Barrier Blind .223/5.56 Versus Service Handgun Penetration of House Walls

[JB2000]

Over the years there have been several tests done comparing the penetration of .223/5.56 against service handgun calibers in common building materials like wallboard. I think these discussions and tests started up when patrol carbines started to replace shotguns in police cruisers and were designed to show cops using those evil black rifles weren't going to kill little Timmy after the bullet passed through the bad guy and three houses. In those previous tests, the handgun service calibers tended to penetrate more walls and to stay truer to their trajectory than the .223/5.56. All of the tests I have seen (non-scientific) tend to use .223/5356 ammunition with FMJ, older SP designs, OTM, or varmint bullets. The FMJs tend to flatten and tumble, most of the others fragment and don't penetrate as far as the handgun bullets.

My question is, does barrier blind .223/5.56 ammunition change this calculus and to what degree?

Thanks.

[WobblyPossum]

Over the years there have been several tests done comparing the penetration of .223/5.56 against service handgun calibers in common building materials like wallboard. I think these discussions and tests started up when patrol carbines started to replace shotguns in police cruisers and were designed to show cops using those evil black rifles weren't going to kill little Timmy after the bullet passed through the bad guy and three houses. In those previous tests, the handgun service calibers tended to penetrate more walls and to stay truer to their trajectory than the .223/5.56. All of the tests I have seen (non-scientific) tend to use .223/5356 ammunition with FMJ, older SP designs, OTM, or varmint bullets. The FMJs tend to flatten and tumble, most of the others fragment and don't penetrate as far as the handgun bullets.

My question is, does barrier blind .223/5.56 ammunition change this calculus and to what degree?

Thanks.

All the testing of good barrier blind ammunition (Speer Good Dot, Federal Fusion, etc) I’ve seen shows it pass through the FBI testing barriers and still penetrate 12”-18” of ballistic gelatin while retaining a good amount of its mass. The barrier blind .223/5.56 ammo delivers similar penetration results to the good handgun ammo. I haven’t seen any testing where people just shoot wallboard to see how many sheets the rounds penetrate.

[JB2000]

I guess since .223/5.56 carbines have been I use for several years now, the concerns about over-penetration just aren’t there anymore.

[Velo Dog]

Interior wall penetration of Federal Fusion MSR 62-grain .223 Rem bonded soft point

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZTBPpZk0Mc


Drywall does a poor job of stopping bullets.

[DocGKR]

Incorrect test protocol that does not show anything useful.

[BehindBlueI's]

Drywall does a poor job of stopping bullets.

That's true, but his "walls" were much closer together then a real house would be, and bullets tumbling or fragmenting would behave differently with 10-12' of space between the walls.

[Velo Dog]

That's true, but his "walls" were much closer together then a real house would be, and bullets tumbling or fragmenting would behave differently with 10-12' of space between the walls.

Perhaps. This test might suggest that, but it also included fiberglass insulation which is seldom used in interior walls.

However, a bullet traveling nose forward will easily penetrate such insulation. A sideways bullet perhaps not so much.

https://www.theboxotruth.com/the-box...sulated-walls/

Brass Fetcher Ballistic Testing has conducted overpenetration tests to simulate a bullet passing through an attacker's arm and then through an interior wall.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlUhhwuUVtE

[JB2000]

In order to test something like this, the first thing to do would be to determine, based on previous incidents or testing, what exactly you want to know? If it's how many walls a specific round will penetrate, what is considered a pass or fail? Next you could design the test parameters.
- How many walls are you concerned about penetrating?
- Interior, exterior, or both?
- Do you want to measure deviation of the projectile's path?
- Capturing the bullet in the appropriate medium (10% ordnance gelatin), what penetration depth and would cavity characteristics are considered pass or fail?

When this topic first came up years ago, I got the impression it was more fear than fact based. It's important to know that what is cover from one bullet may only be concealment from another. Knowing what those parameters are for your particular ammunition is critical for professionals. But without specific incidents to model the tests on, I'm not sure there's much to be gained over the standard FBI tests.

It's still fun to shoot stuff and see what it does though!

[Unobtanium]

Very little to be gained from a controlled lab test here, IMO. I've shot car doors with 270gr .44 mag from a 7.5" barrel and it stopped them cold. I've also punched car doors with 9mm. When bullets hit complex objects in the real world, it's a legit 1-off event, and the only thing a lab or tests will show you is that "Trends emerge".

[Velo Dog]

Brass Fetcher Ballistic Testing has conducted overpenetration tests to simulate a bullet passing through an attacker's arm and then through an interior wall.

Since the Brass Fetcher link no longer works, here's two different videos for your entertainment