.380ACP Carry Ammo Question
- Thread starter Gunmeister
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Agreed and makes you wonder why so many people spend so much on exotic ammo that will probably not do any better than American Eagle fmj, winchester, or any other reputable brand of much less expensive fmj ammo that may be even better than the exotic ammo in 380.
crew590
Member
kokapelli said:
Jocko nailed it. Priority 1 is it goes bang. I hope I never have to find out about stopping/shooting a bad guy (as we all should IMO).
Jay
Bobo
Member
dmxx9900 said,
At the time that Santa Barbara came out there wasn’t a readily available round that was as hot in .380. Now, DoubleTap and Buffalo Bore make .380 rounds just as hot and of better quality, but more expensive.
http://www.buffalobore.com/ammunition/default.htm#380
http://www.doubletapammo.com/php/catalog/index.php?cPath=21_62
Bobo
Santa Barbara is a very hot Spanish surplus .380 non-expanding round that was readily available starting about two years ago. It was very inexpensive because it was surplus. Since that time it has all but sold out and is very hard to find.
At the time that Santa Barbara came out there wasn’t a readily available round that was as hot in .380. Now, DoubleTap and Buffalo Bore make .380 rounds just as hot and of better quality, but more expensive.
http://www.buffalobore.com/ammunition/default.htm#380
http://www.doubletapammo.com/php/catalog/index.php?cPath=21_62
Bobo
santa barbars 380
It was cheap ammo, it was also very inconsistet velocity ammo to. I think RC Model did a chrono of the 380 santa barbara ammo and found alot of variation in the ammo. It is indeed very old ammo and today probably all gone to. It was very popular a few years ago due to cheap in price but certainly not good for much other than paper punching IMO>
It was cheap ammo, it was also very inconsistet velocity ammo to. I think RC Model did a chrono of the 380 santa barbara ammo and found alot of variation in the ammo. It is indeed very old ammo and today probably all gone to. It was very popular a few years ago due to cheap in price but certainly not good for much other than paper punching IMO>
I have a problem with the one shot stop from Marshall and Sanow's books. There is a lot of controversy about how they came to the conclusions they did.
Another thing is in Marshall and Sanow's results they don't mention what type of guns were used and how long the barrels of those guns were.
I'd bet all the ballistics and statistics on 380 stopping results were from barrels much longer than the ones we are discussing here.
The ballistics chart in that website probably has no relevance for the short barreled LCP, P-3AT, NAA etc.
JR47
Member
Just curious, but exactly what "long-barreled" .380 guns are in common use? There just aren't very many that you see on the streets of America. The Beretta Model 84 uses a 3.8" barre;, while the old Browning Model of 1922/1955 used a barrel length of 4.4", but I doubt that many, if any, were used, as they are more holster sized guns. Same with the Beretta Model 84, and it's ilk.
I shouldn't have used the term "long barreled" guns, but rather longer barrels than the pocket pistols being discussed here.
Here are some 380 pistols with longer barrels than the LCP/P-3AT sized guns.
Hi-Point CF-380 features a 3 1/2 inch barrel
Bersa thunder 3.5 inch barrel
Llama (not sure of the barrel length)
Taurus 3.25 barrel
Baretta Cheetah 3.8" barrel
Walther 3.35" barrel
CZ83
Jennings
S&W Sigma 3.85"
Makarov 380
Colt government model 380
Sig Arms P232 380
Browning BDA 380
Some of the above pistols are no longer being made, but there are still plenty of them around.
And here is Horge's website with a bunch of 380 ballistics, but none of the pistols have barrels as short as the pocket pistols we are discussing....
Horge's site
moooose102
Member
in my 380's (p3at & lcp), i carry a mix of ammo. i load alternating rounds of winchester silvertips, and fmj bullets. some of the people on this board believe that there is not enough power to make the jhp's open up consistently. i am no expert, so, since i have never been in a gunfight (and hope to never be in one) i have decided that for me, this is the best of both worlds. if the silvertips do open up effectively, they will transfer more energy than a fmj. but in either case, a round nosed full metal jacketed bullet will penetrate deeper. which may be important, considering the limited power of these litte guns.
The Santa Barbara .380 is now gone in all but the occasional gun broker sale where people sometimes ask up to a buck a round for small batches, such is its reputation.
I laid in my own sizeable stash and shoot maybe one box every 2 months, it should last me years that way.
