diameter than a given .45 ACP hollowpoint. Assuming that both were capable of reaching the 12″ minimum in ballistics gel, this hypothetical 9mm bullet could possibly be a more-likely-to-incapacitate round than this hypothetical .45.

When evaluating bullets for incapacitation potential, the simplest possible formula is that you want the very biggest bullet you can get, that also penetrates between 12″ and 18″ of ballistics gel. That’s the simplest rule. Once you get the desired penetration performance, you then want to see as much expansion as possible. A bullet that expands too much, won’t be able to penetrate as deeply; think of an expanding hollowpoint as like a “parachute”; as the bullet opens up it really slows the bullet down and limits its penetration. Ideally we’d like to see a bullet that could travel through about 14 – 15″ of ballistics gelatin and expand to the biggest diameter possible. But that’s not the only consideration! You also want to consider recoil, muzzle flash, muzzle flip, all sorts of factors that could come into play in affecting your ability to get a second shot off. As an example, here are two .45 ACP rounds; on the left is a Federal Premium HST +P 230-grain round, on the right is a 185-grain Hornady Critical Defense (note: I’m showing the backs of the bullets because it exemplifies the relative expansion more dramatically).

In the above example, both are .45 ACPs, both penetrate to about 12-13″ in ballistic gel, but clearly the Federal HST expanded to a much, much bigger size than the Critical Defense. How can this be? Well, the Federal is a 230-grain bullet, and the Hornady is only a 185-grain bullet. And, the Federal is a “+P” round, whereas the Hornady is a standard-pressure round. The net effect on the shooter is that the Hornady is a “softer-shooting” round than the Federal is. A shooter who can handle the increased recoil and increased muzzle flip of the more-powerful +P round might benefit from the additional expansion, whereas a shooter who values the greater controllability of the softer-shooting round may not mind trading off some expansion in exchange for the greater control they would receive.

And that’s why ammo selection becomes a personal thing, and not a “right or wrong” decision. For some shooters, a .380 is all they want and all they need. Some shooters want the biggest, deepest-penetrating, biggest-expanding round they can get. And some shooters want a Glock, because they like the way it shoots and they like the way it feels. And some want a .357, because they have lots of .357 ammunition on hand. And some want a 9mm, because they want to have 17 rounds of capacity in their Glock G19. All of these are fine decisions, and none of them (with the possible exception of the 380) will lead to an inadequate performer that’s incapable of providing incapacitating hits.

Choose what you will use. Choose what you can handle. Choose what you can shoot effectively and accurately. And, I’d suggest, choose ammo for it that provides the penetration and the expansion to give you the best opportunity for an incapacitating hit.

Bullet Effectiveness — what’s the big deal about 12″ penetration anyway?

32 Replies

In my ongoing quest to find the ideally suitable .380 round for a Taurus TCP, I’ve specified that I’d like the ammo to be able to meet the minimum 12″ penetration as specified by the FBI’s ammo testing protocol.

Needless to say, that’s generated some comments from various people, who want to know: Why? Questions such as “Why do you need 12 inches? The average bad guy isn’t even 12″ thick.” Or “Why do you need to follow the FBI protocol — you’re not the FBI.” Or “I don’t fancy myself some SWAT agent, so I don’t care what the FBI protocol is…”

Truth be told, I understand where they’re all coming from. The most recent question was a simple one, in relation to one of my videos showing that the ammo would barely penetrate 10″, a person asked “why is 10 inches bad?” I went on a writing rampage to try to explain it, and figured that instead of being buried as a forum post, it might make a decent article for the blog here.

Accordingly, here is what I might call…

A Beginner’s Guide to Ballistic Gel Testing Standards

In reference to the question “why is 10 inches of bullet penetration bad?” — It’s not that 10 inches is “bad” — in fact, I’d dare say that a lot of folks would be content with 10 inches, and that a bullet that penetrates 10″ of ballistic gel may possibly be an effective manstopper, under the right conditions.

But don’t confuse 10″ of gel penetration with 10 inches of torso thickness — they’re not intended to be the same thing!

Here’s the thing — some of the best minds in the business got together to evaluate handgun performance and come up with some standards that would result in repeatable, predictable, effective ammo performance. A disastrous shootout in Miami resulted in calls to find out what went wrong, and how to prevent it occurring again. The results are published in the FBI report “Handgun Wounding Factors and Effectiveness”. You can read the entire report at www.firearmstactical.com, just google “Handgun Wounding Factors and Effectiveness“.

What is Ballistics Gelatin?
Ballistics gel is designed to mimic the properties of human tissue, and a bullet’s penetration in ballistics gel should be comparable to how the bullet would have penetrated through muscle tissue in a human being. Ballistics gel is made from boiled-up animal tissue (hide, ligaments, tendons, etc) that is then distilled down to a powder (gelatin powder) and then mixed at a precise ratio and under precise conditions to result in a product (ballistic gel) that mimics the properties of flesh (to such forces as resistance, shear, stress, and tearing). Mainly because it is flesh, just boiled and mixed together to make one big homogenous block. It’s not exactly the same thing as flesh (you can easily tear off a chunk, for example) but as far as its response to a bullet, it is an excellent and highly accurate simulant. It has been extensively correlated against actual shootings and wound examinations of trauma victims, and the penetration and expansion characteristics have been verified as being quite accurate to actual trauma wounds.

