Changing my SD rifle ammo...

[bobby]

After watching the Badge cam of this shooting. I decided to change my SD rifle ammo to a less effective ( I believe) round. I picked up 40 rds of Winchester Ballistic Silvertip Varmint & Predator Fragmenting Polymer tip .223 55 grain ammo. This is what I could find that I think will not go through a bunch of walls. Let me know if you know of better rounds that will fail on barriers.

[03Lightningrocks]

After watching the Badge cam of this shooting. I decided to change my SD rifle ammo to a less effective ( I believe) round. I picked up 40 rds of Winchester Ballistic Silvertip Varmint & Predator Fragmenting Polymer tip .223 55 grain ammo. This is what I could find that I think will not go through a bunch of walls. Let me know if you know of better rounds that will fail on barriers.

Even those rounds would go right through the walls of a department store dressing room. And most like about every room inside your house.

[bobby]

Ugh better than what I had sooooo

[Tex1961]

So, silly question. For home defense and your determined to use a rifle why not just go with a pistol caliber carbine. 9, 40, 45 all pretty darned good home defense rounds. I’m definitely no expert, but I’ve always found the idea of a hi powered rifle as a home defense gun not a good idea. I’m not talking living miles away from anyone else but in a normal home in a regular urban area.
Over penetration, extremely loud, big flash, seems overkill.

[Paladin]

223/5.56mm actually goes through fewer numbers of drywall than 9mm

Watching the video, the shoot vs. no-shoot decision was debatable, but I have no issue with it.

With a rifle at that distance the blame is exclusively on poor training. Extraordinarily poor marksmanship to miss the bad-guy completely at that distance.

I don't know what the LAPD carbine qualification is, but the officers are clearly a danger to public safety with skills that poor.

It was a tragic accident. Prayers for the girls family.

[Paladin]

How Many Walls Will a 5.56 and 9mm Penetrate?

[bobby]

I went with a very low weight rifle so one handed engagement is possible. It is one of my tools for HD. I can not run as my wife is in a wheelchair so I have tools to deal with and a AR with a 40 rd mag works great and I can run it in a very skillful manner. I also have handguns but I believe should be used to get me to my rifle.

[LTUME1978]

A retired HPD SWAT Sniper/Team Lead/In charge of training for HPD SWAT, etc. taught a two day class on home defense with an AR several years ago. He stated that the AR - with the right ammo - is the best home defense weapon available. The ammo he recommended is Speer Gold Dot Soft Point. He went through the reasons why and HPD SWAT's experience with that ammo over 17 years. In those 17 years (with a lot of shootings), they only had one bullet leave the body and that was because the officer took an angled shop at the bad guy and hit a rib causing the bullet to ricochet off. He also gave case histories on what happens when someone uses a FMJ/BT inside a home (not good). That has been my primary self defense weapon in the home since that time. I also recommend training at CSAT (Tac Rifle then Advanced Individual Tactics so that you are prepared to make those shots inside a house (where to hold for those close shots) and working in the dark in shoot houses.

[03Lightningrocks]

How Many Walls Will a 5.56 and 9mm Penetrate?

The video makes it pretty obvious that sheetrock makes a horrible bullet stop. The reason the young lady was shot was a missed shot by the LAPD. It is looking like they should not have fired on this guy to begin with. At least not unless it was an extreme likely hit. I do believe I read he was not armed with a firearm. Maybe I am mistaken but if this is true, they should have either been right up on him or maybe used less lethal methods of stopping him.

This situation is one to think about for those of us that carry concealed. If we miss our intended target and kill an innocent bystander my bet is that we end up in cuffs and charged with manslaughter at the least.

The officer who fired that round should lose his job at the least and possibly be charged with criminal negligence. Hopefully he does not just walk off like nothing happened.

[The Annoyed Man]

I went to 55gr soft points a long time ago for this reason. They have a good rep for blowing up in the target and over penetrating less. And they penetrate walls even less than most other .223 bullets …which penetrate walls less than 9mm bullets do. I can’t seem to find it right now (although I’ve posted it here before), but Reid Henrich posted a YouTube video a few years ago demonstrating the effect of different handgun and rifle bullets on an actual house that was prepped for demotion. It was instructive.

I want to say that, short of using frangible ammo, I don’t think it is possible to fire a gun inside a house and 100% guarantee that bullets won’t punch through walls unintentionally from time to time.

[03Lightningrocks]

I went to 55gr soft points a long time ago for this reason. They have a good rep for blowing up in the target and over penetrating less. And they penetrate walls even less than most other .223 bullets …which penetrate walls less than 9mm bullets do. I can’t seem to find it right now (although I’ve posted it here before), but Reid Henrich posted a YouTube video a few years ago demonstrating the effect of different handgun and rifle bullets on an actual house that was prepped for demotion. It was instructive.

