Personal protection: Using a car as cover.

[Music] [Music] all right we're at one of our training facilities and we're talking about using a car as cover quite a few viewers have asked about this topic so here we are now this comes with a couple of things first forgive the redundancy but the explanation of the difference between cover and concealment concealment is protection from enemy view cover is protection from enemy fire another thing is some time ago I did a presentation comparing the difference in power of a cave platform versus a AR platform rifles and part of that was shooting a car and part of that process was shooting through two car doors and I found that both 556 NATO and 7.62 by 39 about half of the rounds I fired went through two car doors and still had enough power to go through multiple layers of 3/4 inch plywood the car doors could not be counted on to consistently stop those projectiles so if car doors won't stop 556 NATO or 7.62 by 39 we can infer that they also would not stop 7.62 NATO or 545 by 39 I also consider it axiomatic that car doors are not going to stop 300 Winchester Magnum 30.6 eight millimeter Remington Magnum 7 millimeter Remington Magnum 6 millimeter Remington Magnum 243 Winchester 30-30 the list goes on in short car doors cannot be counted on to consistently stop projectiles from serious rifle rounds so that brings us to three questions for today one being should you use a car as cover and I would say not if you have a viable alternative but the two big questions are one if car doors cannot consistently stop serious rifle rounds what kind of projectiles can they stop and the other question is are there parts of a car that are more bullet resistant than other parts of the car well I've got a couple of cars I have a few guns let's find out now what we've got here is our favorite target soda jugs and they're sitting on this cooler just to get them up to the right level and I'm going to shoot from the driver's side and I'll shoot from a distance of seven yards and we'll shoot through the trunk and the gun I'm going to start with is this Colt government model caliber 45 ACP and I've got it loaded with 230 grain Full Metal Jacket round nose I fired four shots and on the driver's side they all just went through the sheetmetal on the passenger side we see two went through the sheetmetal and went through our soda but two of these rounds hit it enough of an angle that the hit back here where there's several layers of metal and they were stopped so a car stopping a bullet has a lot to do with where the car gets hit now I'll set this up again and we'll do the same process again this time with the beretta 92fs caliber nine by nineteen and it's loaded with 115 grain full-metal-jacket round nose with the nine-millimeter I fired five rounds all five just hit the sheet metal and all five went through so our car is not faring very well but again the question is there anything a car can stop we'll all go back seven yards and I'll shoot the car with my Ruger Mark 3 caliber 22 long-rifle and I've got it loaded with CCI mini mag 40 grain copper wash round nose let's see if the car can stop this interesting results with our 22 the car stopped most of them you can see the hump here with a bullet almost went through and even the bullets that went through had very little power left only one penetrated a soda jug and the bullet was still in the first jug it had very little power left so it would appear a car fare is pretty well against a 22 and remember this was only 7 yards from a meaningful distance like fifty or a hundred yards the car would fare even better can we show you a close-up of this bullet and there's the bullet that was stuck in the soda jug after going through the car now we're on the driver's side of the car and here's our 45 or 9-millimeter on our 22 bullet holes but how will the car fare against shotgun projectiles now this is a Remington 870 with an 18 inch cylinder bore barrel and I've got it loaded with Remington 12-gauge two and three-quarter inch one in one quarter ounce of number six led birdshot and I'll shoot from 15 yards and let's see what happens well the birdshot was devastating to the paint job but none of those pellets went through the metal however a couple of them did go through this tire I can feel the air coming out it'll be flat soon enough but let's see how we do with buckshot now I've got the shotgun loaded with federal 12-gauge two and three-quarter inch double ought buck twelve pellet and again I'll shoot from 15 yards now this was double-aught buck 12 pellets when I shot this quarter panel that's 24 pellets and even though this was already compromised none of those pellets went through to the other side of the car now with the door this is again two shots and that's 24 pellets but the real story is on the inside of the door of the 24 pellets that hit the door only about 10 went through the door and somewhere in there the shock broke that window just the tape is holding that together but the real story is on the other side of the car now we see here the holes from our handgun projectiles but again none of those shot pellets went through and in the door none went through only one made a dent in it so it would appear that against shotguns a car can be fairly good cover now right now some of you are thinking what about the stuff that's inside a car door well the car door will have a reinforcing bar in it that will vary in location and size and shape depending on the car there's also window carriage in there some doors will have an electric motor to make your window up go up and down some will have a stereo speaker in there so with a car door it has a lot more to do with where you hit it than what you hit it with but as you saw on the other side of the car with 24 pellets of buckshot where we hit it was pretty much everywhere and it still stopped the pellets so although the car does not fare very well against rifles and pistols it would appear that against a shotgun it can be good cover so against birdshot and buckshot your car seems to do pretty well but what about a slug well we'll get back to annihilating the Toyota in a minute but for the slug demonstration I want to use this 2005 Dodge Neon and I've got my Remington 870 loaded with Winchester Super X 12-gauge 2 and 3/4 inch 1 ounce rifled slug and I'll shoot this door from 15 yards [Applause] now I didn't put any target behind the car because I figure anything that can make a hole that big still has plenty of power to do a lot of damage to you but I fired six shots and only three of the slugs actually went through oh when none of them hit this window just the concussion broke it so let's see our car doors fare against a handgun I'll shoot from seven yards through the driver's door and we'll see if the projectiles will pass through the front passenger door into our soda jugs the handgun I'm going to use is a Sig Sauer model p229 caliber 40 Smith and Wesson and the ammunition is winchester Ranger T 40 Smith & Wesson 180 grain jacketed hollow point a viewer sent me this and asked me to test it so here we are also with the Ranger T questions came up about its role as a law enforcement ammunition so its ability to shoot through a car door may be relevant and I'll try to spread the shots in the driver's door out to account for the variables inside the door let's see how we do now fire 13 shots and as you can see I tried to spread them out you also saw that only three went through now let's see how our nine-millimeter does this is loaded with winchester Ranger T nine by nineteen 147 grain jacketed hollow point 147 grain projectiles fairly heavy for a 9-millimeter and this ammunition is supposed to be good for barrier penetration let's see how it does against the barrier of the car door so with the 40 I fired 13 shots and three went through with a 9-millimeter I fired 15 shots and four went through so about the same percentage now considering on a previous presentation was shot the meet target with the winchester ranger t9 by 1947 grain jacketed hollow point and it's performance was unimpressive would you really say that its performance in this card or makes up for that enough to make it worth carrying you be the judge now there's no question that the part of most vehicles that is going to give you the greatest bullet resistance is behind the engine compartment so we've got our soda jugs set up I'll go to the other side of the car shoot through the engine compartment and see how we do also some of you may have noticed that we've changed camera angles that's because we're dealing with something called glare it's a rare phenomena that occurs almost very few occasions when I can see the Sun now it's been said that it's all fun and games until someone pulls out an m16 or in this case a colt ar-15 a2 and I've got this loaded with 556 NATO 62-grain steel core penetrators so I'll shoot from 30 yards and I'll shoot through the engine compartment and see how we do and there you have it 25 rounds of steel core penetrator and none went through so the questions we asked at the beginning should you use a car as cover if you can get behind the right part of it maybe and the two big questions what kind of projectiles can a car really stop well it looks like 22 and most shotgun projectiles pretty consistently and are there parts of a car that are more bullet resistant than other parts absolutely yes so bottom line if you have to use a car as cover if at all possible get behind the engine compartment and you should be in pretty good shape so as always don't try this at home on what you call a professional and thanks for watching the car as cover video [Music]

