I love this topic because being a first responder in a violent city I get to see a lot of gunshot wounds from a lot of different bullets. I also see a lot of barrier penetration but that’s a separate discussion. A good example of pistol vs rifle in an actual human is leg wounds. pistol rounds (of all calibers and bullet types) often hit the upper thigh area without severing the femoral artery. Usually its a clean in and out leaving a hole about the size of the bullet. It was surprising to me how often people have close calls with the fatal femoral. But in the one case where I saw a victim hit in the thigh with a 7.62, the bullet took half the thigh with it on the way out and definitely severed the artery. I mean it looked like a softball size chunk of flesh was missing from the inner thigh. It wasn’t a direct arterial hit, but it didn’t have to be because of the huge area affected. Poor kid only survived because he had some training and put a good improvised tourniquet on immediately. He still left several liters of blood on the floor mixed with viscera I believed to be chunks of the muscle and fat the exiting bullet carried with it. That was the AK round after penetrating the thin barrier of a trailer wall, and which was likely fired from a “draco” short barrel AK pistol. The gangsters love those things. Another 7.62 draco hit I saw to the head similarly resulted in a massive gaping wound that opened the side of the skull up. Believe it or not that 15yo victim made it to the hospital still breathing and lasted almost an hour on the table with small chunks of brain falling out of his shattered skull. There is simply no comparison between a round that achieves a significant wound cavity and one which does not. That said, I have seen a lot of people get dead from a single well placed small caliber round, so carry what you can and shoot straight.
@@LuckyGunnerTo me, this reinforces kind of what we see in what I can find about real world statistics. None of us (I don't think!) Have a civilian EDC concealed rifle. The traditional "high performers" of 357 Magnum, 45acp, 357 SIG, and the very large caliber handguns produce more foot-lbs of energy, and tend to dump most or all of it in a body (person or animal). 9mm and similar seem to have measured poorer results, which seems to correlate to simply producing less energy. Not that I want shot with anything, of course. But that makes a case for yes, a revolver will be enough with six shots 95% of the time, or more. If a dozen shots of 9mm don't connect solidly, versus one or two equivalent hits of 357 Magnum giving the same or better stopping effect, I find the industry mantra of 9mm as the One Round to sound hollow.
@@DasGoodSoup 5.56/223, absolutely. Those seem to be a mixed bag, heavily dependent on the bullet and barrel length I expect, though I’m not seeing the weapon when I show up after the fact, based on trends I would guess most AR rounds I see are fired out of shorter barrels. The gangsters generally like AR pistols the same as they like the “draco” AK pistols. That might explain why some of the 223 wounds are pinholes akin to the pistol wounds, and others are pretty gnarly, probably better bullets out of longer barrels. I’ve never seen the same massive cavitation as those AK rounds cause though, and I’ve seen them punch through every wall of a house front to back where most 223 barely makes it through the first exterior wall. I swear 380 fmj has more barrier penetration than 223. AK rounds are terrifying.
@@keithgraham9547 No offense but this is exactly the oposate of what is being explained here. The point is that pistol I.E 45, 357 9mm and so on is all basically the same. In that they are not rifle rounds. In the end take the more capacity and easier shooting 9mm.
Probably you didn't understand the PDW concept. PDW was chosen for Soft Armor Penetration (f.e. of russian paratrooper) and way higher hit probability on moving targets as well as extended range of engagement (both due to higher velocity). While having a compact weapon, that can -in emergency - shot without instant hearing loss. Ever shot a 7,5" AR15 with 223 without hearing protection?
Thanks Chris, for continuing to present science and facts over "conventional wisdom," ego-driven theories and fudd lore. We need more of this in the industry!
Thanks Chris for this additional info. I attended many autopsies as a crime scene investigator over 30 plus years. All your information is spot on in terms of my observations and experience.
Sir, you are the best at this-no cutsie remarks about personal factors, no asides to your audience, and nothing insulting to a gun-owner's choice of weapon. You pack more into 12 minutes than many presenters can deliver in twice as much time.
Exactly. I class him with Paul Harrell in my mind. They have different presentation styles for sure, but that's great because they fill two niches of the same subject matter.
Excellent video. I'm incredibly grateful that you're using your platform to bring objectivity to a field commonly marred by misinformation, anecdotal evidence, and outright chicken bones voodoo.
Great video! Interesting to see a 5.56 round out of a reasonably lengthy barrel perform noticeably worse than a good 9mm hollow point out of a pistol. That's something I didn't expect based on my cursory understanding of terminal ballistics. Goes to show the importance of ammo selection even for full size rifles.
That was absolutely a bad batch. 5.56 out of a 16" barrel has no business performing that way on a target less than 100 yards away (if not 150). They absolutely should have performed the test again on a different batch of ammo. Using what by all appearances is an outlier as their one data point is inexcusable methodology and invalidates the entire 5.56 section of the video.
@@Florkl The entire point of that demonstration was to show that bullets can well exceed the velocities where you would usually expect significant wounding from the temporary cavity only to have them under-perform due to the specifics of the bullet and what it does (or doesn't do) as it passes through the target. Not only does it not invalidate anything, not including something like it would have been a massive oversight. There's a reason no one hunts with FMJs and that gel test is a good example of why that is.
M193 should have been used in Mozambique or Mogadishu (🤔). Its yawing and fragging begin 3.5-4” in tissue; M855 starts around 8”. The malnourished insurgents were so gaunt, the M855s were zipping through them like pencils before they could cause their intended damage. Again, proper M193, not the underpowered junk in the video, will comparatively demolish soft tissue sooner (distance in) than other 5.56. Not all M/XM193 are the same.
I just here to say Chris's delivery of the lucky gunner spot at the end has been getting so good. He's gotten me on the last 4 or 5 vids and frankly i'm impressed. Well done, sir.
Still one of the best channels regarding the use of firearms and its related equipment. No BS, straight to the point and well skripted videos. Thank you for that content.
Great video Chris! I think something a lot of folks forget about, too, is distance (and the resulting loss of velocity). I had one of my 5.56 SBRs out at the 500yd range the other day, and even with good 75gr ammo, my ballistic software was calculating that the projectiles were down to about 1330fps (300ft-lbs of energy) by 500 yards. That's going to do very very different things than what it would do at the muzzle when it's doing about 2200fps and 800ft-lbs of energy.
I've been saying this for years. 'Stopping' a target isn't a factor of caliber, it is a factor of shot placement, specifically hitting the CNS. Everything else is just secondary support for the CPU. Works on everything, up to and including bears and elephants.
Conversely, mindset also affects the psychological aspects of what makes a murderer continue fighting after receiving non-survivable hits. Michael Platt in FBI Miami, the recent terrorist in Fargo, the suspect who smiled and walked into the deputy's ten 9mm Critical Duty shots to the upper chest, and the suspect in the Gramins OIS all soaked up fatal rounds, but they apparently didn't get the memo that they were dead on their feet. They just kept on fighting until blood loss or their CNS was hit. There are just some really bad men out there who aren't impressed with our defensive firearms. We must always be ready for those guys.
There's just as many stats out there of guys soaking up 40 & 45 rounds. Handguns are defensive. You want to go offensive, then you need a rifle or a shotgun with slugs, and STILL shot placement is of vital importance.
What helped me understand a lot more about how this stuff works was an old blog "The Box O' Truth #1 - The Original Box O' Truth". Tons of examples of how things behave.
That blog was a great resource back in the day. Looking back, the conclusions he drew from the test results were sometimes a little iffy, but he was one of the only people getting out and actually doing stuff and then sharing it with regular people.
Very well presented, and a good complement to your "why ballistics gel works video." In the discussions I read or heard, consensus finally come back to the point you emphasized: shot placement is critical. Sure, many discussions devolve into arguments over caliber, but I don't recall ever reading anyone suggest shot placement was irrelevant, or even that shot placement is secondary. I don't recall anyone is suggesting hitting an attacker in the pinky with a 44 Rem Mag is more effective at stopping a threat than hitting an attacker in the cranial-ocular cavity with a 32 ACP. There is broad consensus on shot placement being paramount. As you mentioned, one area where opinion splits is on kinetic energy. The Federal engineer in your earlier video who answered your question about what happens to the energy, "It just dissipates" provided a very unsatisfactory response. A soccer ball kicked with full force has around 180 ft-lbs of energy, roughly the equivalent of 90gr bullet from a typical 380 ACP. A prepared player with their arms up might feel pain, but not suffer any temporary ill effects. However, an unprepared player is very likely to be stunned, dazed, or at least momentarily disoriented. This highlights one of the limitations common to some terminal wound research. Every study has limitations, flaws, and assumptions. We can still learn from them, but we should acknowledge the issues, as you did with ballistics gel. Gun fights are highly dynamic. Doctors evaluating wounds or performing an autopsy see the net results: this bullet punctured thug Platt's lung causing exsanguination and death. Can they do more than infer how long that took or physical limitations he was under between the fatal wound and subsequent 2 minutes of fighting? The thug Matix (1986 Miami shootout) was knocked unconscious early in the fight, and only regained consciousness right before the end the fight. Had he been in the fight with Platt the entire time, the results could have been much worse. Can doctors definitively determine what caused a person to lose consciousness for 90 seconds, hours after the fact and after the person is dead? Projectiles from rifles dwarf projectiles from handguns in velocity and energy. Very high velocity must be achieved for a temporary wound channel to exceed the limits of elasticity. No handgun round is going to knock a person on their back. Exsanguination takes time. If the defender successfully places the shots, what energy transfer to the target may do is disorient, allowing additional shots to connect, or the ability to safely transition to another threat, and/or buy time for exsanguination to take effect. Shot placement remains king, but given all else we know about physics, it seems highly unlikely several hundred ft-lbs of energy are absorbed by a person with no effect, just superfluous energy that dissipates.
