The latest NIJ ballistic protection standard I'm aware of, the 0101.04 dated June 2001, does not mention shotgun slugs at all, while some earlier versions mentioned them under level III as "also protects against [...]". As far as I'm aware, NIJ has never had a ballistic body armor standard which included flexible vests rated against 12G slugs.

In fact, I've never run into any flexible body armor rated to protect against shotgun slugs according to any of the more common ballistic body armor standards. Kejo Limited and other firms have probably done some testing of their own and decided that since the slugs are stopped they can include them under "protects against".

[Edit]The 12G slug loads mentioned on the Kejo Limited site seem pretty weak to me. Browsing cursorily through a few G&As leads me to believe 1450+fps, up to 1700fps is a more realistic velocity for a 2-3/4" 1oz slug. A nice marketing trick...[/Edit]

I would be surprised if level II-A vests could reliably stop 12G 2-3/4" slugs. Even though the slug spreads its kinetic energy over an area ~4.2 times that of a .357 Magnum JSP, it has nearly 5 times as much KE to go around as the II-A standard .357 (158gr @ 1250fps vs. 437gr @ 1664fps). The backface deformation would certainly be far beyond the acceptable 1.7"/44mm.

I wish to put in my order for five, effective immediately.

~J

Hmm. You're right, those figures are a bit slow. Well, either Kejo is bullshitting (I don't think so; I've seen that picture elsewhere and I'm pretty sure it was in a NIJ document), the NIJ document the picture is from is old, or the applicable NIJ specification rated the slug defeats at greater range.

I was looking at the test criteria for the 0101.04 standards, and it says the maximum distance from the muzzle to the chronograph start screen is 40 feet. Older standards may have been different. Don't have the time to look it up now.

According to some of the 1,450-1,520 fps 1-ounce rifled slug ballistics I've been looking at, they tend to drop below 1,290 fps at a little less than 50 yards.

I'm pretty sure that picture came out of an official NIJ document. I know I've seen it elsewhere. The Kejo site was just the first one I Googled up that had it. I should have known better than to link to something that didn't say official NIJ on it anyway.

When the odds are stacked against you to the point that 9 rounds aren't enough then you'll need to lay down some suppressive fire if you want to retreat without getting shot in the back.

It is silly to compare cocking a Single Action revolver to chambering a semi-automatic. The time and effort required to cock a revolver are negligable compared to the effort required to chamber a round in a semi-automatic.

Besides, this certainly won't happen with a Single Action

I see no reason why carrying a full sized serivce pistol is a problem unless concealibility is an issue. If concealability is an issue then you are either carrying illegally or plan on killing and/or robbing someone. The rare exceptions being certain formal occasions and jurisdictions that allow concealed carry but not open carry.

Your ignorance amazes me, and that statement in and of itself would be offensive to me, personally, if this was anywhere but the internet.

Jurisdictions that allow concealed but not open carry are far, far, far, from "rare," and making a blanket statement like that about anyone that has a compact or sub-compact instead of a full, expressly so that we can carry legally, is remarkably insulting.

I've always got time to read body armor documents.

In the most recent standard, for testing levels I through III-A, the distance from the muzzle to the first chronograph is minimum 2 meters, the distance from that to the second chronograph is 1.5 meters (+/- 6mm), and the distance from the muzzle to the armor panel is 5 meters.

In the 0101.03 standard (April 1987), there was a single chronograph with start and stop trigger screens. For levels I through III-A, the start screen was a minimum of 2 meters from the muzzle, the stop screen 0.5 to 1.5 meters behind the start screen -- and the armor panel again 5 meters from the muzzle. This standard does not include tests for shotgun slugs, nor does it mention them other than "[Level III body armor] also provides protection against threats such as 223 Remington (5.56 mm FMJ), 30 Carbine FMJ, and 12 gauge rifled slug, as well as the threats mentioned in sections 2.1 through 2.4."

In both 0101.03 and 0101.04 Rev A, the armor panel is placed 15 meters from the muzzle for testing level III and IV. Back in '87, the chronograph start screen could have been placed anywhere from 2 meters to about 13-14 meters in this test -- as of June '01 the first chronograph is placed between 12 and about 13 meters.

Standard 0101.02 (the first to include level III-A, from March 1985) is a rarity by now, I couldn't find a copy with Google. For all I know, it could have included shotgun slugs. In any case, NIJ could well have published other test material including slugs outside of the body armor standards and Selection and Application Guides. I've just never run into any, so I was glad to see even the BoT-version.