Channel: Paul Harrell

Views: 2,537,999

Rating: 4.9176764 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 6qXwdBOZzpY

Length: 11min 54sec (714 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 28 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Rhesusmonkeydave]

Nelson:”That’s my dad’s shooting car, just three more payments and its ours!”

[u/95688it]

this guy is really good at speaking.

[u/Narwahl_Whisperer]

When I see police use doors as cover, the door is ajar, so that their adversary would be shooting the door at something like a 45 degree angle.

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In the video, all shots are direct, 90 degree angles from the metal.

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I'd like to see the difference if it was a 45 degree angle. There's a chance that it offers a little more protection that way. Real world example: have you ever tried to drive a nail in at an angle? It's much harder to penetrate vs a 90 degree insertion.

[u/anachronistic_sofa]

This information is very relevant to my daily life.

[u/PurposelyIrrelephant]

I think this is a pretty dam good video that demonstrates the power of solid cover against nearly any type of small arms fire. Cars at close range are not going to be reliable at stopping anything better than .22 caliber fire at close range. Unless you have some sort of reinforced plating inside your vehicles car door, you're far better off trying to find a building to take cover in.

Edit: plz don't mishear me tho. A car is far better cover than nothing at all

[u/Dschmidt8]

Most people dont try to shoot through a car at someone. Look on youtube.

[u/WalnutEnthusiast]

Paul Harrell is a great guy and makes some excellent and informative videos. Glad to see him getting some love on here.

[u/[deleted]]

what about an Uzi 9 milimitah

[u/IloveblinkingIdo]

He has such a fascinating and precise way of speaking "We shot the meat target with the WinchesterRangerTninebynineOneFourSevenGrainJacketHollowpoint and it's performance was.......... unimpressive."