Thank you for mentioning that Dr. Fackler actually developed his gel technique to correspond to actual gunshot wounds. It seems that many people think that gel tests are unrelated to real world gunshots.
@@bobjones-bt9bh Source please. Fackler was a surgeon during the Vietnam War and was very familiar with what bullets would do to humans. I have never read anything about hunting deer with a 9mm. With pistol ammo in particular, what is used now is radically different from what was used in the 1970's and 1980's, so unless you are talking about cast bullets or FMJ, he wouldn't have tested it.
Very good information. Good common sense explanation. Great visual demonstration also. 308 & 12 gauge slug win the "very impressive" gel impact(devastation) award in this installment. Thank you.
I have spent a lot of time reading up on this subject and drew almost identical conclusions. I've been summarizing and explaining these conclusions to people for years. I think I'm going to just start giving people this video instead. Thanks, Chris!
“Pistols put holes in people, rifles put holes through people and shotguns, with the right load and at the right range will physically remove a chunk of shit off your opponent and throw that shit on the floor!” Clint Smith
I say this as a forensic firearm examiner for over 30 years: you, sir, are absolutely top notch in information quality and presentation! Col. John Boyd of OODA Loop fame said, “Do good work!” And you certainly do. Best wishes, “may your tribe increase.”
Thank you for this updated video. The original version has people thinking there was a 2200fps magic "line in the sand", and ignored all other factors!
Great info and subscribed as this is the first I see Lucky Gunner on TH-cam. Been buying your product(s) for a few years now, thanks for the great prices and quick shipping. 👍
I remember some engineers from federal mentioned the tissue tear threshold for 223 was about 2200 fps in another video. I think it was lucky gunner interviewing them actually.
I have to thank you for bringing it up. The reality is that creating a balance between the myths and the technical complexity of this topic should not be easy. I think you are achieving it and I hope you will be encouraged to make a few more videos on the subject.
Outstanding basic and to-the-point explanation of terminal ballistics Lucky Gunner Ammo! I've personally fired a lot of calibers and bullet types through water jugs over the past 20+ years, and this video is spot on concerning bullet damage effect. My experience is the same as you describe: bullet performance in medium after impact is more related to bullet design than velocity, caliber or bullet weight. Regardless of rifle or handgun, regardless of caliber or bullet weight, a massive damage cavity comes at the expense of penetration, and deep penetration comes at the expense of wound tunnel diameter. Round nose or pointed bullets tend to tumble, creating a "buzz saw" damage path, but limiting penetration, while flat-nosed bullets, especially large caliber handgun bullets, tend to punch deep leaving a 1 inch plus diameter wound tunnel behind. A bullet design that is practically 100% reliable in damage effect, it is the wide flat nose bullet of about 80% caliber meplat, especially in .40+ caliber handguns, that punches extremely deep with a large diameter wound tunnel left behind. Even a .30 rifle round will not penetrate as deep as the 44/45 caliber flat nosed bullet of 240+ grains weight, although the explosive destruction of the .30 rifle bullet impact will be greater in the first 50% of penetration.
Would love to see you discuss how the Lehigh fluted solids that were designed around looking pretty in clear gel don’t really represent what they would do in actual tissue, since ballistics gel wasn’t made to mimic lateral tearing. Edit: Let me rephrase. Discuss how standard gel isn’t an appropriate test medium for that style of bullet. While it may be that they perform well in real life, ballistic medium doesn’t actually demonstrate that they will.
I don't know man, I have seen video of the fluted solids doing to flesh what it does in gel. I believe it was a necropsy of a feral hog that someone shot with a 45acp Lehigh XD and the wound channel did have an X shaped hole and the channel seemed wider than it should be for a solid. Unfortunately TH-cam took it down because they are stupid. I would link it if it was still up. That video is what convinced me that they at least have a better damage path than FMJ. I still carry hollow points in anything 9mm and up in power, but for things like 380 or 32acp, I would definitely consider the fluted bullets personally.
No ballistic medium gives a truly accurate representation of exactly how a bullet behaves in live human tissue. 10% calibrated gelatin is the closest we've come up with, but it is **not** an analog for flesh. Even FMJ and JHP behave somewhat differently in tissue than in gel. The benefit of gel is that it is **somewhat** close to living tissue, but most importantly that by always using identically calibrated test media, results can be consistently compared. I asked a similar question about Lehigh XD and similar fluted rounds, and I believe the only question that needs to be answered is: is the velocity of the fluid coming out of the flutes sufficient to cut tissue? If the answer is yes, then there is no debate left to have: the bullet design is effective as claimed, period. We know this is true because high-pressure water jets and airstream can easily cut flesh. I just don't know the minimum velocity of the stream needed to produce damage, and I don't know the measured velocity of the fluid being ejected from the flutes. If anyone could figure that out, I think we'd have our answer.
@@FlorklDead tissue doesn't behave the same as live tissue. The wound track and overall damage to a brisket or pork shoulder does not necessarily represent what a bullet does in a live human body. That being said, your conclusion is probably not wrong. Based on anecdotal and unscientific tests, I do believe that the XD-type solid fluted bullets are effective, and I carry them in every one of my guns that Underwood makes the XD for. But I have honestly not seen any properly performed scientifically valid testing of these types of bullets, and no properly measured and validated data about the unique effects of the flutes. I've cast my personal verdict in favor, but technically the jury is still out.
@@its_clean Right, I agree with your initial statement. The point being that our current ballistics gel was designed around mimicking how standard projectiles wound. The fluted Lehigh bullets make a larger cavity through their flutes laterally disrupting the ballistic medium, which if you have ever messed with either true organic ballistics gel or clear ballistics you know how easy it tears. You can just tear chunks apart as you wish, which obviously you cannot do with the vast majority of human tissue. I don’t disagree that they could work, I’m just pointing out that current ballistics gel isn’t going to be a reliable indicator that they will or not.
Great video and a great Segway at the end. Chris you and your channel are definitely in my top five favorite on TH-cam. Thanks for the informative entertaining content.
LG consistently has some of the most informative videos out there. This is a video I'd readily use to explain the mechanism of injury for firearms to non-firearms people (something I often have to do to in my 2A advocacy). Excellent points about round construction, what effects a bad load can have, and so on. Great work as usual. Coming from a background in physics, I do appreciate it when things get broken down in a way that demonstrate clearly the science behind what's going on--particularly when a round overpenetrates and doesn't expend its energy on a target and just keeps on shufflin' wherever it's headed. And that not all mechanisms of dissipating that energy are created equal.
Once again the greatest channel beats the expectations. 7.5 FK is said by the manufacturer that it produces wounds by big temporary cavity. Would love to see it to the test. And also the 20 gauge slug. Oh boy, it's a whole new world that can be explored
Good video Chris! I concur that there are a lot of factors to consider in bullet selection. No argument in that a rifle dispenses a lot more energy than a handgun. There is also velocity dependence (especially in handgun rounds) as you stated which is affected by bullet construction. For example I shoot .45 Super however much of the ammo currently available is still constructed for .45 acp velocities resulting in hyper expansion but only 6-8 inches of penetration depending upon the brand. Bullet placement is tantamount! Shooting someone deranged on PCP usually requires a CNS shot to incapacitate.
Big fan of 00 buck. A lot of talk of 1 buck being optimal but I think that is only under optimal conditions. In real world conditions 00 will have the smash to carry thru
I'm glad you touched on the fact that larger diameter bullets are better. For too long people have been saying that they're the same, which is mathematically and physically impossible.
EXCELLENT VIDEO! I don't think any of this info was nessisarily new to me, but only Lucky Gunner could put it all together so efficiently. This is a great "one-stop shop" of knowledge, especially for newer gun owners.
Hi Chris, loved the no-BS information here and the easily understandable presentation as usual. What do you think about novel bullet designs claiming to use external hydraulic effects, like the Lehigh XD and ARX Inceptor? Ignore the differences in price, manufacturing quality, barrier penetration, etc- let's talk exclusively about wound cavity here. Most non-scientific and semi-scientific tests I've seen point strongly to a measurable benefit from solid copper bullets with flutes that "eject" fluid perpendicular to the wound track, cutting a wider x-shaped channel. The logic makes sense to me, as we know pneumatic and hydraulic jets from various machines can easily cut flesh even at moderate velocities. I assume the only question is: is the fluid leaving the flutes at sufficient velocity to cut flesh? Or am I oversimplifying and there's more to it? This is the limit of my understanding of fluid mechanics, so I'd love for someone with more knowledge, both about the field and the particular rounds in question, to chime in with something based on actual science.
