My .40 handgun or Ruger 556 for home defense.

[Shakgul]

I just purchased my first AR, and while doing some research I came across some claims that for close quarters, the .223 will have less over penetration than pistol rounds becuase of barrel twist. Can any police and swat verify this?

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Some, not all, .223 rounds will have less penetration than most .40 pistol rounds. This has nothing to do with barrel twist but is because a .223 bullet is a small, lightly constructed bullet travelling at high speeds. IF a .223 bullet strikes something and breaks up, the tiny little fragments shed their energy very quickly - leaving less energy and mass to cause a lethal injury.

Having said all that, bullet construction is very important - a bonded or thick jacketed bullet that doesn't yaw or break up will penetrate quite a bit.

Also, just about any firearm that meets the minimum recommended FBI criteria will penetrate a typical drywall interior wall with ease and still pose a lethal threat to someone on the other side.

*I'm neither police nor SWAT; but this is well documented in dozens of different places.

[g.willikers]

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the choice of gun is the least of it.
Especially when the topic is self defense.
Use whatever weapon you know how to use the best.

[Old Bill Dibble]

Maybe people who have done these test but are not police and SWAT?

Drywall/ Wood:
http://www.theboxotruth.com/the-box-...uns-and-walls/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0qgQoej5zE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BeOlRl8ZLI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXOIQgfvVlE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U142S-Bhrrw

Concrete Block:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih3nw4qVa1I

Too much trouble to watch?

Also, just about any firearm that meets the minimum recommended FBI criteria will penetrate a typical drywall interior wall with ease and still pose a lethal threat to someone on the other side.

[849ACSO]

I'm a police officer and spent several years as a SWAT officer.

The .223/5.56 will pose the least risk of penetrating common building construction materials if the RIGHT BULLET is used, but with common building materials, there will always be some risk.

You will need a frangible, or ballistic tipped bullet (Hornady TAP/Varmint) that is light weight (40-55gr) and fast moving to minimize that risk. Virtually ANY centerfire handgun round will penetrate drywall and insulation and remain lethal.

We did some testing with mock walls several years ago, and inside of abandoned houses that were slated for demolition. The lightweight ballistic tips began to fall apart when they began to hit hard materials, but they still penetrated. In some cases, there didn't appear to be enough weight retention to be lethal on the other side, but, that was just SOME cases.

Every handgun round we fired would have been lethal on the other side, unless it hit a wall stud direct.

[Wyosmith]

You are responsible for EVERY round you fire. So these tests are quite interesting, but I think they are asking the wrong question.

The real question is this:

In my home or work, where are the safest lanes of fire and what cartridge/bullet is going to stop best in an enemies body.

When we see the tests that show us how many walls and brick, blocks or 2x4s a bullet will go through it seems to beg the question, why did you fire and miss? In a home invasion you can set the ambush yourself, and let the enemy be at the disadvantage.

You see, cops firing live rounds in a crowd are going to be held responsible for their misses. If the lane of fire is dangerous to other citizens a good cop holds his fire.

In a home invasion you hold the aces in the deck. You know the battle ground and the enemy doesn't. You have a huge advantage over a cop, in that the cop has to deal with a battle ground that is not of his choosing, and never knows how the lay of the land is going to be.

In a home defense situation you should know.

I am ALWAYS someone that recommends a longarm over a handgun in ANY life or death encounter in which you have time to go get a gun. NEVER go get a handgun when you can go get a rifle or shotgun. Handguns are at their best when you have them on your body so you need not go get it at all. That's exactly what they are for!

It is inconvenient to carry a shotgun or rifle at all times, but far less inconvenient to carry a handgun. I have one on my hip as I write this. But if I saw someone coming up my drive at this very moment that I believed was a threat I would walk the 15 feet I need to to go get my rifle. In my case it is a 308 autoloader, but I have no neighbors so I can use a 308 safely if I needed to. A stray round would have to go 1.3 miles for my nearest neighbor to be in danger.

If you have a 223 rifle I'd recommend you get some ammo that has highly fragmentary bullets (frangible as they call them) so over penetration through a human body is less of a danger, and make the rifle your main home defense gun.

Carry your 40 for those times when you may have no time to go get the rifle.