As said before, ballistics gel provides a tissue simulant that is homogenous (all consistent, all the same). But humans aren’t homogenous. We’re made of all sorts of different densities — lungs are basically empty, bones are comparatively dense, then there are super-stretchy tissues like intestines and not-stretchy tissues like the liver… we’re not homogenous. So ballistic gel isn’t designed to exactly mimic the human BODY, it’s designed to mimic a relatively homogenous tissue such as muscle tissue.

“I’ve never been attacked by a block of Jell-O”…

I hear this a lot, from people who just don’t seem to understand — shooting into ballistic gel isn’t designed to mimic shooting into a human body. Shooting into ballistic gel is designed to create a repeatable, standardized testing method that replicates the average performance of a bullet through a body, but does so in a way that is predictable, controlled, repeatable and directly comparable. Because shooting into a body is one of the most unpredictable things we can do. There are so many variables, it’s nearly impossible to account for them all! Whether a bullet tumbles or not, whether it expands or not, whether it strikes a bone or not, whether it strikes that bone head-on and passes right through, or it strikes the side of a rib and is deflected; whether it strikes a critical organ or whether it sails straight through without hitting anything vital, whether it cuts an artery or only passes through a lung, and on and on and on… there’s no way to predict what will happen.

So we don’t try. What we do, is we try to come up with a way of ranking the power of bullets through a homogenous medium of flesh. I know people that get all bent out of shape about “jello shots” because “it’s not a body” but that’s not the point — what it is, is a way of saying “if you shot this bullet into muscle tissue, this is the results you’d get.” And those results have been highly correlated against actual shooting victims. And then you can directly compare the ballistics gel results from one bullet, to what you’d get with another bullet. If one expands more and penetrates deeper, then you can unequivocally say “this bullet would produce more damage in a human body than that one, all other things being equal.”

Why Do I Want My Bullets To Be Capable Of 12″ (or more) Of Penetration?

So here’s a question that people seem to get confused over — does 10″ of ballistic gel penetration mean 10″ of penetration through a chest? Not necessarily. Maybe. Maybe not. It depends on the shot. And it depends on the chest — if our attacker is a 105-pound waif supermodel, who is literally skin and bones, that 10″-gel-penetrating bullet might pass clean through her. If we’re being attacked by a professional bodybuilder with a 52″ chest that’s all muscle, the bullet might stop well short of hitting his vitals. If we’re being attacked by a 350-lb barbecue-and-gravy aficionado with a 52″ chest that’s all fat, the bullet might penetrate further through his chest than it would in the bodybuilder’s, but still stop well short of his vitals. We don’t know what our actual shooting scenario will be, until we’re in it.

But what we DO know, is that if the bullet is able to go through 12″ of ballistic gel, it will also be able to punch through pretty much all of their chests and reach their vitals. And that’s what counts. Think of it as a relative power ranking, because, well, really, that’s what it is — a more powerful bullet could push through more inches of gel. And, accordingly, no matter what tissue it hits in the body, it would be able to push through more of it, than a less-powerful bullet would be able to, if that less-powerful bullet were to have hit in exactly the same spot on a genetically-identical body.

So the penetration question is not about the chest thickness, it’s about however much tissue the bullet can penetrate through, regardless of what type of tissue it encounters (bone, lung, bowel, muscle, fat, etc). The 12″ minimum takes account of factors such as having to shoot through bones, and at odd angles. It’s all already factored in.

And bullet penetration is influenced by a number of design factors — the weight of the bullet, the type of bullet (a solid FMJ or an expanding hollowpoint), the speed of the bullet, the diameter (or caliber) of the bullet; all of these things have a direct influence on how deeply the bullet will penetrate. Which is why we have to test. And why we need a standardized testing medium to test in; one that will deliver consistent and comparable results.

The 12″ penetration figure the FBI arrived at is also a MINIMUM. They would actually prefer to see about 14-15″. The acceptable range for them is 12″ to 18″ of penetration; if it penetrates over 18″ then it would probably exit most bodies and therefore be not as efficient in delivering a wound, and also pose a threat to whatever/whoever is behind the target. If it penetrates less than 12″, then it may not possess enough energy to reach the vital organs and cause an immediate incapacitation of the target.

What Stops An Attacker?

Now, keep in mind — an 8″-penetrating bullet may hurt like hell, it may cause a lot of bleeding, it may make the person who got shot drop their weapon and say “no more!” That all may happen. But it may not. The target may be feeling no pain, they may be on drugs or feeling so much adrenaline that they don’t actually recognize that they’ve been shot, they may continue attacking even after having been shot. That 8″ bullet may actually kill them eventually, too, through aggregated blood loss or through infection or any number of reasons. But when talking about having to shoot in self defense, we’re not trying to kill our attacker, we’re trying to STOP our attacker — immediately. And the only way to force a quick stop is to either hit the central nervous system (brain/upper spine) or damage the circulatory system such that it causes a rapid bleed-out and thus loss of blood pressure, which will deprive the brain of oxygen and cause them to fall unconscious. That’s the goal — stop the attacker from continuing their attack. We’re not trying to “kill” someone, we’re trying to stop them from killing us.