Google doesn't find anything but the same standards and S&AGs mentioning "also protects against 12G slugs" under level III. Tables or charts including 12G slugs as being protected against by level III-A don't seem to exist anywhere but on the websites of firms making or selling body armor, which seems somewhat suspect to me -- although that particular chart is always tagged "NIJ [whatever]", so it may well originate from an NIJ document.

One site even includes 1oz sabot slugs @ 1500fps -- with more than twice the KE spread over ~1.36 times the area of the .44 Magnum SWC test round, it sounds really odd to me that it would pass the backface deformation criterion.

In no way was I saying that subcompacts are only intended for criminal use. I was saying that the only reason to be so concerned about concealibility that one completely rejects the idea of carrying a full sized pistol out of hand is.

I also made exceptions for "polite society" and jurisdictions that only allow concealed carry in my statement.

As for thetreat that firearms present, they present more of a threat if potential attackers actually know that the firearms exist. If someone is so intent to attacking you that he will ignore an openly carried weapon drawing a concealed weapon isn't going to make him just run away.

Concealed carry is more trap than threat. This is the common law justification restricting concealed carry in states that have a constitutional guarentees protecting the right to carry.

I live in a state that has legal open carry and hands out concealed permits to anyone who pays $20 and who hasn't been convicted of a felony or insitutionalized recently.
The people I know who do have CCWs usually carry full sized pistols and rarely make extradorinary efforts to conceal them. If a police officer sees the butt of weapon sticking out of your jacket it isn't a big deal just calmly show him the CCW permit and have a polite conversation. If a police officer sees the weapon and it is being carried completely in the open then it isn't a deal at all.

The guy at the 7-11? He certainly has less to fear from a gun that is carried openly than one that is concealed. The person with a concealed weapon presents a greater threat of robbery. But it has more to do with demeanor than it has to do with a weapon. If you act like it is perfectly right for you to be carrying and everyone will be more trusting and at ease. Open carry simply helps convey this attitude. It is a very broad statement to the convience store clerk. "I don't care who sees my weapon because I am not going to do anything illegal with it."


Critias, I don't know where you live but the laws there are made by idiots.

Gangbangers want to show off their illegal weapons around other gangbangers. They don't want to show off their illegal weapons around people who will call the police.
When robbers go into a store they usually have their weapons concealed. They don't draw the weapons untill they are in front of the register because they dont want to alert the clerk who may sound an alarm or draw a weapon of his or her own..

Georgia.

I was slightly incorrect. In Georgia the carry permit covers both concealed and open carry. One cannot carry a gun on one's person without a permit. However one can carry openly in an automobile. That means having the weapon displayed on the dash or passanger seat. Still, is very easy to get a permit.

1: This has already been answered by everyone else. I was gonna say "Punching great big holes in things".

2: I like the .45 ACP. It might not have the penetration of a 9mm, but thats OK by me. A wise man once said, "A 9mm hollowpoint MIGHT expand, but a .45 full metal jacket aint gettin any smaller".

I like 1911's and Sig's. If you absolutely MUST have something that has a DA trigger pull, might as well get something thats double/single, like the Sig. I dont need a DA, so I'll stick with the 1911 (and have. Sold my Sig to fund another 1911).

The .40 is a compromise between the power of the .45 and the capacity of a 9mm. I cant stand them. Compromise is a dirty word.

Besides, why settle for 13-15 rounds of .40, when you can get one of the new Springfields, or a Para, and have 14-15 rounds of .45? Heck, even Glonk makes a .45 with a decent capacity (14, I think). Not that I would pay money for one. And if given one, I'd sell it to fund another Springfield. But thats just because I dont like Glonks.

Couldnt tell you about 10mm, as I've never decided that I wanted to pay that much for a box of ammo. Which means I'm not going to buy a pistol that eats ammo thats that expensive.

I'm not real big on revolvers, so I cant really say much about the .38, .357, .44, or .45 Colt. Or the other, even bigger, calibers. I will say that I've known a few people who have some of the larger caliber revolvers, and mostly they arent too fond of them. One of them is a gun dealer near where I live, who had to get surgery done on his arm because of the .500 Snakes & Weasels.

