Some chronograph results from different barrel lengths

M

mukjp22m

New member
I chrono'd some 9mm rounds from a Sig P290RS (2.9 inch), a Sig 2022 (3.9 inch) and a Beretta CX4 (16 inch). The numbers listed are multi-shot averages.

Independence 115 grain 9mm HP. There is almost no info on these rounds online, but they are very cheap at Cabela's right now. I don't have gel, but I thought I'd at least see the velocity. Good velocities, so surely they would expand even if they are crappily made.
2.9" - 1068
3.9" - 1110
16" - 1275

Federal HST 124 grain 9mm standard pressure:
2.9" - 1055
3.9" - 1100
16" - 1225

Liberty Civil Defense 50 gr 9mm:
2.9" - 1920
3.9" - 2075
16" - 2580 with a max reading of 2607
(wow! That's getting close to .223 velocity with about the same grain weight. BTW, I confirmed that this detonates tannerite. Also managed a 2.5 inch 5 shot group at 100 yards with a 4x scope.)

American Eagle 147 grain flat tip:
2.9" - 856
3.9" - 895
16" - 965
The good news is that these were incredibly consistent, only a few fps difference per shot. Bad news is they are a solid 100 fps below advertised velocity of 1000.

Herters 115 fmj:
2.9" - 1066
3.9" - 1120
16" - forgot to do this one, but these readings are almost the same as the Independence, so probably would be about 1275.

Hornady Critical Duty 135 gr +P:
16" - 1104
Interesting thing here is this is lower than advertised and from a 16". The 16" seems to add about 100-150 fps, which corresponds closer to the advertised velocity of the standard pressure version of this round, but the box shows +P. 5 shots and they were all close to this reading which is lower than advertised, and advertised is probably a 4" barrel.

Anyway, just thought I'd put more information out there since I search for stuff like this all the time.
 
Interesting that the Liberty Civil Defense load is so fast. Would like to see some projectile performance testing on that load to see what the real effectiveness is.
 
After reading ShootingTheBull410's explanation of why the G2 RIP rounds are not a good idea (they perform similar in gel to the Liberty round), I think I believe him that they are not great defense rounds. However, they do offer some interesting advantages. They detonate tannerite, they dump a lot of energy (more than any other round), they can defeat decent body armor even from the 4" barrel velocities, and they do very well against barriers like auto glass. But, they lack deep penetration, so I don't know. I sure as hell wouldn't want to take one of those to the chest from a carbine though.
 
mukjp22m said:
they dump a lot of energy (more than any other round), they can defeat decent body armor even from the 4" barrel velocities, and they do very well against barriers like auto glass. But, they lack deep penetration, so I don't know.
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There seems to be less attention paid to "energy dump" nowadays than in the past, primarily because temporary wound cavities -- the important side-effect of energy dumps -- seem to be less a factor with handguns than rifles (particularly military weapons). When surgeons are working on living wounded or coroners or pathologists are doing post-mortems, the temporary wound cavities from handgun wounds seem to be less critical than once thought -- and apparently don't play a big role in STOPPING AN ASSAULT.

In the case of the ammo mentioned, if the round lacks deep penetration, the energy being dumped isn't going to do much damage, regardless of where it ends up.
 
if the round lacks deep penetration, the energy being dumped isn't going to do much damage, regardless of where it ends up.
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Not sure just what you mean by this. The energy dump can cause tremendous damage, and may be enough to stop a fight. May. Stop the fight. Lots of fights get stopped short of the attacker being physically stopped or killed.

For those who won't, penetration is the key, getting SOME damage to the deep vital spots. It doesn't have to be a hyper hot expanding bullet, it just need to get where it needs to go.
 
44amp said:
Not sure just what you mean by this. The energy dump can cause tremendous damage, and may be enough to stop a fight. May. Stop the fight. Lots of fights get stopped short of the attacker being physically stopped or killed.
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Energy dump seems to be synonymous with temporary wound cavity -- the physiological disruption of tissue causing bleeding, organ damage, and, in a few cases bone dislocation, etc.

There are too many recorded (and well-documented) instances of people getting hit 5, 6, or even more times by powerful handgun rounds and still continuing the fight.

What seems most important is bullets that hit the heart, the head, the lungs, bone structure that keeps opponent from being able to move (like the pelvis or spine). Bleeding out will end a few battles, but not necessarily quickly -- so that the dying opponent can get the good guy, too. Just hitting a bullet proof vest can be a bad experience for the person wearing the vest, but that energy dump doesn't necessarily put him or her out of action.

My point is that 1) the temporary wound cavity (addressed by Fackler) doesn't seem to be much of an issue with most handgun ammo, 2) and even if it IS an important factor, if the round doesn't penetrate deeply, important structures or tissue simply can't be damaged.

