I was interested to see this article in the latest issue, but didn’t have very high hopes. It promises to show the data for 100 different handgun bullets being fired into ballistic gelatin. Unfortunately, most of my fears were confirmed.
The article, in my opinion, is very poorly written. Instead of giving a concise background for what does and doesn’t work, it runs the gamut of tying how much pain a person will feel as a factor in stopping an assailant, discussing Marshall and Sanow’s completely discredited work, kinetic energy, and finally penetration and expansion. He even brings up the Strasbourg goat tests! While Marshall and Sanow’s works are labeled “controversial”, they are referenced three times and cited in his supported literature, giving implicit approval of the data. The penetration and expansion aspect of a bullet is given slightly more emphasis (backed up by referring to Aargard’s African hunting experience), but not convincingly so.
Discussing the methodology, the author mentions that 10% ballistic gelatin was used, but fails to reveal if any of the gelatin was properly calibrated. No mention is made of block size, how many shots were made of each round (I assume just one), nor how many times a block was shot before being discarded. The latter, in particular, can have a huge bearing on the data collected as a bullet can show significantly more penetration once a block has been shot too often.
Finally, there’s the data itself. The author has chosen very few rounds which are on Doctor Roberts recommended list. Ranger-T, HST? Forget about it. The only notable exception is the Speer Gold Dot which is tested across various calibers. Furthermore, the author has chosen to stick with mostly lightweight bullets in each caliber. When I look at the penetration data obtained for some of the bullets for which known good gelatin data exists, it appears that the information by the author is roughly on par, albeit with a bias toward more penetration depth than Doctor Roberts tests show. There’s not enough data to make a statistical analysis worth it.
Ultimately, I’m pretty disappointed. Virtually ALL bullets hit the 12" penetration depth, which gives the uninformed reader a false sense of security when it comes to choosing defensive ammo. Only bare gelatin data is shown and bullet performance after barrier penetration is not shown.
The author could have saved himself a lot of time and done a better service to the readership by referencing Urey’s work and pointing to Doctor Roberts data.