An attacker will stop for several reasons that are completely voluntary: sometimes just seeing a gun in your hand would cause an attacker to stop. Sometimes seeing a gun pointed at them would cause them to stop. Sometimes feeling the pain of a bullet hitting them would cause them to stop immediately. Sometimes they may experience a psychological shock upon being hit, that causes them to drop to the ground. But all of those rely on the attacker WANTING to stop, or choosing to stop. And, frankly, sometimes they don’t want to stop, sometimes they choose not to stop, and you may have to force them to stop. The only way to force them to stop is to take away their ability to attack — either through a central nervous system hit, or through rendering them unconscious (or dead.) This is called an “incapacitating” hit — it’s when you take away their capacity to attack, so that they have no more capability of attacking.

Any type of bullet could cause any of the voluntary reasons to stop. A tiny little .22LR or .25 ACP is just as capable of causing pain and fear and psychological shock as a .45 ACP. Any gun is better than no gun, and many guns can provide enough incentive to get an attacker to choose to stop. But in order to FORCE them to stop, you need to have the capability of rendering an incapacitating shot.

If you are relying on your weapon to render them unconscious/unable to move (or dead), then you need a bullet that can penetrate deeply enough to hit those vital organs and force their physiology to shut down. The FBI testing came to the conclusions that a bullet needed the ability to penetrate through 12″ of gel in order to have the minimum amount of power necessary to (with proper placement) force the attacker to stop attacking. And that penetrating 18″ or more was undesirable too. It’s not about “the most penetration”, it’s about “enough penetration to hit the vital organs”.

Obstacles And Barriers
Here’s a key thing that many people don’t seem to factor in — you won’t always have a clean shot at the attacker’s chest. In fact, you frequently won’t have that clean shot. There will or may be barriers in the way. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen video of attackers and defenders just standing facing each other, pointed at each other in classic Isosceles stances, trading chest shots, but I don’t think it’s too frequent! The most common barriers you’ll encounter are clothing, and other limbs. For example — if the attacker decides to shoot at you sideways, you may find yourself having to shoot through their arm or shoulder to even get to their chest — and that arm might be three or four inches thick or even more. Or, a more likely scenario, what if you and the attacker are pointing guns at each other — in order to hit his chest, you may very well have to shoot through his forearm. At an angle. So the bullet might have to penetrate the outer layer of skin, traverse five or six inches diagonally through a forearm, and then push through the inside layer of forearm skin before it can even get to his chest. That’s going to eat up a tremendous amount of the bullet’s energy; by the time it hits his chest it will already be expanded, and have lost much of its energy, and may not have enough power left to penetrate very deeply at all. It’ll cause pain, sure, but the odds against it causing an incapacitating hit are much lower. You’d need a really powerful bullet to be able to remain effective after encountering such a barrier — a bullet that would probably be able to travel through 14″-15″ of ballistic gel.

Now, law enforcement officers will face barriers that the general public aren’t as likely to; law enforcement officers may need to shoot through windows, windshields, car doors, etc., and so they need ammunition that they can count on that can overcome those barriers (and that’s why the FBI ammo test protocols include testing against bare gelatin, against “heavily clothed” gelatin, against windshields, and other barriers). I would argue that in a personal defense scenario, we are not as likely to encounter such situations. If there are substantial barriers between us and our attacker, that’s something you’re going to have to consider in the overall context of “are you in immediate danger of suffering severe injury or death” (or whatever your particular State’s legal standard is before the use of deadly force is justified). In a standard mugging scenario, none of these barriers will likely apply, but in a carjacking situation, it’s possible that they may.

The point of all this is — you don’t know what your shooting scenario is going to be, other than that we can all pretty much assume it’s not going to be textbook perfect! It’s very unlikely that if you’re involved in a defensive shooting, that you’ll be standing with a two-handed isosceles grip pointed at a defender who’s perfectly open to you, like a silhouette target. You’ll be moving, they’ll be moving, there’ll be arms and clothing in the way, and you don’t know what angle you may hit the target at. You may be on the ground shooting up, you may be turned at odd angles to each other, you just can’t predict what the scenario will be.

In order to account for all those variables, and to make sure that the bullet would have enough energy to do its job in any of the reasonably foreseeable scenarios, the FBI conducted tests and determined that 12″ of gel penetration would be the minimum power level their ammunition should deliver.
Is 12″ the minimum penetration standard you should consider? That’s a personal decision, only you can decide what you’re comfortable with, but as for me and those I consult with, we feel that the 12″ minimum is a reasonable standard and one that would be a good starting point for anyone to carefully consider. I would not want to rely on a pistol/ammo combination that can’t deliver 12″ of penetration. I know that sometimes we may have to compromise, but my preference would be for a defensive round that can meet the FBI minimum of 12″ of penetration through ballistics gel.

