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Wrong Gun for Home Defense?

After getting my AR pistol and shooting it a bunch at the range monday, it has become my go to for home defense. I obviously still have pistols close by, but the AR pistol will be first to hand. It is so easy to maneuver and feels so natural.
When in a home defense situation, the Hellcat at my side and the XD 9mm are to get help get me to my Saint Pistol and the 30 round magazines in the safe.
 
Unfortunately, both of those will also readily pass through several rooms' worth of the typical American residential home's interior walls.

Sadly, there's really no magical bullet/load that will just tear into and destroy a bad-actor's flesh but won't pass through walls.

In-reality, the dual considerations of the shooter's proficiency with the weapon - i.e. not missing the intended target - combined with known shooting lanes/backdrops are really the two factors that will control unintentional casualties in adjacent rooms (and beyond), in residential structures.
Would a 9MM 147gr JHP pass completely through an intruder. I was told by a guy that knows about as much as I do about ammo, which is I know the difference between JHPand FMJ, that the hollow point will stay in the intruder?
 
^ Pretty much anything can happen in the real-world, unfortunately.


The idea behind expansion is the enlargement of the permanent wound channel, leading to greater destruction of tissue. Remember, the goal is to shut down the threat, and that can only be achieved with sufficient destruction of either critical CNS structures ("lights out," instantaneous incapacitation - be it full-body or otherwise) or by sufficiently dropping the blood pressure so as to cause the threat the inability to continue their intended physical action/function (i.e. to cause them to "pass out" from blood loss, or to at least sufficient drop blood pressure so that they can no longer function effectively and are on their way to the former). With both of these requirements, penetration is king, which is why the FBI's requirements revolve around depth of penetration as the first mark (with the second mark of not surpassing maximum penetration depth, as a concession for "overpenetration" - http://www.ar15.com/ammo/project/self_defense_ammo_FAQ/#mozTocId20101).

Modern technology brings us the amazing examples of Federal's HST and Speer's Gold Dot, which are currently perhaps the benchmarks of the industry.

However, just because the bullets *_can_* expand doesn't necessarily mean that they will. The target also has a say in the equation, here. Clothing fibers, for one, can "clog" the works of the modern expanding hollowpoint and cause varying forms and degrees of failure.

Certainly, more complete transfer of kinetic energy into the target will translate into an increasing possibility that the bullet will stay within the target (notice that this is -NOT- to imply any kind of physical incapacitation of the threat via "energy dump" - current medical and physical knowledge points only to the factors of hemorrhage and nervous system destruction/disruption as addressed previously as certain methods of achieving the "physiologic stop"), but there's so many possibilities there, versus the singular and crucial need for wound channel creation and enlargement.

Empirically, however, it stands to note that there are virtually no instances of "overpenetration" being problematic in the annals of police shootings in which the threat is properly addressed via marksmanship and yet innocents in the backdrop were harmed by bullets which "passed through." My personal belief is that this - combined with the not-infrequent tales of the lack of marksmanship and safety awareness also by officers leading to bystander deaths and injuries (the latest confirmed cases: https://www.foxnews.com/us/nypd-9-shooting-bystander-victims-hit-by-police-gunfire ) - highlights the critical need for marksmanship.
 
If your worried about the round going through walls, you can look into 9mm 98 grain frangible ammunition.
I’ve heard that frangible ammunition is hard on barrels, but I don’t know how long it would be before it would cause a noticeable change in accuracy or wear on the rifling. I would think that if you’re not shooting thousands of rounds through it you should be OK, but we all know that it doesn’t take many trips to the range to accumulate a thousand empty casings.
 
I’ve heard that frangible ammunition is hard on barrels, but I don’t know how long it would be before it would cause a noticeable change in accuracy or wear on the rifling. I would think that if you’re not shooting thousands of rounds through it you should be OK, but we all know that it doesn’t take many trips to the range to accumulate a thousand empty casings.
I shoot frangible all the time in a annual competition, never heard of anyone saying it damages barrels. You have any data on that?
 
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