FMJ's vs Hollow's for self defense

Speaking from experience.

9mm FMJ rounds have been giving through and throughs to all kinds of bad guys in the Middle East. So to expect that a FMJ 45 ACP round won't is laughable.

I have leveled my Army issue Beretta 9mm with military issue ball ammo at a bad guy wearing a shirt and a coat. I made the FMJ work to my advantage by not using a tight firing group on the man's chest. Instead, I walked the rounds down from the right shoulder towards his left hip area as he ran towards us. From the way he was jerking all over the place, I wasn't going to try and get a head shot. He was screaming something, our interpreter just yelled shoot, that turned out to roughly be, "I'm blowing you up for so and so." The guy had a grenade on him, it turned out, a grenade he forgot to pull the pin on in his haste to run towards the seven of us. I was the only one with the presence of mind to pull my weapon as soon as I saw him. Of the nine rounds I fired before my stovepipe, eight went right through him as he continued to run towards us. The last round nicked his Texas sized belt buckle and then exploded when it hit his spinal column just above the L4, dropping him instantly.

In the after action review and investigation, it was found that I had shot two into his shoulder which were nearly harmless, one through his neck...nicked his carotid, two bracketing his descending aorta about 1/4" from his heart, two in the lung, two in his Pancreas and the kidney behind it and finally, the last one that took out his spine. The final one was the only one that didn't pass all the way through even though two of them had gone through his sternum/Ribs. Of the eight rounds that passed through him, three were found in a car door, the rest we never found and they, THANK GOD, didn't hit anyone else.

You would think with such devastating wounds, this cat would have dropped way before the #9 cut his spinal cord. But he was also totally hopped up on meth and cocaine. It's very common for suicide bombers of any country to be given large doses of drugs for this very reason. It hops them up so badly you damned near have to blow their heads off or get lucky like I did and take out the spine. The guys are like freakin Zombies or something.

In another incident, we had a Marine (I was a UH-60 MedEvac guy in Iraq) shot with two rounds of what we believed to be 10mm JHP. It was definitely a JHP, but we were guessing on the caliber. This guy had been wearing his MOPP suit with his regular DCU's underneath and no body armor for some reason. Both of those rounds were clogged up with clothing and never expanded much inside his body although when one of them hit his canteen, it did expand by a great amount. But he had two holes all the way through him and one of the rounds was stopped in his rucksack inside a ball of socks.

In my home, I will NOT use FMJ. I only use it on the range. FMJ rounds, especially in these larger bore weapons, simply cause too little kinetic/hydraulic damage for my taste. Especially when there are JHP rounds to be had. My personal defense loads are 45 ACP Winchester Supreme Elite 230 Bonded PDX Ammo. I personally believe these rounds, and others like them, are engineered well enough so as to still expand despite clothing. If someone isn't wearing body armor, even if that round begins to expand in his clothing, it's still going to do some massive tissue and hydraulic damages to that individual. I will never try to get three shots within a half inch of each other if I have to fire my weapon on an intruder. Instead, I will space them out as I move from mid-chest towards his baby maker. The sheer kinetic force behind these 230gr loads will cause tremendous hydraulic tissue and artery damage, as I move the rounds about 2" down per shot, and I will spread that damage over a wide area affecting the maximum amount of organs and tissues as I can.

There's a reason war's are fought not with handguns, but rifles. The rifle round doesn't do its damage from making a nice little thru and thru hole. That's the easy wounds to dress. It does its massive damage by tumbling. And once it enters the body, kind of like the damage path a JHP does, the rifle round tumbles through the tissues, cutting, slicing, tearing and hydraulically compressing everything in its path. We always hated it when picking up one of our guys who had a small entry hole high on the side of his trunk with an exit wound out of his butt. It meant the round had done some traveling and this guy wasn't gonna be with us long unless we could get lots of fluids into him on the way to the CSH for a Doc to open him up and start tying off all the loose stuff.

So there's why I choose JHP for my personal CCW and home defense weapons.
 
The FBI in their wisdom cam up with two general criteria for defensive ammo. It must penetrate more than 12" in bare gelatin with 18" being better and the wound channel should be bigger than the caliber of the bullet. This means an expanding bullet. Most modern 45 rounds are no designed to do at least 12" and expand pretty reliably. The 230gr Federal Hydrashok has a long history of reliability and success. I think the 230 gr Federal HSTs are even better.
 
the post by retired is a perfect example of the principle that you can't even count on the laws of physics and general anatomy to win a gunfight.

The two salient points.