I want to say that, short of using frangible ammo, I don’t think it is possible to fire a gun inside a house and 100% guarantee that bullets won’t punch through walls unintentionally from time to time.

I agree. Even a shot gun with light weight bird shot will penetrate most interior walls. Most of my house has brick exterior walls so I am hoping a round would not get outside of my house should the worse situation happened.

[MadMonkey]

I don’t think it is possible to fire a gun inside a house and 100% guarantee that bullets won’t punch through walls unintentionally from time to time.

Yep. What's one of the rules of gun safety? Be sure of your target and what is beyond...

IMHO, don't sacrifice on ammo effectiveness. Use the most effective ammo available for your weapon, which means better effect on target, which means fewer rounds are likely to be needed to end a threat and thus fewer rounds that you're responsible for. And DEFINITELY incorporate awareness of what is beyond your walls into your training and your home defense (and self defense in your workplace, etc) game plans.

ETA: Carry a notepad into a random room in your house and draw a quick sketch of the surrounding neighborhood from your point of view in each direction just as a thought exercise to see where you can safely fire. In a typical suburban neighborhood there's a LOT of potential for shots to go very wrong.

I live in a small town now and even on the edge of my neighborhood I have almost no safe direction to shoot, unless I just kneecap the bad guy so any misses go into the dirt in the yard

[Paladin]

A retired HPD SWAT Sniper/Team Lead/In charge of training for HPD SWAT, etc. taught a two day class on home defense with an AR several years ago. He stated that the AR - with the right ammo - is the best home defense weapon available. The ammo he recommended is Speer Gold Dot Soft Point. He went through the reasons why and HPD SWAT's experience with that ammo over 17 years. In those 17 years (with a lot of shootings), they only had one bullet leave the body and that was because the officer took an angled shop at the bad guy and hit a rib causing the bullet to ricochet off. He also gave case histories on what happens when someone uses a FMJ/BT inside a home (not good). That has been my primary self defense weapon in the home since that time. I also recommend training at CSAT (Tac Rifle then Advanced Individual Tactics so that you are prepared to make those shots inside a house (where to hold for those close shots) and working in the dark in shoot houses.

Speer Gold Dot Soft Point is my preferred rifle home defense ammo as well.

Hoffner had a good force-on-force class I attended back in the day, and CSAT pretty much sets the standard for shoot house training. Paul Howe puts a strong emphasis on target identification and accuracy with good reason.

[Excaliber]

How Many Walls Will a 5.56 and 9mm Penetrate?

The video makes it pretty obvious that sheetrock makes a horrible bullet stop. The reason the young lady was shot was a missed shot by the LAPD. It is looking like they should not have fired on this guy to begin with. At least not unless it was an extreme likely hit. I do believe I read he was not armed with a firearm. Maybe I am mistaken but if this is true, they should have either been right up on him or maybe used less lethal methods of stopping him.

This situation is one to think about for those of us that carry concealed. If we miss our intended target and kill an innocent bystander my bet is that we end up in cuffs and charged with manslaughter at the least.

The officer who fired that round should lose his job at the least and possibly be charged with criminal negligence. Hopefully he does not just walk off like nothing happened.

Latest reports are saying the fatal round was a ricochet off the floor instead of a straight shot into the wall. They haven't said if it was a miss or it ricocheted after passing through the intended target.

[Paladin]

How Many Walls Will a 5.56 and 9mm Penetrate?

The video makes it pretty obvious that sheetrock makes a horrible bullet stop. The reason the young lady was shot was a missed shot by the LAPD. It is looking like they should not have fired on this guy to begin with. At least not unless it was an extreme likely hit. I do believe I read he was not armed with a firearm. Maybe I am mistaken but if this is true, they should have either been right up on him or maybe used less lethal methods of stopping him.

This situation is one to think about for those of us that carry concealed. If we miss our intended target and kill an innocent bystander my bet is that we end up in cuffs and charged with manslaughter at the least.

The officer who fired that round should lose his job at the least and possibly be charged with criminal negligence. Hopefully he does not just walk off like nothing happened.

Latest reports are saying the fatal round was a ricochet off the floor instead of a straight shot into the wall. They haven't said if it was a miss or it ricocheted after passing through the intended target.

ricochet off the floor makes it sound like a miss to me.

This chart shows that a standard 5.56mm begins to yaw after 10-20cm (4-8 inches) in ballistic gel: