Stopping Power of .380 ACP

there's a lot of preconceived ideas about out there about how the 380 acp bullet is not powerful enough hello everyone and welcome back to ammomart.com before we begin i'd like to thank everyone that's been supporting the channel lately our views are way up especially around the 40 smith and wesson stopping power and i want everybody to know how much we appreciate that a few videos ago we did a history of the 380 acp caliber and then we talked about it as a concealed carry piece today we're going to put the 380 acp caliber to the test out of my sig p230sl which looks remarkably like a walther ppk very concealable and a very popular handgun in the 380 acp what we're going to begin with today and then move on to some gelatin testing is a mag dump as you recall we've been timing out how long it takes me to work through a magazine so let's see how quickly we can do that compared to the 40. i would like to remind our viewers who may not be super familiar with the 380 acp that it does actually have more recoil than some people sort of advertise it does i hear a lot of people go get a 380 it doesn't kick at all it actually does very controllable with exposure and training but it's definitely not a 22. so let's give it a try and see what we get so here we go magdump seven rounds 380 acp okay lots of fun as we discussed today we're going to put the 380 acp caliber through its paces using the fbi protocol and gelatin testing so what you have with that protocol is from the muzzle 10 feet away ballistic gelatin they use ten percent we're using fifteen percent and if you've watched our videos in the past we've already explained why which was we didn't find a very discernible difference between the two we will be using some standard ball rounds that are 95 grain as well as 95 grain jacketed hollow points some from winchester and some from spear bearing in mind this is not a bullet comparison i'm just kind of curious to see between manufacturers how much weight retention they'll be and potential penetration as we talk about penetration the fbi standard called for a minimum of 12 inches of penetration and not more than 18 simulating over penetration would have a negative characteristic at least in their view three rounds 95 grain standard ammunition and i would try to keep them across the top face and we do read our viewers comments and somebody had a suggestion which was to get more in line with the ballistic gelatin perhaps using a chair i'm not going to sit down but i do think that's a good idea and we do appreciate your comments okay i'm gonna remove the magazine this particular weapon doesn't have a safety but magazine removed and the slide is locked open if we travel downrange here these are in fact 16 inch ballistic gelatin blocks clear so you can get a good view of what's going on you have one sort of just barely all the way into the second block and you have of course the ball round that's a little farther and this is really cool for our viewers at home if i split this a bit you can see the one is exactly pinned between the two ballistic blocks and they did retain their shape which is what you would expect from a ball round now let's load up some hollow point and see what the differences are the first one we'll be using is spear gold dot as i said and then followed by two winchester rounds try to get level here come down on the block weapons safe remove the mag so this will be one for the tape measure for sure because as we stated the fbi demanded at least 12 inches of penetration and it certainly does not look like at least in 15 gelatin that we have 12. it looks more like somewhere around 8 to 10 here and maybe 12 here but we'll have to get out the tape measure to be sure when we get them back home but you did notice there is a remarkable difference between the three bullets you have two that look very very mushroomed very aggressive which is what you would want and the other one looks like if it is in fact the spear gold dot which obviously i can't tell until i dig it out it looked like it did as well but not near as well as the winchester one of the reasons why we were really interested in doing this video today was there's a lot of preconceived ideas about out there about how the 380 acp bullet is not powerful enough and if you catch the first two videos there's a lot of studies that suggest it does very well in ending one round fights possibly because it doesn't over penetrate but i don't have any scientific data to back up why it is so good in one round fights i have my work cut out for me for the rest of the video because we're going to move at the 50 meter line 164 feet and see if i can't put a ball around and hopefully a jacketed hollow point into the ballistic gelatin and see how far they penetrate at that range so difficult test before me today i'm going to use the sig p230 downrange we have 50 meters 164 feet one of my magazines i have jacketed hollow points the other ones some ball rounds now no guarantees at this distance but i'll do my best so matt our videographer and spotter tells me i might be a little over the top of the target so i'm going to try to aim a little lower see what happens my spotter tells me we do have one hit thank goodness very challenging at this distance with this gun so now i'm going to switch to ball rounds and hopefully we can do the same thing so now one of the challenges when you switch ammunition things change so point of aim speed all of that comes into factor so i'm going to try to go to roughly the same spot and hopefully we'll get a good result let's go downrange and see what we get so one of the things that continued from the nine millimeter and 40 smith and wesson testing at this range has been at least the way i grip the gun sight the gun and with the way apparently my eyes work i'm actually aiming roughly here the first time a bullet contacted the ballistic gelatin you can sort of see how it skimmed the top and that's what happened when i sort of cut the block that particular weapon has what's called a lollipop sighting system which is stick on the bottom and circle on the top and the gun's fairly accurate but shockingly enough as you start to experiment and our videographer and spotter matt does a good job of steering me onto the target if at least for me you tried to do that you're over the top so when you'll notice we had more hits three hits actually out of the series like we said this one was a skimmer we have this one this one and this is one of the jacketed hollow points that made contact so what's interesting is you have roughly the same penetration maybe by an inch shorter at 50 meters that you did at 10 feet i find that interesting as well as your aiming points so you hear all the time your instinct would be to lift the sight over the target for the drop especially for a handgun round but for me once again i'm clear down here now certainly using a ball round 380 acp at 50 meters would be considered lethal according to military standards which is where as we discussed they tested the nine millimeter luger had to be deadly at 50 meters guess what boys and girls the 380 acp is as well and you would certainly expect that for a case that's only two millimeters shorter now anecdotally we'll have to analyze how far penetration we actually got not only here but at the 10 foot range my experience is awfully effective little handgun caliber especially in a quality gun challenging test in the now traditional ending to a lot of our shooting videos we're going to take out our weekly angst on some poultry i would like to thank the provider of the ammunition which has been the buffalo cartridge company here in findlay ohio they make a great product and as you can tell i actually recorded the most hits with their manufactured ammo as compared to the jacketed hollow points which could be me for sure especially at that distance but i must tell you for a home grown company and not one of the big boys pretty good product back to weekly angst and poultry huh you

Channel: AmmoMart

Views: 710,858

Keywords: ammomart, firearms, findlay OH, ammunition, sig sauer p230 sl, stopping power of 380 acp, stopping power of .380 acp, how fast can you fire a concealed carry .380, speer gold dot, buffalo cartridge company, winchester pdx1 defender, .380 acp, 380 acp

Id: LePn4zxErec

Length: 12min 10sec (730 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 21 2022