Pocket Holsters

2 Replies

Been doing some thinking about pocket holsters. A pocket holster is (obviously) just one of many ways that people can choose from to carry a concealed pistol, among other choices such as inside-the-waistband (IWB), outside-the-waistband (OWB), “deep concealment”, shoulder holster, ankle holster, all sorts of choices…

But the pocket holster is particularly appealing to me from an aspect of comfort. It’s so easy to just drop a TCP or XDS in your pocket (in its appropriate pocket holster, of course). There’s never an issue with how you have to sit, or worries about your shirt riding up and exposing the pistol, or anything like that. If you’re used to carrying a phone and a wallet and keys in your pockets, then putting a pocket pistol in a pocket holster is about the most comfortable, easy, and natural way to carry a pistol.

Except…

There’s one thing that kind of bugs me about a pocket holster. And it’s that, when using a pocket holster, you frequently violate Rule #1 of Gun Safety: Always Keep The Weapon Pointed In A Safe Direction.

You see, when you’re standing or walking, and your gun is in a pocket holster, the muzzle is pointing down at the ground. But when you sit down… now the muzzle is pointing forward. And if you’re sitting behind someone (as in rows of chairs) or across from them (across the lunch table maybe) you now have a loaded gun pointing right at them.

Does this bother anyone else? It bothers me. Not a lot, because I know a quality pocket holster is safe, but still, my Spidey-sense tingles just a little bit now and then. I sometimes find myself consciously rotating the pistol and holster in my pocket, to be pointing down even while seated.

Now, I know this is a topic upon which reasonable people can disagree. I don’t believe a gun will “go off” by itself, without the trigger being pulled (unless maybe you’re foolishly disassembling or working on it with a round in the chamber). So just sitting in a holster, in the pocket, it should be perfectly safe, as long as the trigger is fully covered and cannot be accidentally manipulated (i.e., keep your keys out of the pocket that has the pistol!)

But even so — using a pocket holster still results in a loaded pistol pointing at another person (or many people, depending on where you’re sitting). And even though I know (and I KNOW) that it won’t “go off”, just like I know that swimming in the ocean will not result in me being bitten by a shark), I also know that I am less likely to be bitten by a shark when in my living room, y’know? The odds of something happening are infitesimally small, but the consequences are so profoundly significant, that I can’t help but think about it sometimes. It’s like fire insurance on a house — the odds of your house burning down are so incredibly rare, but the cost and impact so enormous, that most of us carry fire insurance, right?

So every once in a while, I get just a little tiny bit uneasy about the idea of a pocket pistol potentially pointing at someone else…

IWB/OWB or ankle holster usually means the pistol is pointing down, whether standing or seated. With the pocket pistol, it may very well be pointed at someone. Is it dangerous at that point? Well, it is in a holster, with the trigger completely covered, and therefore it should be perfectly safe. I’ve been pocket-carrying for quite a while and never had an accidental or negligent discharge, nor do I ever expect one to happen. Then again, I’ve crossed many, many streets and never been hit by a car, but I still recognize that people do get hit by cars…

It’s impossible to prevent every possible risk, and you’d drive yourself crazy trying; a reasonable person will take reasonable precautions to minimize likely risks and then get on with life. In my mind, that includes:

Always keep the pistol in an appropriate, well-fitting holster
Always use a holster that completely covers the trigger
Never put anything else in the pocket that has the pistol

Follow those three rules and I think it’s reasonable that you should avoid any substantial risk of the pistol firing unintentionally. I have seen (and I’m sure you have too) pocket holsters that have a cutout for the trigger; I guess they’re designed such that you could fire from the pocket, but to me that’s such a potentially dangerous scenario for a negligent or accidental discharge that I would never want to use such a product.

Which brings me to the Recluse holster. I’m currently using a Desantis SuperFly for my TCP, and the Crimson Trace “freebie” holster for my XDs, but that’s really not any good so I am entertaining getting a new pocket holster for my XDs… because I really do prefer pocket carry. The XDs is a tad big for a pocket, but it can be done. And I like that the XDs has a grip safety as well as trigger safety which should further minimize any potential for an accidental discharge down to, in real world terms, zero risk. But the Taurus TCP has neither of those; no manual safety at all. It relies soley on its long, long trigger pull as its safety. Which is fine, as long as the pistol is in a fully-trigger-covering holster, but …

Have you seen the Recluse? This is a really interesting holster idea. Most holsters rely on the shape of the holster to hold the pistol in place, whether it’s leather or kydex that’s formed to grip the pistol firmly. But the Recluse is different — it uses a molded urethane block to hold the gun basically by the trigger guard, while completely immobilizing the trigger. The trigger is literally trapped between two chunks of urethane rubber, such that it would be physically impossible for the trigger to move at all.

That seems really appealing. Especially for a pistol like the TCP that has no other manual safety. If the trigger is physically incapable of moving, there’s no way that pistol is going to “go off”!