Has Lucky Gunner ever done a review of the 5.7x28 rounds? They were designed specifically for use in the PS90 rifle and handguns. It seems like the perfect round to analyze the difference between rifle and handgun ballistics.
We're working on some 5.7 testing right now. We actually did this video specifically to provide context for when we analyze the 5.7 results. Not sure when that will be posted, but it should be sometime before the end of the year.
Thanks for talking about this, been trying to tell people about this for years. Handguns are a great comprise, but they have no stopping power to speak of.
A short search will also show many thousands of M193 rounds doing exactly what they are designed for from a 16" barrel, to say what was shown is typical of this round from a standard AR15 would be wrong at best.
Great video. You should do m193 through 16" 1/7 twist vs m193 through 20" 1/12 twist. I think you'll be surprised with the results and would make for a good video. Thanks
The M293 round was /is crippled by shorter barrels and increased twist rates. The M16 had 1:12 twist rate out of 20: barrel and terminal ballistics were fantastic! The red herring of "you cannot over-stabilze" a bullet persists. The slower the spin, the easier it will be to tumble and fragment the M193.
Your videos are great. I am so glad that you guys have taken this approach to sharing your data. I have been following your videos since you guys did the steel cased ammo in AR15s test. You guys rock. I don't see that video so maybe you could repost it. In the topic of bullets maybe compare the effects that handgun rounds have on gel and then the same round fired out of carbine length barrels. Keep up the good work.
@@LuckyGunner I'd be honored! It came to me as I was watching the Fackler video you linked in the description. It's funny how the principles discussed almost 40 years ago are still being debated today. Keep up the good work
“Pistols put holes in people, rifles blow bigger holes through people, and shotguns, with the right load at the right distance, physically remove a chunk from peoples bodies and throw that shit on the floor.”- Clint smith
Great video. All newbies to shooting should watch. Thank you. I will say that I recently decided to toss my rifles and just use 9mm since it blows lungs right out of the body. Who needs a rifle? jk of course. I am not an idiot. As a northeast woods deer hunter, I can say that i have seen this years ago, with results of deer being shot with high powered magnum rifles at our close ranges (under 100 yds) The results meant a LOT less meat in the freezer. I don't go over a 30-30 personally, using 170 grain. Bullet, with good placement of course, passes through hyde, bones, muscles, both lungs and exits leaving a good blood trail, and you have minimal meat loss. Go up to 2500 fps or more, and you lose half the shoulder meat, at least.
My question has always been .300blk vs .45 ACP, ballistically. I always see comments that subsonic .300 is just pointy .45. I would love to see a ballistic gel conparison
I have wondered the same thing and that is something we would like to dig into for sure. We did an informal test with one subsonic 300 BLK load so far and it was... unimpressive.
Makes sense that .300 Blackout subsonic would be less impressive than .45ACP. As he stated, you need a certain velocity and/or mass for the temporary stretch cavity to do significant wounding. .300blk subsonic wouldn’t have either, so it’d wound like a pistol where the only damage is the permanent wound cavity. However, you’d be making a .30 caliber hole (which is smaller than even 9mm at .355 caliber) rather than a .45 caliber hole. .300blk’s main advantage as a subsonic load is the pointy projectile does have better aerodynamics than .45ACP, so it shoots a bit straighter and further, but at the cost of terminal ballistics. It’s why for civilians, which generally shoot at much, much, much closer ranges, I never found that much point with .300blk subsonic. Just go with .45ACP which is much cheaper, has slightly better terminal performance, and can keep the same ammo for a carry/home defense handgun.
@@gameragodzilla tbf my .300 has like a 7.5” barrel so 5.56 is less than ideal for that. It’s kinda sounding like subsonics are just for memes as a civilian though. Still gonna reload a ton of subsonic when I get a press though
@@bishopm4401 Yeah, for such a short barrel, just stick with pistol calibers. It’s the one area I think PCCs still have a place, since while rifle rounds are much more powerful, they are also much more dependent on barrel length to get that really high velocity. When you chop the barrel down, you lose a lot of that effectiveness so you might as well use pistol ammo designed for short barrels.
I’d love to see you guys do some testing on 5.7mm as a self defense round. The advantages to a 5.7 pistol as a carry gun seem great, provided it’s an effective round.
Love the way this guys explains stuff...and yes they have GREAT prices on ammo, fast cheap shipping too. Lucky Gunner is awesome! (not a paid spokesperson lol)
Try your .45-70 test with an HP bullet like hornady's 300 gr. HP. Results will vary drastically. I shot a deer with that and it went in about .75" hole size and came out the back about the size of my fist (which is not very small). I use Hornady's 350 gr. RNFP bullet in my .45-70 loads now for my levergun and they are doing closer to 1900 fps and don't do quite so much meat damage. Combined with the slightly better speed achieved with handloading, I guarantee you don't want to get hit with that. Most .45-70 commercial loads are set up for old guns, so they don't have the liability of destroying an heirloom rifle or hurting someone. A handgun that does very well is the .45 Colt with a 240 gr. XTP magnum which when fired out of my 5.5" blackhawk (not too huge at all) which drops most deer in 3 steps in my finding. It's producing 1248 fps and 1126 ft/lbs of energy. I had one run 30 yards and that's the furthest one has gone with the modernized old .45 Colt. I also have a .45 Colt carbine and modern henry lever action with 20" barrels and those produce 1693 fps and 1527 ft/lbs of energy. While not nearly as powerful as most rifles, its capable of knocking down anything in North America at short range and all but maybe a big brown bear at moderate range. I also use a bullseye version of this load in my 3" barrelled .45 Colt Snubby and it's a handful. I only use them when going into bear territory, but use a softer 240 gr. Sierra Sportsmaster load for normal deer hunting here.
Fascinating stuff. The 5.56 vs 7.62 was especially interesting. I think handgun ballistics are easy to understand by comparison, as they're doing things the same way. With the rifles you need to account for different effects of the lightweight superfast 5.56 vs the still fast, but much heavier and higher energy 7.62.
hello chris. here in Brazil, ammunition is very expensive and ballistic gelatin is practically impossible to get. If possible, do some tests with Brazilian ammunition CBC/Magtech 9mm proshock 135gr and 147gr. currently, as there is no reliable data about them, I continue to use the 124gr fmj.
Energy transfer is what makes the temporary cavity. The 2200fps threshold is junk science. This is why a high velocity 223 can sail right through and ice pick if it doesn’t destabilize. And why a heavy slow bullet with a large meplat can create a large temporary cavity. It’s just that velocity has more of an influence on energy than mass. But that’s just the start. You can tear tissue by exceeding its elastic limit, as you mentioned. But you can also reduce that elastic limit with a fragmenting bullet. The fragments lacerate the tissue and reduce its elastic limit everywhere a fragment travels. This is why the M193 can produce a devastating baseball sized hole in what would otherwise be elastic tissue… when it properly fragments. The tradespace with fragmenting bullets is they often don’t penetrate far. But, if you can get a reliably fragmenting bullet to penetrate deep enough for your needs (depending on animal), it should be a more lethal sounding mechanism than an expanding bullet. E.g. the 77gr TMK for medium sized game.
I think the importance of meplat diameter bears consideration. I would like to see terminal ballistics turned into a mini-series, and I think bullet profile and the importance of meplat should be the subject of the next video. The French were pioneers in early ballistics. They recognized the importance of meplat on wounding early on, but these lessons were forgotten around the beginning of the 20th century with the rush of militarys to adopt spitzer projectiles. While the range of pointed projectiles was increased, the lethality was not as great. Old school thinking favored bullet diameter to increase lethality without respect to nose profile or bullet construction. This backwards thinking continues to this day, with people insisting larger caliber projectiles make bigger holes. Caliber only significantly contributes to wounding to the degree an increase in bullet diameter leads to a corresponding increase in meplat diameter. Since all spitzer projectiles have essentially the same meplat diameter, an increase in caliber of a spitzer bullet contributes little to terminal effect. This makes sense as the same elements of design that allow the spitzer bullet to slice through air with minimal drag and disruption also allow the bullet to slice through tissue with minimal drag and disruption. With spitzer bullets, you need expansion, fragmentation, or some other mechanism to increase the surface area exposed perpendicular to the vector of the projectile's travel in order to increase wounding. This is why the non-expanding FMJ rifle rounds of the 20th century all sucked about equally regardless if whether they were .26 caliber or .32 caliber, and why to this day, a 5.56 M855 round that tumbles early and fragments can be counted on to be far more terminally effective than a 7.62mm M80 ball round that punches all the way through the torso of a malnourished jihadist without significant yaw or bullet deformation.