3: A double-stack .45 with 13 or more rounds capacity. Power, mostly. The power to knock big holes in things. Add to that what someone else pointed out, its easily suppressed. And more thing that isnt a factor in deciding which weapon to use, but IS an added bonus: Intimidation. Get a standard, 5" barrel .45. Put a snap cap in it (DO NOT, under any circumstances, use a live round. Wouldnt want some fool that doesnt know what they're doing getting themselves killed because they read my words and thought they knew how to be safe with a firearm, when in fact they know next to nothing about them). Now take a gander down the barrel. See that? Thats the tip of the snap cap. Now take a look at the face of a hollowpoint bullet, and imagine how THAT would look, if the weapon was in the hands of someone who was none to happy with you and just might decide to exert a couple pounds of pressure on the trigger.

Even in dim light, from arms length away, you can see the bolt face of a .45 with an empty chamber.

Like I said, its not a factor in deciding what to use, but it is an added bonus.

4: See above.

5: Same.

6: NO! That'd be like training in Shodo Khan every day of your life, then stepping into the ring and trying to fight using Tae Kwon Do (unless you trained in Tae Kwon Do every day, also, in which case I have to wonder if you've got anything else in your life besides martial arts training). Train the way you fight.

Because of that big, fat, clunky steel grip frame? It makes for an awful lot to get your hands around and even more to carry around. Polymer-framed high-cap .45s generally handle that better than the high-cap 1911 does.

Considering that components are readily available and that the 10mm can outperform almost any practical automatic pistol load by a pretty fair margin, handloading is one of those things that 10mm owners tend to get into to save a few bucks. You probably don't want to get into 10mm if you're not very interested in handloading.

But if you think about it in terms of Shadowrun, the 10mm would very likely make a huge comback, considering the potential threats. So factory loads really wouldn't be much of an issue in that kind of setting, IMO.

Pffft. I would say he's either A) a complete muppet, or B) had a previous injury that his 500 somehow exacerbated, in which case he should have known better. The 500 does give a substantial thumping, but it's not going to rip your arms off unless you're doing something very wrong.

What is "violating rules one and two"?

Do you really have to be able to see the snap cap/bullet to understand that a gun being pointed in your face is all wrong? It doesn't matter how big the hole is or whether you can see the bullet or not. It's bad.

I'm beginning to think that there's something seriously wrong with your 1911 and that you've been spending way too much time looking down the wrong end of it, Hague.

This is probably the worst advice/example/directions I've ever, ever, seen anyone post.

That's a pretty bold statement, but considering the source I can pretty much assume there's good reason for making it. Can you expound a little?

Also, the business of grains. That's grains of gunpowder in the cartridge, right? How much variance in a round's performance is down to grain load? And how widely does/can the grain load for a round vary?

While I think about it, what are "hot loads"? Do they have specific advantages or disadvantages?

To clear that up, I'm pretty much referring to the big four auto cartridges, there: 9x19mm, .357 SIG, .40 S&W, .45 ACP. They're all loaded to about the same energy levels, normally 350-400 foot pounds energy (fpe). That's pretty much considered a "practical defensive load" these days.

The .357 SIG, .40 S&W, and .45 ACP are all capable of being loaded into the 500-530 fpe range. But the 10mm Auto is capable of topping those cartridges by at least 150 fpe (203 joules) at their highest energy levels. To help put that into perspective, a Walther PPK .380 Auto puts out about 150-170 fpe total. Top loads of the 10mm even clear the .357 Magnum by about 100 fpe.

While there are other auto pistol cartridges that can develop far more energy (.50 AE, etc...) they aren't very practical as defensive sidearms. The 10mm Auto is.

No. A grain is a unit of measurement equal to 1/7000th of a pound. There are 15.432 grains per gram. It's the typical English unit of measurement used in relation to both the weight of the power charge and the weight of the bullet. In this case, I was talking about the weight of the bullet.

9x19mm bullet weights can vary between 88 and 158 grains, though 115-147 is more typical. The load it was developed for was 124 grains @ 1150 fps = 364 fpe.

The .357 SIG uses the same bullets as the 9x19mm, so bullet weights vary about the same. It's a .40 S&W case necked down to a 9mm bullet. The load it was developed for was 125 grains @ 1350 fps = 505 fpe. This duplicates common 125 grain .357 magnum loads from 4" barrel revolvers. It was developed by SIG, hence the .357 SIG moniker.

The .40 S&W goes about 135-200 grains, but 135-180 is more common. The .40 S&W is actually just a 10mm Auto case shortened from 0.992" to 0.850" in order to allow it to fit into guns designed for the 9x19mm. It uses the same bullets as the 10mm. The .40 S&W was developed for the FBI at 180 grains @ 980 fps = 384 fpe.

The .45 ACP goes from 165-230 grains. The load it was developed for was 230 grains @ 855 fps = 373 fpe.