Funnily enough I ran a magazine through my Ruger LCP out in the desert just this morning and both gun and ammunition performed flawlessly as always.
I'll really miss this ammunition when it's gone, it shoots so well and has serious punch for .380. My last 7 rounds will be my last precious carry load, hopefully not for years to come.
All in all I have shot over a thousand rounds through various P-3ATs and my LCP, and it has always been a perfect performer.
It really shows me how light loaded most of our domestic .380 ammunition is.
I laid in my own sizeable stash and shoot maybe one box every 2 months, it should last me years that way.
Funnily enough I ran a magazine through my Ruger LCP out in the desert just this morning and both gun and ammunition performed flawlessly as always.
I'll really miss this ammunition when it's gone, it shoots so well and has serious punch for .380. My last 7 rounds will be my last precious carry load, hopefully not for years to come.
All in all I have shot over a thousand rounds through various P-3ATs and my LCP, and it has always been a perfect performer.
It really shows me how light loaded most of our domestic .380 ammunition is.
I thought as described in THIS ARTICLE the value of energy transfer had been shown to not be a factor at handgun velocities.
JR47
Member
The comparison of the bullet energy absorbed by the mechanism of the soft armor is specious. The armor works by spreading the impact energy along the lines of the structure of the vest. This allows the vest to absorb the energy over an area much wider than the actual impact zone. That basic science is totally ignored in the hopes of dazzling the reader with words versus fact.
Nichole Brown Simpson was killed by the transfer of energy at the point of impact of the tip of the knife. That's what allowed the knife to breach the skin, and penetrate.
Has anyone reading this actually considered the fact that knives are rarely 12-18" in blade length? The one used to kill Ms. Simpson certainly wasn't. Why, then, are bullets required to penetrate that distance before they are considered "adequate"? The bullets actual surface area, the part making the incision is actually much larger than the tip, and in many cases, the width and height of a knife. Unlike a bullet, the knife is usually withdrawn, and doesn't fullt penetrate the body, either.
It would seem that there's a striking dichotomy in the facts and the theory here.
Nichole Brown Simpson was killed by the transfer of energy at the point of impact of the tip of the knife. That's what allowed the knife to breach the skin, and penetrate.
Has anyone reading this actually considered the fact that knives are rarely 12-18" in blade length? The one used to kill Ms. Simpson certainly wasn't. Why, then, are bullets required to penetrate that distance before they are considered "adequate"? The bullets actual surface area, the part making the incision is actually much larger than the tip, and in many cases, the width and height of a knife. Unlike a bullet, the knife is usually withdrawn, and doesn't fullt penetrate the body, either.
It would seem that there's a striking dichotomy in the facts and the theory here.
I think your way off the mark here and I disagree completely with your interpretations of the article. For example
First I want to tell you that I'm not dazzled by the words in the article or your post and that some of us might take that as an insult!
The article states, "When a projectile impacts soft armor, its energy is transmitted directly through the flexible fabric to the officer's body. There's not one documented incident in which an officer was knocked unconscious or physically incapacitated or in any way rendered unable to perform willful activity after his soft armor stopped such a projectile. These officers absorbed nearly 100 percent kinetic energy transfer, yet none were incapacitated by the blunt trauma "shock" of projectile impact or temporary displacement of underlying soft tissues."
No dazzling there, energy transfer is energy transfer!
That seems to me to be clear and simple logic. If energy absorption were a factor and your body absorbs 100% if the projectiles energy through the vest or from the bullet, it's still energy transfer and does it cause incapacitation?
That's just wrong! The article did not in any way imply that the knife's energy caused death. As a matter of fact the point about the knife was that energy was not even a factor in incapacitation and death. Bleeding out was what caused death.
Bullets are not required to penetrate 12" any more than a knife is, but the more body it passes through the more chance it has to sever an artery or other organ that will cause bleed out.
If a bullet nicks and severs the carotid artery like the knife did in Simpson's case, it would have had the same effect as the knife without deep penetration and the result would be the same, to bleed out and die with a minimum of energy transfer.
First I want to tell you that I'm not dazzled by the words in the article or your post and that some of us might take that as an insult!
The article states, "When a projectile impacts soft armor, its energy is transmitted directly through the flexible fabric to the officer's body. There's not one documented incident in which an officer was knocked unconscious or physically incapacitated or in any way rendered unable to perform willful activity after his soft armor stopped such a projectile. These officers absorbed nearly 100 percent kinetic energy transfer, yet none were incapacitated by the blunt trauma "shock" of projectile impact or temporary displacement of underlying soft tissues."