Absolutely fantastic video that has illustrated (my own) research into these topics is a digestible and unbiased way. However, I have 1 contention: If we're shooting a human that's faced towards us, then you only need the projectile to penetrate 3-10 inches deep to hit organs and/or the spine, as a 6ft male my chest 'depth' (from sternum to spine) is around 10 inches, that not only means that most of the 'damage' created by the projectile needs to happen within the first 10 inches, but that any further penetration results in the projectile flying away and potentially hitting someone you never intended to hit: Aside from very specific cases purpose made to defy this rule, all contemporary ammunition will penetrate, through clothing, enough to hit vitals, and most will travel straight out the other end too. You will only 'need' a minimum of 12 inches of flesh penetration if you are specifically afraid of having to shoot at the swollen bellies of unfathomably obese men, and even then pistol calibers will penetrate enough to hit his organs anyway.
I don’t know but I think that last part is really important. If you can’t afford the best protection, it may not be that bad because criminals or as you said predators are by nature basically cowards who are taking advantage of a perceived weakness. The moment they find out that the big guy or little lady has the jump and is hitting them with some kind of bullet that resolve might melt away quickly. They see that their perception was wrong and they are being hurt now. They probably don’t have the awareness to tell what you are using and then weigh it against the number of times they just took damage. They will want to leave the situation. Not everyone is going to be able to buy the finest thing that is scientifically proven to stop a predator. But even though you don’t want to bet everything on the theory, you might be just fine if you can break down their idea that they can harm without consequences. But I don’t know.
The 223 performance was good in the gel test but what we really need is longer gel test to really see what it's performance is like at 100 200 300 400 500 yards with a chronograph right in front of the gel,
Will you be going into hydrostatic shock in a future video? I have heard in the past that it is a significant factor with rifle rounds designed for hunting but I would be interested in your opinion.
That is a really tricky topic because "hydrostatic shock" can refer to different wounding effects depending on who you ask. A lot of people use that term when they're actually talking about the temporary cavity. Originally, it was meant to refer to a pressure wave that radiates through the body and causes remote damage. This has not been proven to exist, but enough weird things happen with bullets and bodies that it's also difficult to prove it does not exist. Additionally, there is some evidence that the temporary cavity can displace tissue that then causes blunt force type trauma to the spinal cord, which has the (sometimes temporary) effect of incapacitating the target. This could be what's happening in some cases when a hunter gets a good heart/lung shot, but the animal drops instantly as if the central nervous system were disrupted. Is this the phenomenon that is being attributed to "hydrostatic shock"? I don't know... there is still a lot about this stuff that is not very well understood.
@@LuckyGunner thank you for the reply. Most of the time I hear people talking about 'hydrostatic shock' it is in reference to a reaction by the CNS to a pressure wave from the bullet impact. It has never been clear if this is direct trauma from pressure passing through the fluids of the body or just through the circulatory system. But the end result is normaly described along the lines of either knocking them out long enough that other trauma (blood loss) causes death before return of consciousness. Or that the overpressure causes enough damage itself to 'turn the lights off' permanently. Your video brought it up in my mind and I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask and see if there is a more definitive explanation. Cunningham's Law ect.
I love content like this... y'all do such a good job! Have y'all done anything on twist rates? I would like to see the answer to the age old question "is 55gr projectile accurate in a 1:7 twist barrel?"
There will always be manufacturing defects in bulk manufacturing. A bullet with a thicker jacket, will not fragment as easily. And some foreign made 55 grain FMJ is not designed to fragment intentionally.
I love these ballistic gel tests. I'd really like to see some tests for the 5.7x28 round. Now that there are a number of different pistols being offered for it and a number of different rounds. Lucky gunner does the best, most scientific, gel tests that I've come across.
Impacts that break or shatter bones may not immediately kill, but, may 'anchor the target (whether animal or human) fairly fast. Don't know of many pistol bullets that, reliably, do this, but, seen more than one deer drop in place, but, were needful of a mercy strike. Further, large, relatively, slow projectiles (from pictures of dead & injured from our 'War of Northern Aggression' as it's sometimes referred) were very destructive to a body while many survived multiple hits from pistol caliber rounds.
"War of northern aggression"? I always heard it referred to as "temper tantrum of the slave states" guess we have different nicknames for it in different places.
Your presentations are always enjoyable and informative. Thank You! In the realm of 5.56 M193, would you consider slow mo gel testing with different barrel twist rates? I've always heard that the 1:12 twist rate of the original M16 was a necessary factor in its wicked terminal performance. But the evidence I've found to support this is anecdotal, and the testing wasn't up to any kind of standard.
@@notme3184 Yup, the 1:7 is fine for M193. The difference is that the 1in12 of the original barrel kept the project just stable enough to fly true but upon hitting a soft target the round immediately destabilized, thus yawing and fragmenting, and that's what made it so catastrophic. I've even heard that they tried a 1in14 barrel, but I don't recall why they settled on the 1in12.
I think it's important to understand that ballistics gel and actual live tissue are different so what the gel shows vs what actually happen will also be different. the youtube channel "ASP" or Active Self Protection has lots of real world firearm defense incidents. Plenty of people take rounds to the chest and run off like nothing happened. But a threat running off is a threat stopped so practice. Be as fast and as accurate as you can be.
Please please please a video about pdw calibers like 5.7 and 4.6 Also the new kid on the block the .30 super carry will be much appriciated! And another question, those "extreme penetrator" and "extreme defender" bullets that came out a few years ago claim to do the same rifle effects in handguns. Can it be tested in any scientific way? Except for live targets of course...
This is why m193 is good for range shooting, but bonded soft points, OTM or hollowpoints will always be a better choice over depending purely on velocity to induce fragmentation.
It's funny how you criticise the KInetic Energy Transfer Theory, but on the other hand completely follow it's key points. A slower, heavy in mass projectile has a lot of KE, if it is able to transfer this energy (shotgun slug) it is very effective - if it fails to transfer it's KE (like the 45-70) it is an ineffective bullet and does way less damage. You basically just followed KE Transfer Theory. Greetings from Germany.
![Is 5.7x28mm Just Overpriced .22 Magnum? [Part 1]](/img/n.gif)
I love this topic because being a first responder in a violent city I get to see a lot of gunshot wounds from a lot of different bullets. I also see a lot of barrier penetration but that’s a separate discussion. A good example of pistol vs rifle in an actual human is leg wounds. pistol rounds (of all calibers and bullet types) often hit the upper thigh area without severing the femoral artery. Usually its a clean in and out leaving a hole about the size of the bullet. It was surprising to me how often people have close calls with the fatal femoral. But in the one case where I saw a victim hit in the thigh with a 7.62, the bullet took half the thigh with it on the way out and definitely severed the artery. I mean it looked like a softball size chunk of flesh was missing from the inner thigh. It wasn’t a direct arterial hit, but it didn’t have to be because of the huge area affected. Poor kid only survived because he had some training and put a good improvised tourniquet on immediately. He still left several liters of blood on the floor mixed with viscera I believed to be chunks of the muscle and fat the exiting bullet carried with it. That was the AK round after penetrating the thin barrier of a trailer wall, and which was likely fired from a “draco” short barrel AK pistol. The gangsters love those things. Another 7.62 draco hit I saw to the head similarly resulted in a massive gaping wound that opened the side of the skull up. Believe it or not that 15yo victim made it to the hospital still breathing and lasted almost an hour on the table with small chunks of brain falling out of his shattered skull. There is simply no comparison between a round that achieves a significant wound cavity and one which does not. That said, I have seen a lot of people get dead from a single well placed small caliber round, so carry what you can and shoot straight.
Thanks for sharing your experience! I'm sorry you have to see stuff like that, but grateful you're able to enlighten the rest of us
Have you seen ar vs ak wounds? Which would you rather be shot by if you literally had to pick one
@@LuckyGunnerTo me, this reinforces kind of what we see in what I can find about real world statistics.
None of us (I don't think!) Have a civilian EDC concealed rifle. The traditional "high performers" of 357 Magnum, 45acp, 357 SIG, and the very large caliber handguns produce more foot-lbs of energy, and tend to dump most or all of it in a body (person or animal).
9mm and similar seem to have measured poorer results, which seems to correlate to simply producing less energy.
Not that I want shot with anything, of course. But that makes a case for yes, a revolver will be enough with six shots 95% of the time, or more.
If a dozen shots of 9mm don't connect solidly, versus one or two equivalent hits of 357 Magnum giving the same or better stopping effect, I find the industry mantra of 9mm as the One Round to sound hollow.
@@DasGoodSoup 5.56/223, absolutely. Those seem to be a mixed bag, heavily dependent on the bullet and barrel length I expect, though I’m not seeing the weapon when I show up after the fact, based on trends I would guess most AR rounds I see are fired out of shorter barrels. The gangsters generally like AR pistols the same as they like the “draco” AK pistols. That might explain why some of the 223 wounds are pinholes akin to the pistol wounds, and others are pretty gnarly, probably better bullets out of longer barrels. I’ve never seen the same massive cavitation as those AK rounds cause though, and I’ve seen them punch through every wall of a house front to back where most 223 barely makes it through the first exterior wall. I swear 380 fmj has more barrier penetration than 223. AK rounds are terrifying.
