This is the Box. Having some time for study of this fascinating sport, I built the "Box O' Truth". The purpose of the Box is to test the penetration of various rounds. People often say, "I think...". "I suppose...", "I bet...", when discussing facts like penetration of ammunition. There is...
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9mm and .45acp both penetrate drywall and wood similarly. 5.56 not only penetrated the test targets, it kept going...
This is overpenetration. Yes, pistol calibers will penetrate drywall, wood, glass, etc. Rifles will penetrate farther, much father. Really is that simple.
In our last tests shooting walls, we tried to line up 4 walls that were 2 feet by 2 feet. It turned out that the 5.56 deviated so much from its course afte
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5.56 XM193 round tumbled... eventually. Also over-penetrated.
Last is this gem of info:
Wound Ballistic Terminal Performance
Here's an excerpt :
Dr. Martin Fackler, the man who has done more research on the 5.56 mm 55 gr M193 FMJ than anyone else on this planet, has written the following (Fackler, ML: “Literature Review”. Wound Ballistics Review; 5(2):40, Fall 2001) about 55 gr FMJ: “
In 1980, I treated a soldier shot accidentally with an M16 M193 bullet from a distance of about ten feet. The bullet entered his left thigh and traveled obliquely upward. It exited after passing through about 11 inches of muscle. The man walked in to my clinic with no limp whatsoever: the entrance and exit holes were about 4 mm across, and punctate. Xray films showed intact bones, no bullet fragments, and no evidence of significant tissue disruption caused by the bullet’s temporary cavity. The bullet path passed well lateral to the femoral vessels. He was back on duty in a few days. Devastating? Hardly. The wound profile of the M193 bullet (page 29 of the Emergency War Surgery—NATO Handbook, GPO, Washington, D.C., 1988) shows that most often the bullet travels about five inches through flesh before beginning significant yaw. But about 15% of the time, it travels much farther than that before yawing—in which case it causes even milder wounds, if it missed bones, guts, lung, and major blood vessels. In my experience and research, at least as many M16 users in Vietnam concluded that it produced unacceptably minimal, rather than “massive”, wounds.
After viewing the wound profile, recall that the Vietnamese were small people, and generally very slim. Many M16 bullets passed through their torsos traveling mostly point forward, and caused minimal damage. Most shots piercing an extremity, even in the heavier-built Americans, unless they hit bone, caused no more damage than a 22 caliber rimfire bullet.”
There is also research from Afghanistan and Iraq as well as Somalia that showed targets getting hit with 5.56 rounds and getting back up and in the fight, especially when doped up. I'm not knocking 5.56 or AR's. I own an AR and a Tavor in the caliber. I think what you described regarding what happens is fine in a lab under perfect circumstances. I think real life things change dramatically. There will be cases that show what you described in terms of cavitation damage, but statistically that doesn't seem to be the case in the real world for FMJ rifle rounds like XM193 at close distances anyway.
I'm not saying your wrong. I'm not saying you're right. People much more knowledgeable than me have studied these issues in depth. For home defense, I'll stick with a PCC. It's more accurate than my handguns, same caliber. Like someone else said, if we're willing to use our handguns for self-defense in the home, then an PCC SBR should work even better.