[T. O'Heir]

"...the .223 will have less over penetration..." Depends on the bullet, but the rifling twist isn't why. Not all .223" bullets are Ball or V-Maxes.
"...will penetrate a typical drywall..." Your fist will do that. So will a screw driver. It isn't the interior walls you need worry about. It's the doors and windows.
You don't need to worry about the walls between units in modern(35 plus years old, up here, at least.)high rise apartments either. Those are reinforced concrete.
Real issue with a rifle is its range. Miss or have a bullet, any bullet, go way down the street and hit something or somebody, you're guilty.
Concrete blocks are great fun. Blew a cinder block to wee tiny pieces at 100 yards(vs standing on it) with 7.62 Ball one time. 2.8" of pine isn't exactly unusual for .30 AP. Stuff was required to penetrate 3" of armour plate.
However, the FBI is not and never has been the arbiters of anything. So their criteria is irrelevant.

[jmr40]

All of the tests I've seen show that ANY 223 bullet, even FMJ, is less likely to over penetrate if it hits building material or a person than most any handgun or shotgun ammo. The softpoint hunting ammo is even better and what I use. 223 ammo will of course travel the greatest distance with a clean miss which must be considered too.

That said, from a tactics perspective I still think a handgun is a better option inside a home MOST of the time. Primarily because of the close quarters and the fact that you don't need both hands on the weapon. There are times where a free hand is needed. There are times where a carbine can work great too and a shotgun is still a viable option. If I hear a bump in the night a handgun is close to the bed. If I feel the need for a carbine or shotgun they are not too far away.

[Bartholomew Roberts]

All of the tests I've seen show that ANY 223 bullet, even FMJ, is less likely to over penetrate if it hits building material or a person than most any handgun or shotgun ammo.

There are many different types of FMJ. To use just one example, the Swiss and the British both deliberately use a thicker jacket on their FMJ to prevent the bullet from fragmenting if it yaws. Both of those rounds look just like M855 externally and meet all the criteria for SS109; but behave differently than M855. And even good old American made M193 or M855 fails to yaw about 25% of the time - and if it doesn't yaw, it doesn't break up or slow down as dramatically.

[briandg]

One of the benefits of a 223 is that god, it tears up a lot of tissue when the bullets break up and go their separate ways, and there is a bit of blow out of veins and organs from the temporary cavity. It stretches, and the speed and energy it is struck with is enough to break up all but the heaviest of tissues and cause bleeding.

No, a round hitting three inches from a kidney isn't going to damage it, it's tougher than you would think. Same with the liver, it's amazingly flexible, but smack either one of them less than an inch from point of impact, just the hit from the pressure or shock wave will be like hitting the body with a ball bat.

So you have heavy bleeding going for you, and the fact that you'll have a half dozen small, sharp pieces ripping through and causing bleeding. I don't think that a typical 223 hit is reliably worse than a heavy hit from a pistol as far as bleeding, but again, that heavy, hard shock just from the bullet shock wave is damaging. Look at prairie dog videos, and imagine that happening in a body. A stud or sheathing is more than a match for a 223 that will break up, but any decent handgun meant for SD will pop through even an exterior wall with only sheathing and typical siding. Now, with vinyl and tyvek, with sheathing, it might as well be blowing through a baloney sandwich.

I still recommend the 40, for reasons I'M not going into. Not enough time and too much controversy. The choices are pretty clear, I feel that the 40 will be inferior to the 223 in disabling power, but that's not the only consideration when someone has kicked down your door, or you are presented with some other threat. I'm probably only one in five that will make that decision. It's a hard decision and depends a lot on your own home, and the homes that will be within your line of fire. Living on a hill top, with stone and brick nearby, make it locally safe, but otoh, i've still got hundreds of homes, a thousand or more people downrange, that will be wide open for those rounds as they drop. will they hit a tree before then, a retainig wall,m drop to the street, maybe even miss the houses and slam into a stone building downtown? someone who fires a twelve gauge slug downrange in a situation like i have would be nuts. an individual round of buckshot wouldn't be very dangerous down range, but hey, will it be safe to send fourteen high velocity round balls randomly into the residential district?

