Silvertips, is my reasoning flawed?

[Creampuff]

Even though I own several boxes of Golden Sabres in the 0.45, and Gold Dots in 9mm, I notice I still keep a mag filled with old school Winchester Silvertips, in both the 9mm and 0.45.

I know Silvertips are considered older technology, and still remembered for their "failure" in the Miami FBI shootout (I used quotes for failure, as I know there is controversy behind that). However, I still like the Silvertips because I live in the burbs with crowded homes packed next to each other, and I have kids; therefore I want to minimize punching through too many walls. I like the idea of a somewhat lower penetrating 9mm (115gr).

Are Silvertips still considered a lower penetrating 9mm? Anyone have any recommendations for the lowest pentrating home defense ammo, minus, the bizarre stuff like MagSafe and Glasers??

thanks!

[Glock30]

Well if all else fails, you're protected from werewolves.

[Moonclip]

Well if all else fails, you're protected from werewolves.

Aluminum jacket on the lower velocity rounds, nickel silver on the faster ones. Silvertip still will penetrate a lot thru housing materials. But besides the exotic rounds most defense ammo will have to penetrate to some certain degree to be effective. Just watch your shot angles and try to hit your target!

I always felt .45acp 185gr silvertips would be good for older guns that would feed it as a mild on the gun lower penetration load.

[ar15barrels]

Well if all else fails, you're protected from werewolves.

Nah, those silvertips are actually aluminum.
Last I checked, werewolves needed real silver to kill them.

[J-cat]

Silvertips offer a shallower penetration though humans and animals, reason being they have soft cores and expand very quickly. They penetrate the same as any other bullet through building materials.

If you are concerned about shooting through an assailant and then through the wall, don't be. An expanded hollow point exiting a person has maybe 10-20% of its energy remaining and is unlikely to do anything to anyone, especially if it has to make it through a wall first.

[Moonclip]

Rounds can miss sometimes though resulting in a market for rounds such as some of the specialized Magsafe loads such as the ones with only epoxy in the core.

[Meplat]

Even though I own several boxes of Golden Sabres in the 0.45, and Gold Dots in 9mm, I notice I still keep a mag filled with old school Winchester Silvertips, in both the 9mm and 0.45.

I know Silvertips are considered older technology, and still remembered for their "failure" in the Miami FBI shootout (I used quotes for failure, as I know there is controversy behind that). However, I still like the Silvertips because I live in the burbs with crowded homes packed next to each other, and I have kids; therefore I want to minimize punching through too many walls. I like the idea of a somewhat lower penetrating 9mm (115gr).

Are Silvertips still considered a lower penetrating 9mm? Anyone have any recommendations for the lowest pentrating home defense ammo, minus, the bizarre stuff like MagSafe and Glasers??

thanks!

[tankerman]

Bad advice, 6,7,8,9's do not penetrate people.

[Creampuff]

My 12 gauge has a combo of 00 buckshot, and #4 buckshot, but is not quickly accessible, as the handguns. But I have to agree with tankerman, birdshot makes for dramatic but rather shallow wounds. Ask Mr Chaney

[Glock30]

Aluminum jacket on the lower velocity rounds, nickel silver on the faster ones. Silvertip still will penetrate a lot thru housing materials. But besides the exotic rounds most defense ammo will have to penetrate to some certain degree to be effective. Just watch your shot angles and try to hit your target!

I always felt .45acp 185gr silvertips would be good for older guns that would feed it as a mild on the gun lower penetration load.

Nice!

Nah, those silvertips are actually aluminum.
Last I checked, werewolves needed real silver to kill them.

Damnet, you're right, is silver vampires? Not like it really matter since they are really aluminum.

[sorensen440]

birdshot really wont penetrate very well

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUReB32qaU4

http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/bot3_2.htm

[Moonclip]

Bad advice, 6,7,8,9's do not penetrate people.

Maybe at longer ranges but I can assure you at most normal home defense ranges they most surely do. A thick layer of clothing or leather can stop some pellets too but at close range the pellets don't spread very much and hit a small area in mass.

I know someone that almost lost a leg and died from a close range birdshot blast.

[CSDGuy]

Beyond a muzzle to flesh distance, birdshot will only create a shallow wound that won't hit the vitals. Even then, birdshot won't guarantee enough penetration. I've heard that the minimum you want is #4 buckshot. That stuff should penetrate sufficiently deeply and not penetrate too many walls. It will likely have enough energy to penetrate one interior wall and injure/kill someone on the other side.

[Meplat]

WOW! I love this list! One guy who actually has experience with a close range birdshot wound agrees with me and half a dozen parrot hearsay. The vice presidents friend would probably no longer be with us if shot in the head at 10 feet with a quail load.