@@keithgraham9547 No offense but this is exactly the oposate of what is being explained here. The point is that pistol I.E 45, 357 9mm and so on is all basically the same. In that they are not rifle rounds. In the end take the more capacity and easier shooting 9mm.
This has been exactly what I’m looking for as the fight for PDW calibers rages on. So succinct! I’d watch another hour of this
Thanks! If you really want a deep dive, check out the 1987 video with Fackler that's linked in the description
@@LuckyGunner thank you Chris another success👍
Probably you didn't understand the PDW concept. PDW was chosen for Soft Armor Penetration (f.e. of russian paratrooper) and way higher hit probability on moving targets as well as extended range of engagement (both due to higher velocity). While having a compact weapon, that can -in emergency - shot without instant hearing loss. Ever shot a 7,5" AR15 with 223 without hearing protection?
@@budterence85 You mistake me good sir! I actually love the P90 and am really looking forward to the 5.7mm testing by @LuckyGunner
Makes perfect sense. PCCs are great for close quarters and they’re compact
Thanks Chris, for continuing to present science and facts over "conventional wisdom," ego-driven theories and fudd lore. We need more of this in the industry!
Thanks!
@@LuckyGunner An addendum addressing 5.7x28 and the like, hyper-velocity tiny-caliber pistols, would be very informative!
try paul harrel.
Thanks Chris for this additional info. I attended many autopsies as a crime scene investigator over 30 plus years. All your information is spot on in terms of my observations and experience.
Thanks!
Sir, you are the best at this-no cutsie remarks about personal factors, no asides to your audience, and nothing insulting to a gun-owner's choice of weapon. You pack more into 12 minutes than many presenters can deliver in twice as much time.
Exactly. I class him with Paul Harrell in my mind. They have different presentation styles for sure, but that's great because they fill two niches of the same subject matter.
Excellent video.
I'm incredibly grateful that you're using your platform to bring objectivity to a field commonly marred by misinformation, anecdotal evidence, and outright chicken bones voodoo.
Hah, "chicken bones voodoo" sounds about right. Thanks for the support!
Great video! Interesting to see a 5.56 round out of a reasonably lengthy barrel perform noticeably worse than a good 9mm hollow point out of a pistol. That's something I didn't expect based on my cursory understanding of terminal ballistics. Goes to show the importance of ammo selection even for full size rifles.
I don't like the fact they didn't tell us the brand
That was absolutely a bad batch. 5.56 out of a 16" barrel has no business performing that way on a target less than 100 yards away (if not 150). They absolutely should have performed the test again on a different batch of ammo. Using what by all appearances is an outlier as their one data point is inexcusable methodology and invalidates the entire 5.56 section of the video.
@@Florkl The entire point of that demonstration was to show that bullets can well exceed the velocities where you would usually expect significant wounding from the temporary cavity only to have them under-perform due to the specifics of the bullet and what it does (or doesn't do) as it passes through the target. Not only does it not invalidate anything, not including something like it would have been a massive oversight. There's a reason no one hunts with FMJs and that gel test is a good example of why that is.
M193s were well known for pass-through hits. It was why they were replaced.
M193 should have been used in Mozambique or Mogadishu (🤔). Its yawing and fragging begin 3.5-4” in tissue; M855 starts around 8”. The malnourished insurgents were so gaunt, the M855s were zipping through them like pencils before they could cause their intended damage.
Again, proper M193, not the underpowered junk in the video, will comparatively demolish soft tissue sooner (distance in) than other 5.56.
Not all M/XM193 are the same.
I always thought big gun with big bullet = big hole; small gun with small bullet = little hole. It’s great to have my thinking updated.
I just here to say Chris's delivery of the lucky gunner spot at the end has been getting so good. He's gotten me on the last 4 or 5 vids and frankly i'm impressed. Well done, sir.
And remember folks, always spay or neuter your pets!
Still one of the best channels regarding the use of firearms and its related equipment. No BS, straight to the point and well skripted videos. Thank you for that content.
Great video Chris!
I think something a lot of folks forget about, too, is distance (and the resulting loss of velocity). I had one of my 5.56 SBRs out at the 500yd range the other day, and even with good 75gr ammo, my ballistic software was calculating that the projectiles were down to about 1330fps (300ft-lbs of energy) by 500 yards. That's going to do very very different things than what it would do at the muzzle when it's doing about 2200fps and 800ft-lbs of energy.
It is a long for caliber bullet, so it is still more likely to yaw and tumble end over end a few times in a target.
I've been saying this for years. 'Stopping' a target isn't a factor of caliber, it is a factor of shot placement, specifically hitting the CNS. Everything else is just secondary support for the CPU. Works on everything, up to and including bears and elephants.
Agree, and so will anyone that actually reads up on the subject, outside of the firearms press.
Conversely, mindset also affects the psychological aspects of what makes a murderer continue fighting after receiving non-survivable hits. Michael Platt in FBI Miami, the recent terrorist in Fargo, the suspect who smiled and walked into the deputy's ten 9mm Critical Duty shots to the upper chest, and the suspect in the Gramins OIS all soaked up fatal rounds, but they apparently didn't get the memo that they were dead on their feet. They just kept on fighting until blood loss or their CNS was hit. There are just some really bad men out there who aren't impressed with our defensive firearms. We must always be ready for those guys.
Ergo, 12GA slugs.
There's just as many stats out there of guys soaking up 40 & 45 rounds. Handguns are defensive. You want to go offensive, then you need a rifle or a shotgun with slugs, and STILL shot placement is of vital importance.
If you're talking about the guy who killed some cops, that's not terrorism. He targeted govt actors.
@@ALovelyBunchOfDragonballz because he got into a traffic jam he was going to a parade.
@@kekistanimememan170 ....and killed agents of the state.
Would love to see a follow up addressing 5.7x28 and the like, hyper-velocity tiny-caliber pistols!
5.7 tests are coming
There are a lot of tests on the internet and they show 5.7 x 28 to be marginally more effective than .22 WMR.
@@johnshepherd9676so like any other pistol cartridge you're likely to carry
@@dandylion1987if that is what you think you really did not understand today's video.
@@johnshepherd9676how so?
What helped me understand a lot more about how this stuff works was an old blog "The Box O' Truth #1 - The Original Box O' Truth". Tons of examples of how things behave.
That blog was a great resource back in the day. Looking back, the conclusions he drew from the test results were sometimes a little iffy, but he was one of the only people getting out and actually doing stuff and then sharing it with regular people.
@@LuckyGunner your info is consistently far more precise and practical!
@@LuckyGunner
Do so with Elite Ammunition S4 and T6B. Otherwise it's pointless
Very well presented, and a good complement to your "why ballistics gel works video." In the discussions I read or heard, consensus finally come back to the point you emphasized: shot placement is critical. Sure, many discussions devolve into arguments over caliber, but I don't recall ever reading anyone suggest shot placement was irrelevant, or even that shot placement is secondary. I don't recall anyone is suggesting hitting an attacker in the pinky with a 44 Rem Mag is more effective at stopping a threat than hitting an attacker in the cranial-ocular cavity with a 32 ACP. There is broad consensus on shot placement being paramount.
As you mentioned, one area where opinion splits is on kinetic energy. The Federal engineer in your earlier video who answered your question about what happens to the energy, "It just dissipates" provided a very unsatisfactory response. A soccer ball kicked with full force has around 180 ft-lbs of energy, roughly the equivalent of 90gr bullet from a typical 380 ACP. A prepared player with their arms up might feel pain, but not suffer any temporary ill effects. However, an unprepared player is very likely to be stunned, dazed, or at least momentarily disoriented.
This highlights one of the limitations common to some terminal wound research. Every study has limitations, flaws, and assumptions. We can still learn from them, but we should acknowledge the issues, as you did with ballistics gel. Gun fights are highly dynamic. Doctors evaluating wounds or performing an autopsy see the net results: this bullet punctured thug Platt's lung causing exsanguination and death. Can they do more than infer how long that took or physical limitations he was under between the fatal wound and subsequent 2 minutes of fighting? The thug Matix (1986 Miami shootout) was knocked unconscious early in the fight, and only regained consciousness right before the end the fight. Had he been in the fight with Platt the entire time, the results could have been much worse. Can doctors definitively determine what caused a person to lose consciousness for 90 seconds, hours after the fact and after the person is dead?
Projectiles from rifles dwarf projectiles from handguns in velocity and energy. Very high velocity must be achieved for a temporary wound channel to exceed the limits of elasticity. No handgun round is going to knock a person on their back. Exsanguination takes time. If the defender successfully places the shots, what energy transfer to the target may do is disorient, allowing additional shots to connect, or the ability to safely transition to another threat, and/or buy time for exsanguination to take effect. Shot placement remains king, but given all else we know about physics, it seems highly unlikely several hundred ft-lbs of energy are absorbed by a person with no effect, just superfluous energy that dissipates.