I also like that the Recluse (depending on the pistol and model of holster) has room for a spare magazine; especially with a little .380, you may very well need more rounds, and there’s nothing as convenient as having that mag already with the pistol, in the holster, taking up no more space (in terms of practical real estate). And, finally, the Recluse features an anti-printing design, so it looks like a wallet in your pocket, not like a gun.

Potential downsides? Well, I’m not thrilled that it’s a one-sided product — the anti-printing flap on one side, and — nothing on the other. The pistol is completely exposed inside your pocket, held in place against the anti-printing flap by that urethane block. I don’t know, I just like the idea of it being encased in a full holster, like the Desantis Superfly. With it exposed, it just seems like it’s an opportunity for lint or dust or whatever to get in there, and … well, should I be concerned that it could potentially fall off the urethane trigger block, to where it’s floating loose in the pocket? That would be a bad situation… Note, I don’t believe that’s a practical consideration; the reviews I’ve read say that the urethane block holds the pistol very securely and it takes an intentional act to remove it from the trigger block, but … really, how hard would it be for them to make it two-sided? They make a two-sided version for the XDs, but the way it’s worded on their site I don’t think the two-sided versions offer the urethane trigger block.

No answers yet; just musing out loud. I think the idea of the trigger block would be a comfort to those of us who carry pistols that don’t have manually-engaged safeties (such as the TCP or Glock). And that additional layer of safety (a completely immobilized trigger) may be the extra bit of reassurance necessary to get me to ease my occasional worry about being seated with a pocket pistol.

In the meantime, I’m using the aforementioned Desantis Superfly and I will say, it’s been totally fine and actually I like it a lot. It’s very compact, the anti-printing flap works well, and it holds the pistol securely but it’s supremely easy to draw from. And the holster stays absolutely stationary in the pocket when drawing; there’s no slipping or sliding around at all. I give the SuperFly very high marks for pocket carry of a Taurus TCP. I just wonder if the added trigger block of the Recluse would provide just that last little extra bit of reassurance…

Ammo Quest – the search for the best ammo for the Taurus 738 TCP

11 Replies

Here at Shooting The Bull, I have a bit of a predisposition towards Taurus firearms. Not that they’re necessarily the highest quality, but — they’re extremely affordable, and in my experience they’re solid performers, and they offer a lot for the money. Plus, hey, Taurus goes well with the site’s name: I spend a lot of time Shooting The Bull (the Taurus pistol)…

Anyway — I picked up one of the most-talked-about Tauruses, a PT738 micro-pistol (also known as the TCP). This is a tiny pocket pistol which can easily be used for pocket carry or perhaps even ankle carry. It’s incredibly inexpensive (at $199, it’s about half the cost of the competition, the Ruger LCP) and it shoots very accurately and with a smooth trigger pull. I like it a lot.

But what to feed it? That’s the question, because, the bottom line is that it’s a .380 ACP pistol. And .380 ACP is generally considered a marginal round for self-defense purposes. Now, the TCP isn’t my primary everyday carry weapon; I carry a .45 ACP when I can, but sometimes you just need or want something lighter, smaller, easier to conceal, easier to carry, and the fact of the matter is that it’s difficult to imagine a scenario where you COULDN’T have the TCP with you. Sometimes a full-size or even compact .45 is just too big and doesn’t fit with what you’re wearing, but the tiny TCP can be a constant companion. And, hey, depending on how paranoid you may be feeling, you may want a backup gun, and the TCP is darn near perfect for that role. Except for the power of its main round, the .380 ACP…

… I am not going to be too much of a downer on .380. I think .380 is an okay choice. It’s not a great choice for your primary or only defensive pistol, but the .380 has enough oomph in it to serve the purpose of a defensive pistol, if it’s combined with the right ammo. I certainly wouldn’t want to be caught with anything smaller than a .380, but a .380 is right on the border of being adequate. I believe that with some ammo, it’s inadequate, but with other ammo it crosses the line to where it’s okay.

I don’t know about you, but if I’m betting my life on a pistol’s ability to defend me, I definitely want at LEAST “okay” and I’d certainly prefer “GOOD” or “GREAT”! Which is why, again, my daily carry is a .45, but that’s beyond the scope of this article. What I’m looking for here is — how good can this little .380 be? It shoots great, it’s very comfortable, it is extremely compact and portable, so if we can just find a type of ammo that delivers satisfactory results, well — how cool would that be?

I’ll tell you — it’d be pretty frickin’ fantastic.

So, I have commenced my Ammo Quest. I’m testing out various brands and types of ammunition to see how they perform specifically from the TCP (and, I would venture to say, the results from the TCP should be directly applicable to the Ruger LCP or any other comparably-sized, comparable-barrel-length .380 pistol). I’m conducting controlled testing using ClearBallistics.com’s ballistic gel, and a ProChrono chronograph. I’ll be testing for penetration and expansion, weighing and measuring the bullets, and coming to some conclusions about each particular ammo’s suitability for the task of personal defense.

