Lucky Gunner's Ballistic Testing

[ELB]

http://www.luckygunner.com/labs/self-de ... tests/#9mm

Lucky Gunner, the online ammo dealer who defeated the Brady Bunch and the Philips over the Aurora theater Batman shooting, is putting up the results of some in-house ballistics testing they are doing with handgun SD ammo out of short (approx. 3.5") barrels, rather than service pistol sized barrels.

I really like the way they have set up the results with graphical and numeric representation of penetration and pictures (as well as measurements) of the expanded (or not, as the case may be) bullets. Click on the graph, and you get a picture of the first shot and the five shot group into gelatin. All the tests of a each caliber are lined up so you can quickly compare, and you can click on each individual ammo type to get more details. There's also highspeed video of the first round fired penetrating the gelatin. Really well done, I think.

LG used a (partial) FBI protocol -- five rounds from 10' through four layers of clothing into synthetic gelatin. Synthetic gelatin is supposed to provide very similar results to the traditional animal-based kind, but it is almost crystal clear and it doesn't melt.

Right now they have up results for .380 (some surprises there for me), 9x19mm, .40 S&W, and .45 ACP. There's 117 loadings altogether, and they say more are to come.

I think they did a nice job.

[gthaustex]

I saw those results the other day. Looks like they did a pretty thorough job. I too was surprised by a couple of the .380 results. Looks like a couple of the Hornady loadings give good results for both penetration and expansion in their testing...

[Javier730]

A couple of them 40 S&W loads penetrated over 25 inches! Seems like overpenetration might be an issue. I carry 165gr Speer Gold Dots. The average for those was 26.9". I have 200gr Speer Gold Dots in my home defense pistol. I expected those to penetrate a little deeper that 13.8". Having second thoughts about my carry ammo.

[Beiruty]

Federal HST is still the best bullet. Period. That being said, my carry bullet is 124gr +P 9mm Gold Dots.

[Javier730]

A couple of them 40 S&W loads penetrated over 25 inches! Seems like overpenetration might be an issue. I carry 165gr Speer Gold Dots. The average for those was 26.9". I have 200gr Speer Gold Dots in my home defense pistol. I expected those to penetrate a little deeper that 13.8". Having second thoughts about my carry ammo.

I am now looking at the expansion on the 165gr gold dots and they don not look good. I am changing my carry ammo as soon as I can buy a few boxes and have them run fine in my pistol. For now I am switching to 180gr gold dots since I have shot quite a few lawmen in 180gr.

[Papa_Tiger]

I'm really happy to see the PDA that I use was one that got good reviews. Even better, they shot it from my EDC!

115gr Speer GDHP in 9MM shot from an M&P 9c. Very nice test and information to have!

[thatguyoverthere]

Very good information. Well presented, not just charts (but plenty of that) - but also lots of good photos of tracks through the gel, plus photos of the bullets themselves after expansion. And good background and testing information. Quite a few different ammo brands, in all the popular calibers. Very well done all around.

[Charles L. Cotton]

It is interesting to see the Remington Golden Sabers are testing so well. They have been around much longer than the most recent "magic bullets" and their performance is equal to or better. I think they are significantly less expensive too.

Chas.

[tlt]

Interesting page.

There is also an interesting youtube channel unrelated to LG stuff. The do some interesting testing, also some of that new fangled, over priced junk as well.. Here is the link if you are interested. "https://www.youtube.com/user/wjpurnell/videos"

[The Annoyed Man]

Funny...... literally right before coming to the site and seeing this thread, I was reading a Lucky Gunner page about .223 vs 5.56 safety issues: http://www.luckygunner.com/labs/5-56-vs-223/

[ELB]

... I carry 165gr Speer Gold Dots. The average for those was 26.9". ...

That result is kind of weird. You can see in the photo that they didn't really expand, the tip just got mashed a little bit.

In general it was interesting to see that for penetration most ammo loadings had spread of several inches. Not so many where the bullets all stopped at nearly the same depth. One that did was PNW Arms 115 gr TACOPS SCHP 9mm. It was very consistent in penetration, put'em all right in the FBI "green zone," and win the prize for the most letters/acronyms in naming the ammo. Never heard of them before. ?

[Jago668]

Good to see my Speer Gold Dot 124gr +P did well. Was surprised how much over penetration there was on the .45acp end of it.

[rentz]

gold dot and federal HST seem to have the most across the board consistency.
As others said very surprised by some of the .45 over penetration, but also the lack of expansion by many rounds, It seems based on this test at least that quality HP ammo is even more important in a .45

One thing this test reinforced with me was that there isn't nearly the benefit to .40 over 9mm as some think, both had very similar results.