The 10mm Auto goes from 135-200 grains. It was developed with a lot of input from Jeff Cooper, who is a big .45 ACP guy. He wanted it to be capable of outperforming the .45 ACP. A pretty common load is 180 grains @ 1050 fps = 440 fpe, but it can be pushed up to 200 grains @ 1250 fps = 694 fpe from a 5" barrel. That's often referred to as the "Norma" load, because of the ammunition company that developed it.

"Hot loads" are simply loads that are more energetic than average loads for a given cartridge. Usually that term refers to a lighter bullet being used with an unusually heavy powder load. Velocity is increased, thus energy is increased substantially. These are also often referred to as "+P" loads, meaning "plus pressure".

I think all of the mentions of that particular unit of weight in this thread so far have referred to the weight of the bullet. For example "a 147 grain JHP load" means the bullet is a Jacketed Hollowpoint and weighs 147 grains (9.525 grams).

The weight of the bullet is important in that heavier bullets are slower but penetrate deeper. Bullets particularly heavy for a caliber tend to have less kinetic energy than lighter ones, because the velocity drops quite fast as you add mass to the bullet; but that's not necessarily a very bad thing, since it's not the amount of KE but how you use it that counts. Many very light, very fast bullets don't penetrate much at all, which may be a serious problem when trying to kill humans. This article makes for pretty good reading on the matter of defensive handguns and penetration (of tissue).

The amount of propellant in the cartridge, while not often discussed here or many other sites, excluding those frequented by many handloaders, is of course critical to the performance of a particular load. You should put in the right amount, based on how much you value greater velocity over lesser recoil. Too much propellant and you start getting problems with the feed mechanism, way too much propellant and you run the risk of the gun blowing up in your face.

Just using a lot of propellant won't do you much good with a very short barrel either, so a snubnose .357 magnum will actually perform worse than a normal-sized 9x19mm pistol.

A "hot load" simply refers to a load where there is more than the normal, standard or average amount of propellant (or more powerful propellant). In other words, a load with greater velocity than is usual for a particular bullet out of a gun in a certain caliber -- and also greater recoil and greater muzzle blast. If your gun isn't designed to tolerate such loads (most guns these days are, but for example some of the 10mm auto pistols from the 1980s won't like the hottest 10mm loads at all), you'll also get lowered reliability and more rapid wearing-off of some parts of the gun, or indeed even the risk of the gun blowing up.

[Edit]Damn I'm slow.[/Edit]

Uhm, what?

Go back to fantasy land, in the real world you don't "lay down some suppressive fire."

It sure is, coz you can at least carry most modern SA pistols in condition 1.

Try it under stress someday.

Also, if you were earlier discussing how you might need to "lay down some suppressive fire" you won't get very far with 5 shots from your SA revolver, either.

Concealability is ALWAYS an issue.

Maybe down there, the good old boys in the PD don't mind seeing the butt of your weapon hanging out, but try that shit up here and you'll learn what its like to be on the wrong end of the officer's firearm mighty fast.

This came up at a later point, but open carry is surprisingly legal in most places, its just a silly thing to do.

What kind of "real world" do you live in? One where people shoot for fun?

In my very "real world" you do use suppressive fire. You also shot from cover, reload during combat, fire "in traffic", retain your weapon from someone trying to take it and use a myriad of other skills that most casual shooters don't bother learning- skills that keep you alive in a real gun fight.

Then again I don't train to casually shoot someone who is trying to kill me.

The one where I'm concerned about where my slugs go.

You should try it sometime.

Rock on in your tacticool gear, Ninja.

Holy, holy, holy shit.

I don't know how I missed that the first time through, but I would feel terrible if I didn't reiterate what others have already said concerning this.

Do NOT look down the barrels of your guns. If you are reading this and are new to guns and shooting, Do NOT Ever Ever do what this guy said.

To properly respond to your counter I feel I would need to have an understanding of where gfen is coming from with his statements, which from his posts, I have been unable to determine.

Request for clarification of said counter?

Regardless his reason, I think it's important that somebody point out the jackassery so that somebody who really doesn't know jack doesn't read his post and then try something that will get their head blown off.

Why not? If you're trying to shoot yourself in the eye, I can think of no better way.

~J

<sarcasm>Wait a minute... are you implying that I could actually use CONTROLLED fire to interdict the movements of my attacker?!? All this time I've been shooting up my neighborhood for no reason!! </sarcasm>

This gfen guy is a tool. I'm done here....