Standards For Evaluation

The standard will I be judging against is the FBI report “Handgun Wounding Factors and Effectiveness.” This is the 1989 study commissioned after the “Miami shootout” wherein several direct hits on some determined shooters failed to actually stop or incapacitate them. The FBI report is the result of some exhaustive research to find out why bullets stop people, and what factors in ammunition performance are important in bringing about an effective quick stop. I won’t go into too much of it here (because, hey, I even linked to the report, so you can read it for yourself) but I just want to point out the two main takeaways that I’m going with:

1) Minimum Penetration

In a short summary, penetration is the most important factor in bullet performance; if a bullet doesn’t penetrate deeply enough to hit the vital organs, then nothing else matters. It doesn’t matter if you have perfect shot placement, if the bullet can’t penetrate deeply enough to affect what you were shooting at. And, it doesn’t matter how big the bullet is, if it doesn’t penetrate deeply enough to hit something that matters. If you are being attacked by a morbidly obese person, and you shoot a huge .45 caliber bullet with perfect placement right to the heart, but the bullet stops after penetrating just six inches of outer fat layers, well — it might hurt, and it’ll bleed, but it won’t actually physically incapacitate that attacker. Simply put, it’s GOT to penetrate deep enough to hit a vital organ, artery, or the central nervous system in order to force immediate incapacitation. Anything less is, well, less. The FBI report specifies a minimum acceptable penetration depth of 12″ in ballistic gelatin.

2) Bullet Size

This one’s simple — the bigger the bullet, the more damage it will do, and the more likely it will be to hit something vital. A little full-metal-jacket might penetrate deep enough, but it may be so small as to slip right between the heart and an artery, causing no significant damage; whereas a big expanded hollow point shot at the exact same point of aim might be so big as to hit both vitals. When it comes to damage, bigger is better. Once you have adequate penetration, you want the bullet to get as big as possible.

What Can The 380 Do?

The 380 starts off with its hands tied behind its back, as it’s not a very big bullet and it’s not very powerful. It is actually the same diameter as a 9mm bullet, but 9mm has so much more room in its casing for powder, and is designed to operate at such higher pressure, that it can propel a heavier bullet at faster speeds and expand more. 380 can’t quite accomplish that.

above: 9mm (left) and .380 ACP (right)

So what CAN a 380 do? That’s what I’m trying to find out. I know the .380 can and has been used effectively before. But can it do so consistently? Can it meet the FBI spec, especially when fired from a micro-sized pistol? Probably not, but let’s find out if it can, or at least, how close can it come? I mean, if I can find an expanding hollow point that grows to the size of a .45, and also penetrates a consistent 11″, well, that might not meet the FBI specification but I think most of us would agree that that would be totally acceptable for us; we are, after all, not the FBI (er, unless you are an FBI agent, I guess); and we’re not going to likely be put in a position of multiple attackers shooting from multiple angles and having to shoot through car doors and windshields and all the other things the FBI tests for. I’m not really interested in all that; I’m just looking for reasonable performance such that I can have reasonable confidence that the little TCP will be reasonably effective.

What about FMJ’s?

It’s true that a full-metal jacket bullet will indeed provide enough penetration, even more than enough penetration, from a .380. So why not just use FMJ’s? Well, there’s really three drawbacks to using FMJ’s for defensive purposes:

1) They don’t expand, so they’re usually relatively/comparatively small bullets, and smaller is not better when you’re looking for damage that will incapacitate an attacker.

2) They don’t inherently do a lot of damage, as they’re comparatively “slippery.” Soft tissue in a human body is usually quite flexible and stretchable, and an FMJ might just zing right through an attacker by pushing the tissue out of the way, without actually crushing or damaging much tissue. A hollow point expands with sharp petals that cut and slice their way through, causing vastly more damage; an FMJ isn’t all that damaging of a round. It’ll make a hole, yes, and if that hole were to be placed through the brain or spine that would certainly stop the attack, but — that’s a really tough shot to hit; in general, FMJ’s aren’t all that effective unless they’re bigger and heavier and they tumble. A typical 90-grain FMJ from a .380 isn’t likely to be a potent manstopper.

3) FMJ’s penetrate very deeply, perhaps too deeply. There’s a limit on how much penetration you want from a bullet. Generally 14 to 15″ is ideal. The FBI’s acceptable range is 12 to 18″. You don’t want more than 18″, because that’s a pretty good sign that the bullet is not going to stop lodged in your attacker, instead it’s going to exit out the back and keep going — and that’s risky, because it’s going to stop SOMEWHERE. If not in the attacker, where will it stop? A bystander? In general overpenetration is something that would ideally be avoided, and that’s one thing hollow points are great at; they normally expand to such a large size that they increase their drag so much that they come to a stop without exiting the target. The same can’t be said for FMJ’s.

So in general, I’m not really looking forward to using FMJ’s. If I can’t find any ammo that expands well and penetrates deeply enough, then I may have to resort to FMJ’s, but they’re certainly not my first choice.

The Quest

I know the odds are against me finding a reliable, consistent, deep 12+” performer in .380 ACP, but I’m going to give it a good thorough search. At this moment I’ve secured some of the most well-known defensive ammo brands, including Winchester Ranger-T’s, Speer Gold Dots, Winchester PDX1, Remington Golden Saber, and even some Remington 88-grain UMC hollow-points. There are lots more that I’d like to test, but the Great Ammo Drought of 2013 is making it hard to find .380 ammo. If I can find it, I’ll test it, and you can see the results right here on www.shootingthebull.net, or on my YouTube channel. If you have a request for a specific ammo to test, leave it in the comments and I’ll see if I can accommodate. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy future installments of this Ammo Quest.

LaserLyte CK-SWAT for Taurus Judge Public Defender

4 Replies

A laser. On a Judge. Really?

Okay, let me explain…

Um… yeah, I don’t really have a good explanation. All right, here’s the deal – I do agree that a laser on a defensive weapon may not be the best idea, because you never want to depend on something that may have a dead battery when you need it most. I understand that, and I agree with it. But with that said, let me also add — not all of us are blessed with perfect vision, and sometimes we could use a little help. I had Lasik eye surgery, for example, and now I can see crystal-clear to infinity, but — up close, my closest focus position is about a foot past how far I can hold my arm out.

In other words, in low light conditions, unless I’ve got reading glasses on, I can’t focus on the front sight. And as any shooter with experience will tell you, for best results, you want to focus on the front sight.

In daylight I can see it fine. In daylight the eye’s iris closes down and (if you know photography you’ll know this) the smaller the iris, the deeper the depth of field, meaning that you can focus closer and further than at night. And in daylight, the Judge’s excellent fiber-optic sight glows and is in sharp focus. But on a darker indoor shooting range, where the fiber-optic isn’t glowing, well… yeah, I struggled with seeing the front sight.

And besides, lasers are cool and I wanted one. Okay, yeah, I said it — it’s a LASER. That’s pretty cool. Of course, you could tape a $10 laser pointer on top of your Public Defender and that’s also a laser, but — yeah, that’s not cool. At all.

And finally — no, you don’t want to rely on a laser when the chips are down and the bullets start flying, but — it certainly can’t hurt to have it, right? To be sure, you MUST train without the laser, you must be able to shoot straight and hit what you’re aiming at without the use of an additional, battery-dependent, potentially-failing electronic device. So as long as you’ve trained that way, what would it hurt to have a laser too? In addition? The way I see it, more options just makes you better off.

Finally, some people might say “but a Judge is the LAST gun that needs a laser! It’s a shotgun, just point it in the general direction and pull the trigger!” But those people would be wrong. Shotguns need to be aimed too! And if you’re using a good powerful defensive round in your Judge, it’s not going to spread out very far, so you want good aim. Birdshot may spray everywhere in a big pattern, but birdshot won’t stop an attacker. Buckshot will, and .45 Colt loads will, and buckshot doesn’t spread more than a few inches at personal-defense distances (typically 7 yards or less). So yes, you do have to aim, just like with any other pistol (or rifle or shotgun).

So seeing as I was having difficulty seeing the sights in darker conditions, I thought — wonder if a laser would be any real help? And googling around, I found LaserLyte was basically the only manufacturer who makes a laser that will fit the Judge Public Defender. I have the steel model, and the LaserLyte CK-SWAT fits it (and other pistols, like the Smith & Wesson J-frames and other Taurus revolvers, although it will NOT fit on the polymer Public Defender).

I found it for a decent price on Amazon, bought it, and installed it. Installation was actually really simple. First step, remove the grip off your Public Defender — that’s one allen screw and then it slips right off.

Unpacking the LaserLyte packaging you’ll find the laser itself mounted to a mounting plate, and a couple of additional mounting plates. I had to remove the laser from the included S&W plate and install it on the appropriate Taurus plate, which was a matter of two little allen-head screws. After that, remove a couple of screws from the frame, and attach the mounting plate into the screw-holes, and you’re up and running.

Here’s the laser ready to be installed:

The picture above is with the laser installed on the Public Defender. It’s really quite tiny and totally unobtrusive. It doesn’t interfere with the grip in any way, and you basically don’t even know it’s there unless you turn it on.

Once you have the laser installed and reattached your pistol’s grip, it’s time to aim it. Aiming the laser is pretty straightforward, there are two included tiny allen wrenches, one for the windage (left-right) and one for elevation (up/down). Yes, the windage and elevation screws are different sizes and require different wrenches; that’s silly, but it’s the way it is. Anyway, secure your Judge somehow (I have a CTK Precision Ultimate Gun Vise for these types of jobs) and put up a target or crosshairs at 21 feet from the muzzle (the CK-SWAT is designed to be “zero’d” at 21 feet). Then just adjust the allen screws to move the laser’s dot to coincide with your gun’s sights and you’re ready to go to the range and zero it in. Just make sure that your last adjustment is clockwise, as that’s what tells the screws to lock in and hold position.