Most of the stuff I've read over the past few years greatly downplays the role of temporary wound cavity in stopping the fight using handguns. It's a much bigger deal on the battle field, using an M-16, an AK-74, or heavier weapons. Energy dump was a bigger topic and focus some years ago.

If you have a counter-argument, I'm open to your evidence. Maybe I've got it wrong.
 
Walt's right -- for traditional carry calibers temporary wound channel and energy dumping play no role in effective and reliable wounding that contribute little of nothing toward producing a physiological stop. For handguns penetration is almost everything, with the size of the hole also being important. You must hit and destroy vital tissue to reliably produce a physiological stop. Trauma surgeons and medical examiners consistent report that damage done adjacent to the permanent wound channel (ie, in the area of the temporary wound channel) is minimal. Living tissue is more resilient than ballistic gel.

The concluding paragraph of the FBI report on their handgun wounding factors workshop at Quantico in the late 1980s (http://www.thegunzone.com/quantico-wounding.html):

Kinetic energy does not wound. Temporary cavity does not wound. The much discussed "shock" of bullet impact is a fable and "knock down" power is a myth. The critical element is penetration. The bullet must pass through the large, blood bearing organs and be of sufficient diameter to promote rapid bleeding. Penetration less than 12 inches is too little, and, in the words of two of the participants in the 1987 Wound Ballistics Workshop, "too little penetration will get you killed." Given desirable and reliable penetration, the only way to increase bullet effectiveness is to increase the severity of the wound by increasing the size of hole made by the bullet. Any bullet which will not penetrate through vital organs from less than optimal angles is not acceptable. Of those that will penetrate, the edge is always with the bigger bullet.
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mukjp22m-

Interesting on the Federal 9mm 147 gr. flat point. I've run it in similar length (16") barrels and gotten the same results -very little increase in speed from the longer runway. I suspect that it is loaded with a fairly 'fast' powder that just doesn't get any benefit from a longer tube.
 
Adequate penetration is certainly necessary, but I believe temporary cavity does play a role in incapacitation. If Mike Tyson hit me, or most any of us, in the torso and "only" created a temporary cavity, I have little doubt that the recipient of that "temporary cavity" would be immediately incapacitated....
 
rock185 said:
Adequate penetration is certainly necessary, but I believe temporary cavity does play a role in incapacitation. If Mike Tyson hit me, or most any of us, in the torso and "only" created a temporary cavity, I have little doubt that the recipient of that "temporary cavity" would be immediately incapacitated....
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There is no "temporary cavity" created by those type of blows. A HARD hit to the lungs can knock the wind out of you, and a blow to the solar plexus, which interfere with/or disrupt some important nerve functions, can stun or incapacitate you. But it might not.

With those type of blows, tissue isn't typically ripped, veins or arteries aren't necessarily torn, and the person hit seldom bleeds out -- it usually takes a LOT of forceful blows, sometimes done with the aid of clubs or feet or hammers, to put the other person down.

On the other hand, a person just grazed by a .22 round might give up the fight after a round or two has been fired. That's a psychological stop, not a physiological one.

In his fights, Tyson certainly delivered many powerful blows to the body, but forty of his fifty-five victories were knock-outs -- some of which likely resulted in concussions. None of those head or body blows create temporary wound cavities like those seen in Ballistic Gel evaluations of handgun rounds.

As noted in Limnophile's response above, a lot of medical research and post-mortem studies have shown that temporary wound cavities and the energy dumps created by handguns just aren't a big factor in putting the other party down. Read from the FBI report he cited. http://www.thegunzone.com/quantico-wounding.html

(Note: when I tried his link, it didn't work. Mine, above, looks the same and takes you there. I think the "parentheses" are included in his link, and that keeps it from working.)

Temporary wound cavities are impressive when seen in ballistic gel, but those same rounds seem to have a different, less dramatic effect in human tissue when people are actually hit by the same rounds -- UNLESS the rounds hit something important (like the brain, the heart, the lungs, the spine, the pelvis bone structure, etc.) As Limnophile said, human tissue is a lot less fragile than you'd expect. Those handgun rounds do their best work when they can penetrate far enough to hit those critical parts.

Some people who are shot many times will often continue to fight, despite what most of us would consider grievous, near fatal wounds -- and they sometimes win the battle. This is also true on the battlefield, where the weapons used are much more powerful and are designed to create very substantial temporary and permanent wound cavities!

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Comparing a punch to a bullet hit is not comparable for more than one reason. One is energy potential. A 9 Luger has about 300 ft·lb, while a heavyweight boxer's punch can be in excess of 700 ft·lb.

