I am of the opinion that safety is based primarily on distance. I am sure bullet construction, that is steel core, will have an affect on safety distance.
I shot tens of thousands of rounds into this target over several decades.
Pistol rounds were all lead, JHP, JSP, FMJ. I shot 44 Magnum down to 32 S&W Long. It was pointless to shoot 22lr as the splatters were small and the disc would not move. I never moved the target closer than 25 yards. And I never had any bullet fragments come back to the firing line. There were lots of lead discs within a foot or two of the target, some star shaped bullet jackets would actually float in windy conditions and land maybe ten feet away. I did not shoot any steel core anything, at any distance, rifle or pistol. The discs were soft steel, and as you can see, dented. I shot FMJ/steel core once at 150 yards with a M28 Finnish. When I walked up, I had three divots in the plate. that was the end of that experiment!
I did shoot hundreds of lead bullets from lever actions, military rifles, and muskets at 100 yards. Nothing ever came back near the firing line.
However, even smoke pole rifles were hard on the welds. The musket did this to my target one day.
It was surprise to see how hard a 510 grain soft lead bullet would whack a target!
None of the steel pistol targets at CMP Talladega are closer than 15 yards, and the plates are angled down.
When I look at youtube videos, the "elite marksman" are banging away at targets 7 to 10 yards away! That is almost spitting distance! At spitting distance I am 100% sure that pits on the target face could send something back towards the shooter.
So my advice, move the target out, and learn something called sight alignment, trigger pull, and follow through.
First time out with both this target, and the pistol.
I did better with my K38. The hit probability was around 5 out of 6 at fifty yards. The less recoil, the less flinch!