As I said, I did tests. The ballistic medium was ductseal blocks. Ductseal blocks are about four times as resistant to ballistic penetration than living tissue or ballistic gelatin. A non-expanding bullet will penetrate about four times as far in flesh as it will in ductseal. Ductseal "enhances" the performance of expanding projectiles as compared to flesh. Bullets will expand more readily and quickly in ductseal. If one takes a ductseal wound cavity and draws it out longitudinally and proportionally it will very closely match that of the same projectile fired at the same velocity into ballistic gelliton. The greatest downfall of ductseal as a ballistic medium is that will expand to some degree at a lower velocity than in gelatin. Thus the cavity for that bullet will be shorter and larger than in gelatin. It can indicate that a bullet will expand in flesh at a lower velocity than it actually will. All these factors work to understate the penetration of a shot charge rather than overstate it.

I did a series of tests a couple decades ago with an eye toward being able to provide defense in my home without killing my kids. While I was at it I did tests on everything from a 30-06 to a .22 handgun. But mostly I concentrated on the reasonable options.

Firing was done at 10 feet with a few duplications done at 15 and 20 feet. The 15-foot trials showed only slight but noticeable degradation in penetration. The 20 footers showed quite noticeable degradation but penetration was still deep enough to be effective. If you live in a house where you are going to need to shoot more than 20 feet indoors it might be easier to just hire full time private security guards.

The shotgun tests showed that anything from slugs to #4 shot will defenatly kill your kid in the next room. Numbers 6 and 71/2 are better but still dangerous.

My choice is #9, I'd use #12 if I could get it. But if you are skeptical go ahead and use #6, you would have to be unlucky to actually kill a child in the next room with #6s but you might tear them up a bit.

Number 9 shot at 10 feet will penetrate 3.5 inches into ductseal. That translates into 14" in flesh, even if I were off by 50% (and I'm not) that would still be 7" and you leave all the energy in the target. An ounce of lead at 1300 FPS as opposed to 125 grains of lead at something similar from a 9mm, or what, 180 grains from a .45? They are both good guns but give me a break. The #9 charge at 10 feet from an 18" cylinder bored barrel makes an entrance wound about 1.25 inches in diameter the wound channel doesn’t expand much on the inside and doesn’t exit (an adult) but individual pellets go off in all directions. Half the shot charge will be found at the end of the wound channel.

Fire a #9 shot charge at 90* into two squares of 5/8" sheetrock spaced 3 3/4" apart, simulating an inside wall, with a ductseal block placed 4" behind them and you will find that the first square has a 1.25" entrance hole and about a 2.5" exit. The second will have about a three or four inch hole a little bigger on the backside than the front. The 12' cubical ductseal block will have most of its face covered with #9 shot, a lot will be sticking to the surface, a lot will be laying on the bottom of the baffle box, some, especially near the center will have penetrated the ductseal from 1/16 to 1/8 inch. Very few, maybe five or six will be at 1/8 inch. That translates into a 1/2-inch deep wound. Serious for an infant but probably not life threatening.

In the case of number six shot, the shots directly into ductseal produced a basic wound channel almost exactly the same except that the individual flyers going out from the wound channel went quite a bit (like three times) farther than the number nines. But after going through the "wall" some individual shot penetrated as far as an inch (translating to four inches in flesh) into the ductseal. That kind of scares me with small children.

Do what you want but if you are going to trust your life to it why not check it out yourself instead of listening to old wives tails and urban legends. I trust my 12 gauge with birdshot. It als has another benefit, you look like Harvey hunter defending his home with his quail gun and not like Vinyl vigilante just looking for someone to shoot with his buckshot. Of course the fact that I have a sling with 10 rounds of 000 Buck and 10 of slugs attached to the gun might just ruin that charade.

Questions and support are welcome.

Criticism is not.

Fight high food prices; eat a treehugger

[tankerman]

Do what you want but if you are going to trust your life to it why not check it out yourself instead of listening to old wives tails and urban legends. I trust my 12 gauge with birdshot. It als has another benefit, you look like Harvey hunter defending his home with his quail gun and not like Vinyl vigilante just looking for someone to shoot with his buckshot. Of course the fact that I have a sling with 10 rounds of 000 Buck and 10 of slugs attached to the gun might just ruin that charade.

Questions and support are welcome.

Criticism is not.

You must be correct, your testing is the only "real scientific" data ever collected. All other testing by FBI, other LE, the Military and other professionals is "old wives tales".

I never knew Massad Ayoob was an "old wife"