First, the guy took 9 hits from NATO spec 9 mm, and I understand that to be the most effective non-expanding FMJ load there is available on the planet. He was finally incapacitated by a hit to the spine that equated to a land mine to the drive shaft of a vehicle.

It is highly probable that the guy would have sucked up numerous hollow points, too, and still taken a head shot after he fell.

Second, the bad guy had taken one of the lessons of fighting to heart. Forget the pistol, and get a rifle. Better yet, forget the rifle, and send a nuclear bomb.

Okay, it wasn't a nuclear bomb. But the lesson is, that he took the idea of bypassing an inadequate weapon, and went for the most destructive weapon he could find, and even that failed him.

So, what stopped that fight? a fortunate hit to the spine. Would typical hollow points have changed the outcome? Who knows, but not likely, IMO. What decided the outcome of the contest? a bullet that could have gone an inch either way and missed the spine, and a distracted combatant who forgot that he had to pull the trigger.

I'd love to see it documented by a third party, because that is a classic lesson about combat.
 
Just get a .357 Sig and you'll penetrate car doors with any ammo and drop any assailant with the first or second shot. :D

I wouldn't ever carry FMJ in a handgun for SD, unless, it was all i had. You risk over penetration and possibly harming an innocent bystander, while the attacker is still a threat beacause the FML did not have the terminal effect to drop him/her. Now, I am not saying that a .45 ACP FMJ will NOT drop an attacker on the first shot, I am saying you risk that bullet going through the target, and maybe hitting someone else.

So, like always, shot placement is key, and if you are carrying FMJ's in your sidearm, make sure there is some sort of backstop if you ever have to shoot at an attacker. And make sure you have plenty of ammo in case the first couple of rounds don't drop your attacker.
 
"I am saying you risk that bullet going through the target, and maybe hitting someone else."

Personally, I've never really given that much consideration.

Most rounds fired in armed encounters simply miss the intended target and can hit innocent bystanders.

Through and through penetration, while certainly not optimal, does mean that your bullets (and HPs can do through and through) are penetrating adequately.

And it also gives the target another hole to bleed out of.
 
I won't go into the exact situation/conditions under which my experience has shown how effective JHP's are on a similar target, but suffice it to say, by the third round from a 9mm JHP on a non-protected target, the target was neutralized.

I'm sure there are plenty of people who have seen a target rendered combat ineffective from three rounds to the torso of a target with a smaller caliber FMJ round. I've just not seen it. So I go with what I know.
 
I agree. Use what you choose. My point wasn't to say that HP rounds don't work, but that they can fail, too. Go back to my post about the joplin gunfight, he absorbed a number of hollow points and still kept going. it happens. here is something I wrote about it back then.

The perp was using a .44 magnum, single action Ruger Super Blackhawk that he had stolen the day before.

He had an extensive criminal history that was discovered, and was on parole.

He fired all six rounds, shooting his last into the pavement as he fell flat on his face.

The cops are pretty certain that there were 37 rounds fired by police. The perp took 6 pistol rounds, and was still shooting. A rifle shot broadside through his chest cavity finally took him down. He died about 5 minutes after hitting the pavement.

Still no toxicology reports or possible motive.

The next night, a fugitive murderer with an UZI from fla robbed a store just a few miles away, and was killed by deputies. The same night, an aggressive boyfriend broke into his girlfriend's home, and was shot when he tried to seize her father's gun.

Friday was a full moon. Three people died violent deaths in separate events.

What the hell happened?
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I should not have used the word "probable."

These cops use hydrashok +P. he traveled about 6 blocks after being first wounded.

I believe in the use of JHP rounds. I'm pointing out that sometimes even the best ammunition will still not disable an opponent.
 
If you carry a .380 (which I don't currently, but have in the past) this is the tipping point. Some insist on FMJ, others say that you can get both penetration and expansion from the right .380 round.
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That's how I feel, and I carry a .380, so i DO carry a mixed magazine. Every other round is a Gold Dot or a FMJ. I figure if I'm unfortunate ever to have to shoot someone, I'll probably have to shoot more than once with a .380, and one or the other of them will be the right one for the situation.

So I guess I'm the first one to say "both."
 
Late to the feast, but I find the whole argument a bit silly. Hollowpoints trump FMJ's in every test ever devised, in every statistical analysis of real life shootings and frankly, in common sense.

1. If you handgun isn't reliable with HP's, then it's broke. Your problem is not with HP's, it's with your firearm.

2. If your handgun won't penetrate with HP's, then you don't have enough gun.

Hollowpoints do more damage, period. It's really not complicated.
 
FMJ my opinion

I think people like the sound that comes out of there mouth when they tell someone " FULL METAL JACKET".
I like the hornady Leverevolution for my BFR 45/70.
 
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Coming from another angle:

I desire that in as much as I can control it, I'd like 100% of the kinetic energy in the projectiles I fire to "dump" itself into whatever it is that I'm shooting at...in a defensive situation.

It's not only the wound channels that debilitate, but the energy transfer of that projectile into another object.

Using a quality "hollow point" bullet pushes the chances of over penetration way down, and, therefore, the 100% "energy dump" way up.
 
When you deal with drugged up bad guys, or religious fanatics/highly motivated and determined enemies, anything less than a .50 to the trachea or center of the forehead isn't a sure shot. I've heard and read plenty of stories about how HP rounds didn't drop a guy until the 5th or 6th round. Same thing as FMJ. While that is very surprising to think a human being can take that kind of damage and keep going, I know it to be true. Too many times I've seen first hand the good guys and the bad guys take multiple rifle rounds and keep functioning despite grievous wounds.

In our civilian world though, I use JHP rounds to try to prevent a through and through round from hitting someone else. Sure, HP's go through and through too, but when they do, it's usually with much less reserve energy. But also, I believe a JHP will do much more damage to a person than FMJ from a handgun.

But like I said, I use what I feel comfortable with. I'm not trying to argue a point or trying to convince anyone to do things differently. But information and experience is valuable no matter what the conversation is. I always pay close attention to others thoughts and opinions no matter the topic. Even when someone is out right wrong in my mind, I can still remain open minded enough to learn something from them. ;) :cool:
 
Preventing over penetration, providing best chance for energy dump and lowering the chance that heavy clothing etc will affect the shot are what brought me to carry Pow-R-ball by corbon. I could be passing up some other better alternatives that I am unaware of but these are what I have carried for quite sometime now. Many friends that are leo and professional body guard/security carry these as well when permitted.
 
To me it really depends on the power of the cartridge. There are some that simply don't have enough juice to both penetrate and expand reliably. Its an either/or proposition. I think it all starts with the 380 and 38spl. Anything less powerful might not be a reliable enough penetrator with HPs. There are some decent 380 SD loads as well as some bad ones that only penetrate 9-10" which isn't always enough. In anything less than 380 I would pretty much stick with FMJ. Anything more powerful go with HPs. To me it all starts at about the 38spl or 380.
 
Retired15T, I'll have to disagree that anything less than a .50 cal is a reliable stopper. A medium-high powered rifle round at short range is absolutely devastating. A 30-06 at short range will literally blow a 5-6" hole through the torso at short range. The 5.56 NATO round even in FMJ is devastating at short range. I'm talking catastrophic. Lots of damage. A 30-30 at short range actually produces a bigger permanent wound channel than a 12 gauge slug.

Nobody will survive a well placed shot with a medium-high power rifle. It is simply impossible.

New2GA, I've never understood the concept of over-penetration. Any round that is adequate for self defense is going to go through quite a few walls.
 
For just protecting your house, I'd normally advocate hollowpoint, or if you're somewhat worried about penetration, then get controled expansion, A.K.A.: hunting rounds. A 30-.06 round will punch through just about anything you can put in front of it.
 
So you all are saying my FMJ is worthless in a gun fight? :) I been shooting way before HP ever came out and belive me many folks were actually killed by this type of round.

1/2 in wound channel? That is very large IMHO and will cause death if in a critical spot.

Use what you wish, just dont knock anyone who chooses to use FMJ. Mine will fire every time, and that is what I care most about, next shot placement, then penetration to the vitals. The exit wound may also help bleed out.

Over penetration? Who catches those misses? Point is the guy shot a BG here a short time ago shot 8 times, 4 hit the BG, did those others majically disappear? Worry about them, not the ones the BG gets to hold within his body.

Too much internet syndrome, it is a bad one, I see it every day in my job. Nothing beats real life experiences.

Just as bad as a 22 for SD threads. Go out and get shot just once, then tell me how you feel about any caliber made. I will respect any caliber pointed at me period. I find it hard to belive a guy will say "that is a 22 so I can go ahead with my bad guy stuff".
 
No, I don't agree with that. A .22 in the exact right spot might penetrate and might cause a serious injury. But it is doubtful that the round will penetrate unless shot placement (eyes, throat, or under the arm) is just exactly perfect. And, the low noise and low flash is unlikely to shock the bad guy into retreating. Say what you want, but i do not buy the baloney that a hit with a 22 is better than a miss with a 45. The miss with 45 is much more likely to make the bad guy turn and flee than a hit with a 22.
 
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