So much to worry about. It could drive you nuts.

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Coincidentally, the most important factor is stopping a threat, shot placement, is also the most important factor in minimizing the risk of overpenetration.

When I take novices out to shoot, I have a suppressed Ruger 22/45 with a red dot on it. It is light. Recoil is minimal. There is no blast to make them flinch. The red dot makes it very easy to use. Practically an ideal handgun for novices. Despite all that, it isn't uncommon for a novice to have difficulty hitting an 8" steel circle at 7 yards. I'll give that same person an old bolt-action .22LR rifle from the 1930s with stamped, tiny steel sights that are so small as to be barely visible for older folks and they'll just wear out that steel plate from twice the distance.

This is why I am a big fan of using a long gun whenever one is practical. It just makes everything easier and in a stressful situation, you don't want anything to be harder than it has to be.

[briandg]

i wish the optical sights were a heck of a lot more affordable. $2-300 is a big investment.

[sig-gunner]

Lots of good quality info in this discussion. All the factors line up, but the one at the top of the list in my view is shot placement along with distance between the muzzle and the threat.

Cops see a lot of different distances out there, unlike we might see in our homes during an invasion. They see that close stuff too, but in a home situation it'll likely almost always be between a few feet and maybe 20 feet.

That is why I would not bother running for my rifles. I carry all the time, so my 40 would be drawn post haste. If it were people coming up the driveway or over my back fence, it'd still be my pistol. I just can't consider the long guns an immediate home defence choice unless it's a complete breakdown in society and we're seeing terrorists all over the place etc.. then it'd have to be an almost military approach to the situation, necessitating everything in my arsenal. Short of that, the handgun is right here on me.

[Bartholomew Roberts]

A not uncommon form of home invasion in the DFW area is where the bad guy knocks on the front door/rings the doorbell. Person at home sees shady character and declines to answer. Bad guy eventually walks around to back door and attempts entry. In many of those situations, people have had time to not only retrieve a rifle and take up a good defensive position; but to call police as well.

[FireForged]

I would not set out to use a AR15 indoors, in close quarters and alone. I say that because rifles are not as wieldy as a pistol and a 16" barrel is much easier to grab than a 4" barrel. If someone gets a hold of the barrel, you will likely lose that rifle. If the rifle is slung, you have effectively allowed a person better leverage and a lasso around your body. If I am fighting alone, I want as many practical advantages as I can muster, not less. I will stick with a pistol but that's just me. Is there a risk to firing a super sonic projectile inside the home or anywhere else, sure. I weigh those risks against the risk of not taking action and go with my gut.

[849ACSO]

I would not set out to use a AR15 indoors, in close quarters and alone. I say that because rifles are not as wieldy as a pistol and a 16" barrel is much easier to grab than a 4" barrel. If someone gets a hold of the barrel,

.............if someone gets ahold of that barrel, they wont hang on to it for long. You're over thinking it. Police officers use rifles every day during entries into houses where close quarters are an issue.

Next you will say "they're trained for that", and I will tell you yes they are, but the concept is the same. Use the best tool for the job, and I will choose any shoulder mounted weapon over a handgun for virtually any confrontation, period.

[FireForged]

if someone gets ahold of that barrel, they wont hang on to it for long. You're over thinking it. Police officers use rifles every day during entries into houses where close quarters are an issue.

Sir, I had an instructor demonstrate the point by taking the barrel of my slung rifle, putting me on the floor and then dragging me out of the structure, releasing me on the grass.

If I am fighting alone and indoors with a badguy who I may have to grapple with if things go badly, I would rather have a handgun vs a rifle. A rifle would be my choice if I had varying conditions ie.. indoor, outdoors, close, far away or where capacity was paramount.

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Originally Posted by FireForged

Sir, I had an instructor demonstrate the point by taking the barrel of my slung rifle, putting me on the floor and then dragging me out of the structure, releasing me on the grass.

In what context did that happen, and were you trying to shoot him during this process? I'm trying to picture how that happens without ending poorly for the guy playing grab the thunderstick. How did he close the distance to be able to grab the barrel in the first place?

[Old Bill Dibble]

You empty a magazine and that barrel will heat up skin frying temps quick, I promise you he will let go.