I realized I was distracted by "hype," but the hype I was distracted by was that surrounding the "wounding" caused by hollowpoint bullets from a handgun, not the claims surrounding the Xtreme bullets that unfortunately come along with many absurd explanations.
First, it has to be conceded that a typical jacketed hollowpoint does wound more than a lead round-nosed bullet at the same velocity, but only provided the conditions are favorable to it opening in soft tissue. Even so, it is widely accepted that all handgun bullets enter and travel through tissue at too low velocity to stretch tissue beyond its limit of elasticity to create a permanent wound cavity much larger than the bullet diameter. We've heard this fact drilled by ballistics experts in an effort to overcome the hype in the market surrounding jacketed hollowpoint bullet effects as well as "hyper" cartridges -- whether it's 45 vs 9, or 40, or 10mm, or 357 Sig, or Super Vel, or Buffalo Bore, or whatever "magic bullet" is going to "blow your head clean off." We ought to know that if it's coming out of a handgun, it's going to puncture the target and it quite likely to need multiple punctures to effect a stop. If the hyper-performance is associated with anything that makes the gun harder to control, it's probably not worth it.
I conceded that hollowpoints aren't "magic bullets" that do extreme damage by magical, explosive, blow-up power, and acknowledged that at best, they make a little wider wound track than initial caliber-size. The other substantial benefit of hollowpoints is that they have the potential to limit penetration to an appropriate depth. When the hollowpoint opens, it increases drag in the tissue and slows the bullet, stopping it before it exits with so much velocity that it presents a more serious threat for collateral damage beyond the intended target. I'm not going to get into "energy transfer" and a bunch of other debunked wounding theories -- I already conceded that a spectacular wounding effect cannot be expected from a handgun bullet.
Therefore, jacketed hollowpoints offer a modest increase in wounding and a benefit of penetration reduced to an appropriate depth, but if and only if the hollowpoint functions which it often does not. There are a lot of conditions that can cause a jacketed hollowpoint to fail to open, and these conditions are not unusual. I've probably deceived myself by looking at too many jacketed hollowpoint bullet "flowers" that open so perfectly and symmetrically in water or uniform gel. JHP's can fail not just because they're plugged with punched-out denim, sheet metal, or wood, but simply because the nose gets smashed on anything hard rather than opened with fluid pressure.
My conclusion is that jacketed hollowpoints don't offer as much as I've allowed myself to believe.
If I cast out all the zaney, absurd wounding theories that have accompanied various explanations of how Lehigh Xtreme Defense bullets work, I notice a couple things:
- They appear to consistently exhibit an appropriate amount of penetration under most all circumstances. Unlike jacketed hollowpoints that exhibit appropriate penetration only under ideal circumstances.
- They do not exhibit extremely poor tissue disruption like lead round nose or FMJ. I think everyone could agree that they at least behave more similarly to a semi-wadcutter but with more controlled penetration.
Do we need to also believe hyper/extreme wounding capability to find the above two points alone a compelling case for these bullets? I think the answer lies in what you actually believe about the hyper/extreme wounding of JHP.
