What makes hollow points deadly

Speer and Hydra-Shok hollowpoints have both long been employed by police departments across the country. This has made them very popular carry ammo for civilians. When it comes to hollow points, you need bullets that penetrate deep enough to create sufficient wounds but don't exit the target.

You also need those bullets to expand reliably, and by an appreciable amount. A 25 percent increase in diameter or more is good. Not every hollowpoint load does. Lead alloys and jacket design impact expansion greatly; some will expand more easily than others.

As a result, you want to select carry ammo that doesn't overpenetrate and reliably expands. Overpenetration can lead to ricochets or even striking people behind the target, and insufficient penetration can mean insufficient wounding. Reliable expansion creates larger wound channels but also ensures the round stays in the target, which is why police departments, hunters and concealed carriers use hollowpoints as defensive rounds.

Like reading this guide to hollowpoint ammunition? Want to get updates on when new content like this comes out from Bigfoot Gun Belts and other great articles from around the web? Head over to the Bigfoot Gun Belts Facebook page and hit the "like" button. You'll find us a lot more easily…. Hollow point ammunition is one category of bullets, but here's the thing: there are a lot more categories and types in different calibers.

If you want to learn more about bullets and ammunition, here's some content Bigfoot Gun Belts has published about various topics: A guide to federal and state ammunition laws The anatomy and contents of ammunition Three defense loads for concealed carry Whether or not ammo has a shelf life Is steel case ammunition any good? Six commonly overlooked handgun calibers. He resides in the great Inland Northwest, with his wife and child.

His varied interests and hobbies include camping, fishing, hunting, and spending time at the gun range as often as possible. Bigfoot Gun Belts. Post Comments. Elmo Butler posted on Mar 1, PM. I agree with the hollow points. Hollowpoint bullets have a deep dimple in the nose, a hollowed-out area on the front surface. When the hollowpoint bullet strikes a semi-solid object such as a human body , the dimple allows the bullet to expand, opening up almost like an umbrella or a parachute does.

Some hollowpoint bullets are also designed to fragment as they expand. As the hollowpoint bullet opens up, it makes a larger hole than a roundnose bullet of the same caliber would do. Hollowpoints that fragment produce extra wound channels to cause rapid blood loss. However, because each individual shot does more damage, hollowpoints are the safest option for use in self defense. How can this be? Three ways:.

Because each bullet does more damage, you can stop the attacker more quickly. At that long distance, the. Slow-motion videos of ballistics tests clearly illustrate this difference.

Watch the. Developed in the early s, the. The U. In the macabre world of terminal ballistics, the study of what happens when projectiles actually strike, much can be made of over-penetration: the phenomenon of bullets passing clean through their targets. Rifle rounds have an elongated, oblong shape and so they often tumble. When they strike, the bullets rotate, and more of their surface hits the body.

Bullets can also increase the surface area that transfers energy to targets by expanding, as in the case of hollow-point rounds. The wider bullet also creates a bigger cavity in whatever it passes through.

Hollow points also create a larger temporary cavity. The temporary cavity is the hole in the target that briefly expands after immediate impact, only to collapse a fraction of a second later. In one case study of a year-old man struck in the chest by a. Though the patient survived and only had a small wound, he suffered extensive contusions throughout his lungs.

Four ribs had essentially turned to dust. The damage was far too extensive. He died in our E. They are adequate for self defense purposes.

The usual bullet weights for 9mm Luger range from to grains. You can use them interchangeably. The goal is to point out that the gr. The safest choice for self-defense purposes is a hollow point round, regardless of the caliber. In short, for a given power factor, a will actually shoot softer than a , and the perceived recoil for most shooters will be an even greater, downward difference.