Zeroing in was quite necessary because, as I found, I’m actually a better shot with the Judge than I’d previously thought — it turns out that my front sight is just a little bit off to the right, so those missed bullseyes weren’t entirely my fault! I’ve since had the gun’s front sight adjusted, so now with the sights or with the laser I can hit point of aim and deliver nicely tight groups at defensive distances. I’ve put a few hundred rounds through the Judge with the laser installed and haven’t noticed it losing “zero” at all.

The laser’s great to have at night or in darker conditions, because in those scenarios it’s really very obvious what you’re aiming at. And you don’t have to have a perfect stance with the gun drawn level to your eye; pretty much if you put the red dot on the target and pull the trigger, there’ll be a hole there. It works well for that purpose.

In daylight, it’s nigh unto useless. I mean, you can actually make out the dot at up to maybe 15 feet away, but it’s not easy. You really have to be looking for it. A green laser would be vastly preferable for daylight use; As an example, for rifles I picked up an inexpensive green laser from Primary Arms that is easily and clearly visible to 100 yards even in the daylight, but the CK-SWAT isn’t a green laser, it’s a red laser, and a red laser in daylight is only good for maybe 15 feet or so. Which isn’t really a problem, because in daylight you can rely on the Judge’s excellent fiber-optic sight; the laser performs best in scenarios where the gun’s own sights fall short, which is convenient.

Operationally, there’s not a lot to it. Press the button to turn it on, and it glows steady. Hold the button in, and it’ll strobe on/off. Press it again to turn it off — or, if you forget to turn it off, it’ll turn itself off after a few minutes. That’s really a nice feature, because replacing the batteries is NOT very fun at all. It takes four tiny batteries, and you need an allen wrench to open the battery cover, and then you have to pound the pistol into your hand to shake the batteries loose, and getting that fourth battery out is a bugger. I’ve done it a couple of times since getting the laser, and each time it’s been the same: the first two will pop right out, the third one’s a fight, and getting that fourth one out is like trying to reason with a teenage daughter. It can be done but it takes a lot of effort.

The operational drawback to the LaserLyte is that you have to manually turn the laser on. I mean, duh, right, but stick with me for a second — Crimson Trace rules the laser roost with their instinctive grip system; I have a Crimson Trace on another pistol and the on/off switch is incorporated to the grip — it’s instinctive, and it’s brilliant. Basically if you pick up the pistol in a shooting grip, the laser will already be on. That’s fantastic — but that’s Crimson Trace, not LaserLyte (or anyone else). With LaserLyte you have to manually turn the laser on. Is that a big deal? Obviously not, if you have the time to do it (say, you hear a bump in the night so you grab your nightstand gun, and turn on the laser). In that scenario, it’s no problem. But if you’re out in public and a mugger pulls a gun on you and you have to react instantly, you’re not going to stop and turn on the laser! So in that scenario, you’re not going to have the benefit of the laser. But, to be fair again, I’ve heard it said that scenarios like that usually involve “3-3-3: they take place at 3 feet, they last for 3 seconds, and there’s usually 3 rounds fired.” And in a scenario like that a laser wouldn’t do you any good anyway.

A word about customer service – on my first LaserLyte, I aimed it as best I could, but the point of impact was a quite a bit higher and several inches to the left of where I could get the laser to reach. No matter how much I adjusted it, I couldn’t get it to close enough to the exact point of impact. I contacted LaserLyte, and they told me about the “reset” procedure (backing out the adjustment screws all the way and leaving it that way for a certain amount of time). After doing that, I was able to get the windage spot-on, but I couldn’t get the elevation exactly right — it was still an inch or two lower than the actual point of impact. To tell you the truth, I actually didn’t care all that much, I figured a couple of inches is no big deal over the course of 21 feet, I can easily compensate for that, but LaserLyte wasn’t happy with that. They immediately arranged not only a replacement, which they cross-shipped to me (meaning, they sent the new one and let me install it before returning the old one), but they also included a package of replacement batteries as a gift. Now, that was some first-class service and I was very pleased by their response. The new laser works very well, and I can say that I get some variation in the point of impact based on which particular ammo I’m using (which is to be expected, of course), but with the right stuff I can make a hole exactly where the laser is pointing, and it’s hard to ask for much more than that.

Summation: the LaserLyte CK-SWAT is a good product that does what it says it will. Is it worth the money? Well, it’s not a lot of money, it’s about half the cost of a comparable Crimson Trace, and Crimson Trace doesn’t make one that fits the Public Defender anyway, so … it’s not that much money, and you do get a workable, usable laser. But could that money be spent elsewhere on better upgrades? Maybe. I’m not so sure I’d do it again if I had it all to do over again; maybe investing in some glow-in-the-dark night sights would be a better way to spend that money. The laser’s cool and all, but having to take a separate step to turn it on does limit its immediate functionality. However, I can guarantee you that if there was a bump in the night, I’ll be pretty happy to press that button.

Overall, I say that if you really want a laser for your Judge, the CK-SWAT does work and works well. I have no complaints about it. I just wish it was integrated like the Crimson Trace product line is.

Testing the GoPro Hero 3 Black slow-moootion camera