No dazzling there, energy transfer is energy transfer!
That seems to me to be clear and simple logic. If energy absorption were a factor and your body absorbs 100% if the projectiles energy through the vest or from the bullet, it's still energy transfer and does it cause incapacitation?
That's just wrong! The article did not in any way imply that the knife's energy caused death. As a matter of fact the point about the knife was that energy was not even a factor in incapacitation and death. Bleeding out was what caused death.
Bullets are not required to penetrate 12" any more than a knife is, but the more body it passes through the more chance it has to sever an artery or other organ that will cause bleed out.
If a bullet nicks and severs the carotid artery like the knife did in Simpson's case, it would have had the same effect as the knife without deep penetration and the result would be the same, to bleed out and die with a minimum of energy transfer.
JR47
Member
Not at all. The objective of the vest is to dissipate that energy over a large enough area to prevent penetration. That's how soft armor works. So, in this case, energy transfer isn't energy transfer in the same manner.
Really? Then I suppose the fact that energy was required to force the knife through the flesh, cartilage, organs and bony structure was somehow unimportant? Or isn't that energy?
Odd, that's not what the article says. Now, on most people, the organs are located within about SIX inches of the surface of the front and rear of the body, and within EIGHT inches of either side. Major blood vessels are positioned under less than one inch of the inner surface of the arms, and may be encountered within six inches in the leg. The neck's major vessels are located within an inch, as well.
Energy is measured in ft/lbs, a measure of work. It requires a minimum of 55 ft/lbs for a bullet to inflict a casualty, according to the DoD. If the energy of a bullet isn't converted to the penetration, and stretching and cutting, of the body it's fired into, where does it go? If there was no energy transfer, the bullet would penetrate fully, and never stop until it hit something it couldn't penetrate.
Even in the 1980's, and before, there was a quantifiable, but not repeatably measurable, phenomenon that indicated that bullets creating a large temporary cavity were more effective than those that didn't. That was referred to, mistakenly, as energy-dump. Who coined that term, I don't know.
With better instrumentation, and more advanced computer modeling, the phenomena is being explored today. Only those locked into the 1980's definitions, and testing methods, are closed to the concept that there is more involved in wounding than was discovered nearly 25 years ago.
JR47
Member
I'm sorry, but I'm pretty sure that the basic physics are correct. It is impossible for any object to penetrate another without a certain amount of energy being transferred to the penetrated object. If it didn't, knives would cut without pressure on them, and bullets would carry their energy literally forever. Nor would bowling pins react as they do.
I would suggest that you look at a soft armor manufacturers web-site, and see how they explain the action of the vest in stopping the penetration of the round.
I can understand how such thinking would fly in the face of the Facklerites dogma, but I think that even they would disagree with with the explanation you're attempting to give.
By the way, you DID notice that the article contradicted your own claims in the penetration minimums, right?
I would suggest that you look at a soft armor manufacturers web-site, and see how they explain the action of the vest in stopping the penetration of the round.
I can understand how such thinking would fly in the face of the Facklerites dogma, but I think that even they would disagree with with the explanation you're attempting to give.
By the way, you DID notice that the article contradicted your own claims in the penetration minimums, right?
OK JR47
Here's Proof
that energy from a bullet is transfered through the vest to the person that is wearing the vest. You can't refute this without explaining where the large dent in the clay behind the vest came from.
Here's Proof
that energy from a bullet is transfered through the vest to the person that is wearing the vest. You can't refute this without explaining where the large dent in the clay behind the vest came from.
JR47
Member
If you'll read my original post, I said that the energy of the bullet striking the vest was absorbed by the vest to prevent penetration. I agree that a small percentage of that energy is going to be transmitted to the body behind the vest, but only a small percentage, and over a much wider area than the actual impact zone.
The idea that a soft armor vest absorbs none of the energy is belied by the size of the impact in the clay. So, the statement that nobody was rendered unconscious is simply poor science.
The idea that a soft armor vest absorbs none of the energy is belied by the size of the impact in the clay. So, the statement that nobody was rendered unconscious is simply poor science.
JR47
Member
You must have posted that second inquiry while I was answering you. No problem, we'll just agree to disagree. 
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