Thank you for mentioning that Dr. Fackler actually developed his gel technique to correspond to actual gunshot wounds. It seems that many people think that gel tests are unrelated to real world gunshots.
@@bobjones-bt9bh Source please. Fackler was a surgeon during the Vietnam War and was very familiar with what bullets would do to humans. I have never read anything about hunting deer with a 9mm. With pistol ammo in particular, what is used now is radically different from what was used in the 1970's and 1980's, so unless you are talking about cast bullets or FMJ, he wouldn't have tested it.
Look at all that old Remington test footage. Really cool
Very good information. Good common sense explanation. Great visual demonstration also. 308 & 12 gauge slug win the "very impressive" gel impact(devastation) award in this installment. Thank you.
What a fantastic video. I love Chris and lucky gunner. Also their bulk 9mm deals are usually pretty good.
Just chiming in to say Lucky Gunner really does have lightning fast shipping. I've never had an order take more than two days to arrive.
I have spent a lot of time reading up on this subject and drew almost identical conclusions. I've been summarizing and explaining these conclusions to people for years. I think I'm going to just start giving people this video instead. Thanks, Chris!
Another very good technical ballistic discussion broken down to more manageable bites.
“Pistols put holes in people, rifles put holes through people and shotguns, with the right load and at the right range will physically remove a chunk of shit off your opponent and throw that shit on the floor!” Clint Smith
I say this as a forensic firearm examiner for over 30 years: you, sir, are absolutely top notch in information quality and presentation! Col. John Boyd of OODA Loop fame said, “Do good work!” And you certainly do. Best wishes, “may your tribe increase.”
Thank you for this updated video. The original version has people thinking there was a 2200fps magic "line in the sand", and ignored all other factors!
Great info and subscribed as this is the first I see Lucky Gunner on TH-cam.
Been buying your product(s) for a few years now, thanks for the great prices and quick shipping. 👍
I remember some engineers from federal mentioned the tissue tear threshold for 223 was about 2200 fps in another video. I think it was lucky gunner interviewing them actually.
I have to thank you for bringing it up. The reality is that creating a balance between the myths and the technical complexity of this topic should not be easy. I think you are achieving it and I hope you will be encouraged to make a few more videos on the subject.
Outstanding basic and to-the-point explanation of terminal ballistics Lucky Gunner Ammo! I've personally fired a lot of calibers and bullet types through water jugs over the past 20+ years, and this video is spot on concerning bullet damage effect. My experience is the same as you describe: bullet performance in medium after impact is more related to bullet design than velocity, caliber or bullet weight.
Regardless of rifle or handgun, regardless of caliber or bullet weight, a massive damage cavity comes at the expense of penetration, and deep penetration comes at the expense of wound tunnel diameter. Round nose or pointed bullets tend to tumble, creating a "buzz saw" damage path, but limiting penetration, while flat-nosed bullets, especially large caliber handgun bullets, tend to punch deep leaving a 1 inch plus diameter wound tunnel behind.
A bullet design that is practically 100% reliable in damage effect, it is the wide flat nose bullet of about 80% caliber meplat, especially in .40+ caliber handguns, that punches extremely deep with a large diameter wound tunnel left behind. Even a .30 rifle round will not penetrate as deep as the 44/45 caliber flat nosed bullet of 240+ grains weight, although the explosive destruction of the .30 rifle bullet impact will be greater in the first 50% of penetration.
Would love to see you discuss how the Lehigh fluted solids that were designed around looking pretty in clear gel don’t really represent what they would do in actual tissue, since ballistics gel wasn’t made to mimic lateral tearing.
Edit: Let me rephrase. Discuss how standard gel isn’t an appropriate test medium for that style of bullet. While it may be that they perform well in real life, ballistic medium doesn’t actually demonstrate that they will.
I don't know man, I have seen video of the fluted solids doing to flesh what it does in gel. I believe it was a necropsy of a feral hog that someone shot with a 45acp Lehigh XD and the wound channel did have an X shaped hole and the channel seemed wider than it should be for a solid. Unfortunately TH-cam took it down because they are stupid. I would link it if it was still up. That video is what convinced me that they at least have a better damage path than FMJ.
I still carry hollow points in anything 9mm and up in power, but for things like 380 or 32acp, I would definitely consider the fluted bullets personally.
I’ve seen what it does to slabs of brisket, and it certainly makes a massive hole in that.
No ballistic medium gives a truly accurate representation of exactly how a bullet behaves in live human tissue. 10% calibrated gelatin is the closest we've come up with, but it is **not** an analog for flesh. Even FMJ and JHP behave somewhat differently in tissue than in gel. The benefit of gel is that it is **somewhat** close to living tissue, but most importantly that by always using identically calibrated test media, results can be consistently compared.
I asked a similar question about Lehigh XD and similar fluted rounds, and I believe the only question that needs to be answered is: is the velocity of the fluid coming out of the flutes sufficient to cut tissue? If the answer is yes, then there is no debate left to have: the bullet design is effective as claimed, period. We know this is true because high-pressure water jets and airstream can easily cut flesh. I just don't know the minimum velocity of the stream needed to produce damage, and I don't know the measured velocity of the fluid being ejected from the flutes. If anyone could figure that out, I think we'd have our answer.
@@FlorklDead tissue doesn't behave the same as live tissue. The wound track and overall damage to a brisket or pork shoulder does not necessarily represent what a bullet does in a live human body.
That being said, your conclusion is probably not wrong. Based on anecdotal and unscientific tests, I do believe that the XD-type solid fluted bullets are effective, and I carry them in every one of my guns that Underwood makes the XD for. But I have honestly not seen any properly performed scientifically valid testing of these types of bullets, and no properly measured and validated data about the unique effects of the flutes. I've cast my personal verdict in favor, but technically the jury is still out.
@@its_clean Right, I agree with your initial statement. The point being that our current ballistics gel was designed around mimicking how standard projectiles wound.
The fluted Lehigh bullets make a larger cavity through their flutes laterally disrupting the ballistic medium, which if you have ever messed with either true organic ballistics gel or clear ballistics you know how easy it tears. You can just tear chunks apart as you wish, which obviously you cannot do with the vast majority of human tissue.
I don’t disagree that they could work, I’m just pointing out that current ballistics gel isn’t going to be a reliable indicator that they will or not.
Great video and a great Segway at the end. Chris you and your channel are definitely in my top five favorite on TH-cam. Thanks for the informative entertaining content.
LG consistently has some of the most informative videos out there. This is a video I'd readily use to explain the mechanism of injury for firearms to non-firearms people (something I often have to do to in my 2A advocacy). Excellent points about round construction, what effects a bad load can have, and so on. Great work as usual. Coming from a background in physics, I do appreciate it when things get broken down in a way that demonstrate clearly the science behind what's going on--particularly when a round overpenetrates and doesn't expend its energy on a target and just keeps on shufflin' wherever it's headed. And that not all mechanisms of dissipating that energy are created equal.
The best channel on youtube. Thank you for all you do.
Chris...you have one of the best channels on TH-cam. Thank you for your years of great work!
What discussions like this one often fail to consider is the stopping effect of multiple shots. What one hit may not do, a couple more may well do.
Once again the greatest channel beats the expectations. 7.5 FK is said by the manufacturer that it produces wounds by big temporary cavity. Would love to see it to the test. And also the 20 gauge slug.
Oh boy, it's a whole new world that can be explored
Good video Chris! I concur that there are a lot of factors to consider in bullet selection. No argument in that a rifle dispenses a lot more energy than a handgun. There is also velocity dependence (especially in handgun rounds) as you stated which is affected by bullet construction. For example I shoot .45 Super however much of the ammo currently available is still constructed for .45 acp velocities resulting in hyper expansion but only 6-8 inches of penetration depending upon the brand. Bullet placement is tantamount! Shooting someone deranged on PCP usually requires a CNS shot to incapacitate.
The 5.56 is particularly sensitive to twist rate and bullet weight being optimized to each other for best results.
and velocity
I use my 00 Buckshot for home defense. Also 4-Buck. Can’t lose. Not reliant upon tumbling or yawing for affect. Great video Chris. 🤠👊🏻
Big fan of 00 buck. A lot of talk of 1 buck being optimal but I think that is only under optimal conditions. In real world conditions 00 will have the smash to carry thru
I'm glad you touched on the fact that larger diameter bullets are better. For too long people have been saying that they're the same, which is mathematically and physically impossible.
I get way too excited when I see a new Lucky Gunner video. Great job as always.
Well done again Chris! Keep 'em coming!
Good video, thanks Chris. I would love a long version that would go into deeper details.
A couple years ago he made: Why ballistics gel works and caliber arguments are dumb.
EXCELLENT VIDEO! I don't think any of this info was nessisarily new to me, but only Lucky Gunner could put it all together so efficiently. This is a great "one-stop shop" of knowledge, especially for newer gun owners.
