ive always thought it was the other way around.

a hollowtip will expand and stay in the body, whereas a non-hollow tip or something will go right through the body....

i could be wrong h:

 

For defence carry, the rounds that have the best reputation in the field for one shot stops are

Federal 230 gr Hydra Shok

Speer Lawman 200 gr HP

The Speer 200 gr load is available from Peter Pi's company, Cor Bon, with identical ballistics to the restricted LE round.

As far as target practice, 230 gr ball loaded for accuracy is available at most ranges.

 

:eek3: thanks for the help.

 

you're right will.. the hollowpoint round mushrooms out more so that the impact transfers as much kinetic energy to the target as possible, which is generally why those that have been shot with a hollowpoint round come out looking like hamburger:bigok:

as far as range ammo goes, unless you reload rounds yourself, just get the cheapest thing you can find. if you're lookin for home defense rounds, just buy a box of each type that you can find and pop them off at the range to see which ones you like the best. ammunition is just like firearms, it's all about personal preference when choosing one.

 

Both of the defence rounds I listed are stopping in the 96% range. (I just checked the statistics again.)

The only rounds that stop as well as those are the 125 gr .357 Remington (revolver round) and the .357 SiG (state police automatic).

 

I'll clarify this right here, right now.

There are two major types of ammunition in circulation today, for civilian purchase. There's some others, but for this purpose I'll ignore them.

First, we have FMJ. It stands for Full Metal Jacket. It's basically a piece of lead coated in brass or copper, or some mixture of the two, completely around the bullet itself (I'm not talking the casing, but the bullet itself). This causes the bullet to be extremely hard. If you shoot someone with an FMJ round it is going to pass through them in all likelyhood, and could very well cause the person to stay alive simply due to the lack of "knock down" power. To give you an example, I fired a .40cal FMJ through around 8 inches of wood, dug the bullet out, and it had barely even deformed at all. To injure/stop a person, you want the maximum amount of distortion of the round itself possible.

The second and most common self defense round is called a JHP, jacketed hollow point. It's the same as an FMJ but the tip is hollow, as you all know. This causes it to spread open (and actually break off fragments of the round itself) when it hits it's target. The good news, it rips the hell out of whatever it is (assuming it's relatively soft) and stops them in their tracks. While it's not completely uncommon for a JHP to travel THROUGH someone, it is LESS common than an FMJ doing so; and even if a JHP *does* pass through the person it will cause a lot more damage to the person in the process. *That* is why JHP's are ideal for personal protection.

JHP's do have a downside though, a lot of firearms have a hard time loading them; so they created a round called the EFMJ, expanding full metal jacket. It does the same as a JHP but it looks like a regular FMJ (for all intents and purposes), so it loads into the firearms without any issues and still expands upon impact like you would want.

Contrary to popular belief, JHP's are not illegal and anyone can buy them and use them as necessary for self defense.


And to blackmagic.
You're correct as well about your interpretation of Hollow Points.

However, on the "cheapest you can find" ammunition, I would beg to differ. I for instance, can't shoot anything other than a nice 180GR Winchester .40 round or 115GR Winchester 9mm with any sort of regular accuracy. IF I use any other "cheap" ammunition, I get irregular results. To let you know though, Winchester stuff in boxes of 100 at Walmart is $10 for 9mm and $15 for .40 - QTY:100. That's really cheap, and it's quality ammo.


FMJ: (after impact)
http://www.allsafedefense.com/images/Bullets/FMJ.jpg

JHP: (after impact)
http://www.allsafedefense.com/images...eerGoldDot.jpg

EFMJ: (after impact)
http://www.allsafedefense.com/images...on&Federal.jpg

 

um.........hollow point will cause the bullet to stop inside the body. if it was a round tip (regular) bullet, then it would exit the body. hollow points expand on impact causing the most damage. they grow to 2x the width of before they enter and thus stay lodged in the body of the person more often than not

 

I carry Federal Hydrashocks on duty as standard issued ammo, and thats what I carry in my off duty as well. Its a nasty round, and I've never had any problems with the gun not accepting it. My service weapon actually shoots better with it than with cheap stuff.

 

There have been a couple of redesigns of the Hydra Shok round since its inception.

I don't think a modern gun with the current iteration of the Hydra Shok will have a problem.

You bring up a good point to mention, though: It doesn't matter what the ballistics and statistics are if (1)your gun won't reliably feed it and (2)you can't hit anything with it.

 

From what I've read and heard from many others is that hollowpoints will very often blow a nasty hole of an exit wound. The advantage is that it looses so much energy, it will usually not pass through the wall behind the person you shoot at, thus making it good for home defense.

If you guys want bullet fragmentation, you should see what a 5.56 NATO (.223 Rem.) does from a 20" barrel. At around 2500fps or better, the bullet completely disintegrates into about 43 peices. It's somewhat hard to use a full length AR-15 for home defense though.

My home defense weapon is an SKS-M. Thirty rounds of cheap Russian loaded (but good ammo) soft point 7.62x39. That's until I can scrounge enough cash to buy a Mossberg 590.