I recall reading a scientific paper not too long ago that measured hydrostatic shock in the head of test animals resulting from a handgun shot to the rear leg, if my memory is correct. The author concluded that hydrostatic shock is de minimus until you reach a muzzle velocity of 500 ft·lb. So, if you want to have a prayer of stopping a bad guy with a shot to his leg, you'd best carry a hand cannon. I've opted for less recoil and consequently better accuracy, greater capacity, using IWBA-compliant ammo, and aiming for center of mass to maximize the likelihood of damaging vital tissues; ie, the IWBA/FBI paradigm.
 
Temporary wound cavities certainly do cause damage and sometimes damage enough to stop a fight. But unfortunately not always and not consistently. The pennant cavity does that and can be relied on to inflict significant damage.

A small point but important is that energy is not "dumped". It is not a separate item that can be picked up or dropped. Energy is transferred in one way or another. The term in handgunning fell away over a decade ago but has been resurrected some due to the appearance, again, of small light weight bullets for service calibers.

tipoc
 
I just got a couple hundred rounds of Federal HST 124g standard pressure rounds that I ran through my G19 to check function and accuracy. My handholds with a 124g bullet average around 1030 fps.

I haven't crunched any numbers or am otherwise basing my perception on science. Though, I'm surprised that your tests did not show that it was higher than 1100fps because they felt pretty snappy to me compared to my custom handholds. Then again, maybe that extra 70fps makes more of a difference than I thought it would.

Fly
 
Yeah, the American Eagles only gain 7% more velocity from 4 inches to 16 inches. Compare that to the Independence rounds gaining 15%. I was toying with the idea of using the flat points for a wild pig hunt. I was hoping for something like 1150 fps based on the advertised 1000 fps velocity. I should probably use my AR, but I just thought it'd be interesting. I read about a doubleTap 147 grain +P which advertises 1150 fps from a handgun. That's tough to imagine. Even the Hornady Critical Duty +P only advertises 1110 at 135 grains (and failed to meet those numbers). If that doubleTap claim is correct, that seems like +P++ or something. I don't want to destroy my gun.

Also, I didn't post it, but I ran some Federal white box 115 gr fmj through the CX4 and was hitting really good numbers. I remember several around 1350 fps.
 
Tipoc said:
Temporary wound cavities certainly do cause damage and sometimes damage enough to stop a fight. But unfortunately not always and not consistently...
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The closing argument from the FBI study cited above offers a different conclusion:

Kinetic energy does not wound. Temporary cavity does not wound. The much discussed "shock" of bullet impact is a fable and "knock down" power is a myth. The critical element is penetration. The bullet must pass through the large, blood bearing organs and be of sufficient diameter to promote rapid bleeding. Penetration less than 12 inches is too little, and, in the words of two of the participants in the 1987 Wound Ballistics Workshop, "too little penetration will get you killed." Given desirable and reliable penetration, the only way to increase bullet effectiveness is to increase the severity of the wound by increasing the size of hole made by the bullet. Any bullet which will not penetrate through vital organs from less than optimal angles is not acceptable. Of those that will penetrate, the edge is always with the bigger bullet.​

That study and the related supporting work is pretty old, so it may be out of date. If you have evidence that temporary wound cavities are an important factor is handgun shootings, please share it with us. It may just be that several of us have missed more recent but relevant information.
 
Kinetic energy does not wound. Temporary cavity does not wound. The much discussed "shock" of bullet impact is a fable and "knock down" power is a myth. The critical element is penetration.
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I guess it's back to hard ball then. ;)
 
No because an expanding bullet cuts a larger hole. The critical issue for handgun ammo is that the hollow point reliably expands to as large a diameter as possible while still penetrating to an acceptable depth (15-18 inches).
 
Oysterboy said:
I guess it's back to hardball then;).
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I'll bet you missed the part where it said, "the only way to increase bullet effectiveness is to increase the severity of the wound by increasing the size of hole made by the bullet." If you're shooting 9mm, then 9mm HP is likely to be more effective than 9mm hardball; ditto .45 acp, .38 special, .357 magnum, .357 SIG, etc.

I'm not sure that the difference, however, is always that great... I've read more than one commentary where the person doing the post-mortem or repairing wound damage says it's almost impossible to tell the difference between a wound track created by a .357, 9mm, .40, or .45 round. The person doing the digging or repairs generally has to find the slug, if it's still there, to say know what caliber was used. (I'm sure there are exceptions.)
 
I guess it's back to hard ball then.
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I know you were joking, but here's a "funny" comparison.

22lr hp vs 45 acp hard ball.

The 22 will expand to about .30-.32.

Hardball "tunnels" through a body, stretching tissue and pushing it out if the way, resulting in a hole about 1/2 the diameter of the bullet. So the 45acp leaves a wound path about .22 in diameter.... which is smaller than the wound path of the 22lr hp!
 
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