Great video. It would have been nice also to hear about buckshot performance.
Hi Chris, loved the no-BS information here and the easily understandable presentation as usual. What do you think about novel bullet designs claiming to use external hydraulic effects, like the Lehigh XD and ARX Inceptor? Ignore the differences in price, manufacturing quality, barrier penetration, etc- let's talk exclusively about wound cavity here. Most non-scientific and semi-scientific tests I've seen point strongly to a measurable benefit from solid copper bullets with flutes that "eject" fluid perpendicular to the wound track, cutting a wider x-shaped channel. The logic makes sense to me, as we know pneumatic and hydraulic jets from various machines can easily cut flesh even at moderate velocities. I assume the only question is: is the fluid leaving the flutes at sufficient velocity to cut flesh? Or am I oversimplifying and there's more to it? This is the limit of my understanding of fluid mechanics, so I'd love for someone with more knowledge, both about the field and the particular rounds in question, to chime in with something based on actual science.
Very informative and great delivery. Thank you!
Ye, I wouldn’t want to be hit by any bullet from any caliber, ever!
Has Lucky Gunner ever done a review of the 5.7x28 rounds?
They were designed specifically for use in the PS90 rifle and handguns.
It seems like the perfect round to analyze the difference between rifle and handgun ballistics.
We're working on some 5.7 testing right now. We actually did this video specifically to provide context for when we analyze the 5.7 results. Not sure when that will be posted, but it should be sometime before the end of the year.
Of course you are, because you guys are AWESOME!
Thanks for talking about this, been trying to tell people about this for years. Handguns are a great comprise, but they have no stopping power to speak of.
Depends upon whether or not you hit the perp; a .22LR that hits him is better than a .30-06 that misses.
Good general vid on a complex topic.
A short search will also show many thousands of M193 rounds doing exactly what they are designed for from a 16" barrel, to say what was shown is typical of this round from a standard AR15 would be wrong at best.
Awesome video, best gun information on TH-cam 👍
Great video. You should do m193 through 16" 1/7 twist vs m193 through 20" 1/12 twist. I think you'll be surprised with the results and would make for a good video. Thanks
The M293 round was /is crippled by shorter barrels and increased twist rates. The M16 had 1:12 twist rate out of 20: barrel and terminal ballistics were fantastic! The red herring of "you cannot over-stabilze" a bullet persists. The slower the spin, the easier it will be to tumble and fragment the M193.
This was an excellent presentation!
Your videos are great. I am so glad that you guys have taken this approach to sharing your data. I have been following your videos since you guys did the steel cased ammo in AR15s test. You guys rock. I don't see that video so maybe you could repost it. In the topic of bullets maybe compare the effects that handgun rounds have on gel and then the same round fired out of carbine length barrels. Keep up the good work.
Outstanding discussion Chris.
Using energy transfer as a metric for bullet effectiveness is like using fuel consumption to determine the speed of a car. Great video
That's a great analogy. I might steal that!
@@LuckyGunner I'd be honored! It came to me as I was watching the Fackler video you linked in the description. It's funny how the principles discussed almost 40 years ago are still being debated today. Keep up the good work
“Pistols put holes in people, rifles blow bigger holes through people, and shotguns, with the right load at the right distance, physically remove a chunk from peoples bodies and throw that shit on the floor.”- Clint smith
The dude taking a cannonball to the stomach is gnarly. My goodness.
Looks kinda like the guy on one of the Matchbox Twenty album covers
Very informative as always. Love your videos, when notification drops I'm always excited what I'm going to learn today.
Thanks! Glad you're enjoying them
Awesome video, would love to see more content on this topic!
Great video. All newbies to shooting should watch. Thank you.
I will say that I recently decided to toss my rifles and just use 9mm since it blows lungs right out of the body. Who needs a rifle? jk of course. I am not an idiot.
As a northeast woods deer hunter, I can say that i have seen this years ago, with results of deer being shot with high powered magnum rifles at our close ranges (under 100 yds) The results meant a LOT less meat in the freezer. I don't go over a 30-30 personally, using 170 grain. Bullet, with good placement of course, passes through hyde, bones, muscles, both lungs and exits leaving a good blood trail, and you have minimal meat loss. Go up to 2500 fps or more, and you lose half the shoulder meat, at least.
My question has always been .300blk vs .45 ACP, ballistically. I always see comments that subsonic .300 is just pointy .45. I would love to see a ballistic gel conparison
I have wondered the same thing and that is something we would like to dig into for sure. We did an informal test with one subsonic 300 BLK load so far and it was... unimpressive.
@@LuckyGunner damn. Guess I can’t live out my John wick home defense fantasy. Thanks for the reply!
Makes sense that .300 Blackout subsonic would be less impressive than .45ACP. As he stated, you need a certain velocity and/or mass for the temporary stretch cavity to do significant wounding. .300blk subsonic wouldn’t have either, so it’d wound like a pistol where the only damage is the permanent wound cavity. However, you’d be making a .30 caliber hole (which is smaller than even 9mm at .355 caliber) rather than a .45 caliber hole.
.300blk’s main advantage as a subsonic load is the pointy projectile does have better aerodynamics than .45ACP, so it shoots a bit straighter and further, but at the cost of terminal ballistics. It’s why for civilians, which generally shoot at much, much, much closer ranges, I never found that much point with .300blk subsonic. Just go with .45ACP which is much cheaper, has slightly better terminal performance, and can keep the same ammo for a carry/home defense handgun.
@@gameragodzilla tbf my .300 has like a 7.5” barrel so 5.56 is less than ideal for that. It’s kinda sounding like subsonics are just for memes as a civilian though.
Still gonna reload a ton of subsonic when I get a press though
@@bishopm4401 Yeah, for such a short barrel, just stick with pistol calibers. It’s the one area I think PCCs still have a place, since while rifle rounds are much more powerful, they are also much more dependent on barrel length to get that really high velocity. When you chop the barrel down, you lose a lot of that effectiveness so you might as well use pistol ammo designed for short barrels.
Suuuuch great concise information here, and a well deserved plug rite at the end, lol Perfect, that’s why this channel is head & shoulders above most.
I’d love to see you guys do some testing on 5.7mm as a self defense round. The advantages to a 5.7 pistol as a carry gun seem great, provided it’s an effective round.
Love the way this guys explains stuff...and yes they have GREAT prices on ammo, fast cheap shipping too. Lucky Gunner is awesome! (not a paid spokesperson lol)
Really cool to see all those compared!
Absolutely!!! Thanks man, more videos needed 👍
Try your .45-70 test with an HP bullet like hornady's 300 gr. HP. Results will vary drastically. I shot a deer with that and it went in about .75" hole size and came out the back about the size of my fist (which is not very small). I use Hornady's 350 gr. RNFP bullet in my .45-70 loads now for my levergun and they are doing closer to 1900 fps and don't do quite so much meat damage. Combined with the slightly better speed achieved with handloading, I guarantee you don't want to get hit with that. Most .45-70 commercial loads are set up for old guns, so they don't have the liability of destroying an heirloom rifle or hurting someone. A handgun that does very well is the .45 Colt with a 240 gr. XTP magnum which when fired out of my 5.5" blackhawk (not too huge at all) which drops most deer in 3 steps in my finding. It's producing 1248 fps and 1126 ft/lbs of energy. I had one run 30 yards and that's the furthest one has gone with the modernized old .45 Colt. I also have a .45 Colt carbine and modern henry lever action with 20" barrels and those produce 1693 fps and 1527 ft/lbs of energy. While not nearly as powerful as most rifles, its capable of knocking down anything in North America at short range and all but maybe a big brown bear at moderate range. I also use a bullseye version of this load in my 3" barrelled .45 Colt Snubby and it's a handful. I only use them when going into bear territory, but use a softer 240 gr. Sierra Sportsmaster load for normal deer hunting here.
Fascinating stuff. The 5.56 vs 7.62 was especially interesting. I think handgun ballistics are easy to understand by comparison, as they're doing things the same way. With the rifles you need to account for different effects of the lightweight superfast 5.56 vs the still fast, but much heavier and higher energy 7.62.
hello chris. here in Brazil, ammunition is very expensive and ballistic gelatin is practically impossible to get. If possible, do some tests with Brazilian ammunition CBC/Magtech 9mm proshock 135gr and 147gr. currently, as there is no reliable data about them, I continue to use the 124gr fmj.
You can make the gelatin according to published spec. Calibrate with a thermometer, chronograph, BB gun.
Energy transfer is what makes the temporary cavity. The 2200fps threshold is junk science. This is why a high velocity 223 can sail right through and ice pick if it doesn’t destabilize. And why a heavy slow bullet with a large meplat can create a large temporary cavity. It’s just that velocity has more of an influence on energy than mass.
But that’s just the start.
You can tear tissue by exceeding its elastic limit, as you mentioned. But you can also reduce that elastic limit with a fragmenting bullet. The fragments lacerate the tissue and reduce its elastic limit everywhere a fragment travels. This is why the M193 can produce a devastating baseball sized hole in what would otherwise be elastic tissue… when it properly fragments.
