Liberty USM extremely lightweight fragmenting ammunition--50-gr. 9mm, 60-gr. .40?

[jkurtz7]

There are gel tests for the Liberty on Youtube, and it's unimpressive to say the least. It actually performs a lot like the RIP round, in that small petals fragment shallow, and a very light weight base continues on. In other words, it's a just another ultralight fragmenting exotic that doesn't perform to FBI/IWBA standards.

[GardoneVT]

A friend is apparently carrying Liberty USM . . . I searched here at PF and didn't find anything. He says it's saving him weight, as he can tell a significant difference in weight with a fully-loaded 2011 in the .40 S&W. Apparently the Liberty load is a 60-grain bullet purported to travel at 2000fps. He also mentioned its "ridiculous ballistic gel results."
Midway USA's blurb says the .40 is going 2000fps and penetrates 10" of ballistic gelatin.
http://www.midwayusa.com/product/914...ProductFinding

Sooo . . . anybody tested or used this stuff? It seems like snake oil to me, but I've never even handled it. It's not crazily expensive like RIP, but 10 inches of gelatin penetration seems short, and surely fragmenting lightweight slugs are going to have trouble with clothing and barriers, won't they? I'm just not seeing it. The two gelatin tests I found on Youtube both found that the fragmentation happened in the first few inches, with a small expansion zone/cavity in the first 3-4 inches and the base of the bullet, weighing about 25 grains, penetrating to about 10"-11" (this is with 9mm.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_hZMZM1l04

I'm not thinking of purchasing any of this stuff, just satisfying my own curiosity. I've been trying out Golden Saber 124 +p lately, and if I try anything else when that's all gone, it'll probably be the same brand in 147gr.

Bought some during The Great Drought for practice ammo- and I regret even doing that. After seeing the POI shift and the high felt recoil (seriously, +p+ actually feels better to me via the 92 then the Liberty stuff ), the stuff sucks even as plinking ammo.

The perfect ammo if your idea of "perfection" is recoil like +p+, accuracy of a .32 auto, the price of a 10mm JHP, and the approximate terminal ballistics of a .380 FMJ.

[Rich]

Bullets that light, which was very much the case with the Glasers and MagSafe, also tend to shoot way off of POA due to being so light.

I would use a LW bullet driven fast for SD-

If it passed ALL of the FBI barriers and shot POA/POI.

My reasoning is recoil. I would love a service pistol that had recoil of a 32acp or better yet no felt recoil at all .

[Don Gwinn]

Eh . . . this guy owns a LGS and range, machine guns, etc., and carries this ammo in a 2011. He's not looking for any advice from me on carry choices and I'm no expert.
Apparently he and others find that carrying lightweight bullets noticeably reduces the weight of a hi-cap pistol.
I'll freely admit to some gun envy . . . I'd take his Bren Ten off his hands, for instance. Just not gonna take his advice on this one.