25Aug04

I spent the morning at the Harvey, IL PD Range, attending friend Jeff Chudw in 's wonderful Patrol Rifle Instructors' Class. Jeff has students fl ock to him from all over the country. Nearly all were using AR-15s, RRA, DPMS, an d DSA.

This morning's curriculum included a ballistic gelatin demonstration. A number of pistol and rifle rounds were fired into gelatin blocks, after penetrating clothing, wall board, car glass, car doors, and soft body armor . My observations:

Soviet and Chinese 7.62X39 ammunition uses bullets with a lot of steel in them. Penetration is astounding! Typically goes through a car door, wall board, and Level II vest, and still penetrates twenty inches of gelatin.

55gr hardball in 223 will penetrate some homogeneous barriers, but does poorly on layered barriers, as the bullet progressively destabilizes and disintegrates as successive layers are encountered.

Federal Tactical in 223 has impressive penetration, even with layered barriers, but, at over one dollar/round, no one is going to be able to buy v ery much of it. Based on my experience, I'm confident Cor-Bon DPX would render

similar, or even better, performance.

Bonded core pistol bullets did best. Without a bonded core, pistol bullets

tend to shed their jackets. Pistol bullets do best when they stay together

and don't break up.

A Cor-Bon 357 PowerBall (100gr) bullet penetrated clothing and still yielde d eleven inches of penetration in gelatin, doing massive damage between three

and six inches. It's the round I carry in my SIG229/DAK and my G32.

Conclusions:

In the domestic police business, plan on having to penetrate parts of cars. 223 55gr hardball does poorly on cars. Federal Tactical and Cor-Bon DPX will do much better.

The human body can absorb an astounding amount of ballistic trauma and stil l remain fully functional. We have to train ourselves to strike the target multiple times along the body midline while protecting ourselves via cover and/or movement. Finish the fight!

/John