What Makes Handgun Cartridges Work for Various Applications
Key Takeaways
SHIT HAS TO WORK!
Flat nose solid bullets vs. Jacketed expanding bullets and why
Transcript
Hi folks, this is a Saturday morning and we're at our Idaho office again. As always, I haven’t staged a thing. You can see our dining room table, which we never eat at because I’ve got all my gear on it. Oh yeah, here’s our windows—see rifles stacked everywhere. This is from our Idaho house, and that’s one of the Buffalo Bore factories down below, about 700 yards away. But this is where we live, no neighbors; I can't stand neighbors, I like peace.
Anyway, my wife is going to come over and take over with the filming. What I want to talk about today is what makes handgun ammunition work to kill people. Killing people is far different from killing big animals. People, if you look at them frontally, from the front of their sternum to their back might be 8 to 12 inches thick. You don’t need a lot of penetration. The only time you need penetration is when they jump behind soft cover.
Let’s say you’re involved in a home invasion with three intruders, and it’s just you. You shoot the front guy and drop him. Now you’ve got two guys ducking behind your sofa or fridge. Expanding ammo is not a good idea here, as it won’t penetrate deep enough. You want a non-expanding bullet. Expanding bullets slow down upon hitting flesh, making a bigger hole, but if it can’t reach the vital organs, it’s ineffective.
For humans, you want something like this 9mm with a 115-grain bullet. It’s a good anti-personnel load, expands fast, and makes a 45 to 55 caliber hole in living flesh. But, expanding bullets won’t work well when a person takes cover. In those cases, non-expanding bullets are better because they penetrate deeper.
Now, talking about smaller calibers like the .25 ACP, which we make at Buffalo Bore. You need non-expanding, flat-tipped bullets to get enough penetration. If I expanded a .25 ACP, you’d barely get 6 inches of penetration, not enough to reach the heart or spine.
For example, with a .44 Magnum, if you’re hunting a little whitetail deer, an expanding bullet will work because it doesn’t need much penetration. But for self-defense, especially against humans, I’d want my first two shots to be expanding, and my follow-up shots to be non-expanding for deeper penetration.
This philosophy applies to Africa too. Hunters use a soft expanding bullet for the first shot and solids for follow-ups. Solids have great penetration and can penetrate lengthwise on big game like buffalo.
Finally, here’s my wife’s purse gun: a Browning Black Label .380 Auto. It's less powerful than a 9mm, so we load it with non-expanding, full metal jacket flat-nosed bullets for deeper penetration. We trust penetration over expansion when it comes to small calibers.
Hope this explanation helps. If you're using smaller calibers like .380 or .32 ACP, we suggest non-expanding bullets for reliable penetration. For larger calibers like 9mm or .38 Special, expanding bullets work fine.
