If ball ammo penetration gives a better depth penetration than an expanding performance bullet, would one get better yield benefit in a violent riot situation toward stopping threats? Perhaps a 3 or 2 for one yield is possible?

My casual search of the internet for data or videos (that I trust) does not give much information on the penetration of common ball ammo.

Your thoughts are welcome.

It’s not an answer to your question, but I would strongly caution against the idea that it would be good to fire into a crowd in hopes of hitting more than one person. Colorado law permits the use of deadly force in self-defense, but under limited circumstances. Colorado Revised Statute 18-1-704 Use of physical force in defense of a person states in part “(2) Deadly physical force may be used only if a person reasonably believes a lesser degree of force is inadequate and: (a) The actor has reasonable ground to believe, and does believe, that he or another person is in imminent danger of being killed or of receiving great bodily injury; ….”

How would it be possible to argue that someone we likely couldn’t even see posed a deadly threat?

Injuring more than one person unintentionally in a defensive situation might be one thing, but to deliberately plan to do it and announce that plan to the world via the Internet is, I believe, something quite different.

As for your question, here is one test that showed a 9mm 115 grain FMJ bullet penetrating about 28 inches of ballistic gel, or close to twice what hollow points normally penetrate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...SuI&feature=youtu.be

A test of 380 ACP FMJ loads from a short barrel; 9mm loads might penetrate farther due to their generally higher velocities and heavier bullets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbSLqdiX_bA

Thank you Sigfreund for your response. It is timely and exactly what I need.

Far too many of both my students and others only buy range ammo for self defense purposes regardless of my cautions about over penetration in both home use and crowd situations. Now I have video visual proof of the danger.

Personally for defensive purposes, I recommend and only use less than 90 grain weight in 9mm or 38 special hollow point bullets due to the over penetration problem. Importantly the lightweight bullets also improve handgun control due to lessened recoil. This easy to shoot handgun plays especially well with those of us who fancy the simple 38 special snubose.

If & when needed, any ammo is better than no ammo. Of course, some are better than others.

I doubt many gang-bangers worry about the best bullets for the job, FMJ will do.

There are some than go with FMJ in a smaller pistol round, like 380, to get better penetration. One instance could be with thicker winter clothing. There may be reason to do so, but with particulars, could easily argue the other way.

The practical side of me says one can use what they have, & works in their gun.

The idea that FMJ is required to penetrate heavy clothing is a baseless myth easily disproved by simple experiments. Some years ago I did just that. One ballistics testing standard is that four layers of denim constitutes “heavy clothing,” so I used 12 layers of the cloth. I taped it to a watermelon and fired a standard pressure 9mm hollow point load with a P239 at it:



Then I used the same material with 230 grain 45 ACP Speer Gold Dot:






Some older hollow point designs didn’t expand well after passing through clothing, but then they acted like full metal jacket bullets, they didn’t just stop in the material. There is a specific myth about Carhart coats, and there is at least one video disproving that one as well.

There is no standard clothing that will stop even a low-powered handgun bullet.

I have trouble imagining a situation that would call for intentional shoot throughs to hit multiple members even of a rioting mob.

That was something the Chinese did, rowing up prisoners so they could execute more than one per shot with their Broomhandle Mausers.

As far as unintentional shoot throughs because hardball was all you could find in the Covid era, I worry more about misses.

If ball ammo is good enough for Wade ...