The tradespace with fragmenting bullets is they often don’t penetrate far. But, if you can get a reliably fragmenting bullet to penetrate deep enough for your needs (depending on animal), it should be a more lethal sounding mechanism than an expanding bullet. E.g. the 77gr TMK for medium sized game.
"But you can also reduce that elastic limit with a fragmenting bullet." Yep, that was mentioned as well.
I guess I missed it.
This plus the sage dynamics videos on this topic should be required media for anyone serious about their defense
I learn more from these kinds of videos, more please!
Good thumbnail review of a subject that causes lots of arguments. Placement is the most critical variable you can try to influence it seems
Great information! Thank you!
I think the importance of meplat diameter bears consideration. I would like to see terminal ballistics turned into a mini-series, and I think bullet profile and the importance of meplat should be the subject of the next video.
The French were pioneers in early ballistics. They recognized the importance of meplat on wounding early on, but these lessons were forgotten around the beginning of the 20th century with the rush of militarys to adopt spitzer projectiles. While the range of pointed projectiles was increased, the lethality was not as great. Old school thinking favored bullet diameter to increase lethality without respect to nose profile or bullet construction. This backwards thinking continues to this day, with people insisting larger caliber projectiles make bigger holes.
Caliber only significantly contributes to wounding to the degree an increase in bullet diameter leads to a corresponding increase in meplat diameter. Since all spitzer projectiles have essentially the same meplat diameter, an increase in caliber of a spitzer bullet contributes little to terminal effect. This makes sense as the same elements of design that allow the spitzer bullet to slice through air with minimal drag and disruption also allow the bullet to slice through tissue with minimal drag and disruption. With spitzer bullets, you need expansion, fragmentation, or some other mechanism to increase the surface area exposed perpendicular to the vector of the projectile's travel in order to increase wounding. This is why the non-expanding FMJ rifle rounds of the 20th century all sucked about equally regardless if whether they were .26 caliber or .32 caliber, and why to this day, a 5.56 M855 round that tumbles early and fragments can be counted on to be far more terminally effective than a 7.62mm M80 ball round that punches all the way through the torso of a malnourished jihadist without significant yaw or bullet deformation.
Absolutely fantastic video that has illustrated (my own) research into these topics is a digestible and unbiased way.
However, I have 1 contention:
If we're shooting a human that's faced towards us, then you only need the projectile to penetrate 3-10 inches deep to hit organs and/or the spine, as a 6ft male my chest 'depth' (from sternum to spine) is around 10 inches, that not only means that most of the 'damage' created by the projectile needs to happen within the first 10 inches, but that any further penetration results in the projectile flying away and potentially hitting someone you never intended to hit: Aside from very specific cases purpose made to defy this rule, all contemporary ammunition will penetrate, through clothing, enough to hit vitals, and most will travel straight out the other end too. You will only 'need' a minimum of 12 inches of flesh penetration if you are specifically afraid of having to shoot at the swollen bellies of unfathomably obese men, and even then pistol calibers will penetrate enough to hit his organs anyway.
I don’t know but I think that last part is really important. If you can’t afford the best protection, it may not be that bad because criminals or as you said predators are by nature basically cowards who are taking advantage of a perceived weakness. The moment they find out that the big guy or little lady has the jump and is hitting them with some kind of bullet that resolve might melt away quickly. They see that their perception was wrong and they are being hurt now. They probably don’t have the awareness to tell what you are using and then weigh it against the number of times they just took damage. They will want to leave the situation. Not everyone is going to be able to buy the finest thing that is scientifically proven to stop a predator. But even though you don’t want to bet everything on the theory, you might be just fine if you can break down their idea that they can harm without consequences. But I don’t know.
The 223 performance was good in the gel test but what we really need is longer gel test to really see what it's performance is like at 100
200 300 400 500 yards with a chronograph right in front of the gel,
Different barrel lengths or just downloading the cartridge will tell you that.
Will you be going into hydrostatic shock in a future video? I have heard in the past that it is a significant factor with rifle rounds designed for hunting but I would be interested in your opinion.
That is a really tricky topic because "hydrostatic shock" can refer to different wounding effects depending on who you ask. A lot of people use that term when they're actually talking about the temporary cavity. Originally, it was meant to refer to a pressure wave that radiates through the body and causes remote damage. This has not been proven to exist, but enough weird things happen with bullets and bodies that it's also difficult to prove it does not exist.
Additionally, there is some evidence that the temporary cavity can displace tissue that then causes blunt force type trauma to the spinal cord, which has the (sometimes temporary) effect of incapacitating the target. This could be what's happening in some cases when a hunter gets a good heart/lung shot, but the animal drops instantly as if the central nervous system were disrupted. Is this the phenomenon that is being attributed to "hydrostatic shock"? I don't know... there is still a lot about this stuff that is not very well understood.
@@LuckyGunner thank you for the reply.
Most of the time I hear people talking about 'hydrostatic shock' it is in reference to a reaction by the CNS to a pressure wave from the bullet impact.
It has never been clear if this is direct trauma from pressure passing through the fluids of the body or just through the circulatory system. But the end result is normaly described along the lines of either knocking them out long enough that other trauma (blood loss) causes death before return of consciousness. Or that the overpressure causes enough damage itself to 'turn the lights off' permanently.
Your video brought it up in my mind and I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask and see if there is a more definitive explanation. Cunningham's Law ect.
I love content like this... y'all do such a good job! Have y'all done anything on twist rates? I would like to see the answer to the age old question "is 55gr projectile accurate in a 1:7 twist barrel?"
Yes. We answered that question in 1983.
M193 was originally made for the 20 inch barrel I believe. Great video as always
It was, still nice out shorter barrels.
@@mattwalters6834 currently running some 62 grain controlled chaos out of my 12.5 inch AR
There will always be manufacturing defects in bulk manufacturing. A bullet with a thicker jacket, will not fragment as easily. And some foreign made 55 grain FMJ is not designed to fragment intentionally.
I was enjoy these types of videos. Very well presented
Great segue at the end!
I love these ballistic gel tests. I'd really like to see some tests for the 5.7x28 round. Now that there are a number of different pistols being offered for it and a number of different rounds. Lucky gunner does the best, most scientific, gel tests that I've come across.
Keep these videos coming, please!
Impacts that break or shatter bones may not immediately kill, but, may 'anchor the target (whether animal or human) fairly fast. Don't know of many pistol bullets that, reliably, do this, but, seen more than one deer drop in place, but, were needful of a mercy strike. Further, large, relatively, slow projectiles (from pictures of dead & injured from our 'War of Northern Aggression' as it's sometimes referred) were very destructive to a body while many survived multiple hits from pistol caliber rounds.
"War of northern aggression"? I always heard it referred to as "temper tantrum of the slave states" guess we have different nicknames for it in different places.
Awesome and informative content.
Your presentations are always enjoyable and informative. Thank You!
In the realm of 5.56 M193, would you consider slow mo gel testing with different barrel twist rates? I've always heard that the 1:12 twist rate of the original M16 was a necessary factor in its wicked terminal performance. But the evidence I've found to support this is anecdotal, and the testing wasn't up to any kind of standard.
I think it has been established that a 1:7 twist rate doesn't make the m193 projectile at all unstable and that it's good for 55-77grain bullets
@@notme3184 Yup, the 1:7 is fine for M193. The difference is that the 1in12 of the original barrel kept the project just stable enough to fly true but upon hitting a soft target the round immediately destabilized, thus yawing and fragmenting, and that's what made it so catastrophic. I've even heard that they tried a 1in14 barrel, but I don't recall why they settled on the 1in12.
I think it's important to understand that ballistics gel and actual live tissue are different so what the gel shows vs what actually happen will also be different. the youtube channel "ASP" or Active Self Protection has lots of real world firearm defense incidents. Plenty of people take rounds to the chest and run off like nothing happened. But a threat running off is a threat stopped so practice. Be as fast and as accurate as you can be.
great topic. enjoy your videos, and your lightening fast shipping.
Please please please a video about pdw calibers like 5.7 and 4.6
Also the new kid on the block the .30 super carry will be much appriciated!
And another question, those "extreme penetrator" and "extreme defender" bullets that came out a few years ago claim to do the same rifle effects in handguns. Can it be tested in any scientific way? Except for live targets of course...
Great breakdown!
This is why m193 is good for range shooting, but bonded soft points, OTM or hollowpoints will always be a better choice over depending purely on velocity to induce fragmentation.
Brilliant Analysis!!!
It's funny how you criticise the KInetic Energy Transfer Theory, but on the other hand completely follow it's key points. A slower, heavy in mass projectile has a lot of KE, if it is able to transfer this energy (shotgun slug) it is very effective - if it fails to transfer it's KE (like the 45-70) it is an ineffective bullet and does way less damage.
You basically just followed KE Transfer Theory.
Greetings from Germany.