New Target -- Door results

Two weekends ago, we finally took a truck door out to the range to test out. It was the same ’79 Ford truck door as described earlier. All of the shots took place at 25 yards or more. We placed the truck door with a slight forward cant, so that in theory the ricochets would be less likely to end up coming back at us.

Results:

.22 LR from a Ruger Mark I

We started off with the .22 pistol, as it seemed like that would be the least likely to penetrate, and therefore the most likely to ricochet. Given that it was an entirely metal door, and not a plastic door like you find in most cars these days, we were rather surprised at the penetration of even the little .22 LR round.

The “little round that could” entirely penetrated the front door skin, and made a hefty dent on the back skin. Recall that this is from a Ruger Mark I with 6” barrel from 25 yards. We didn’t have one at the time, but it would be interesting to see the difference once you pushed that same round out of a rifle.

Sledgehammer

I managed to talk my brother-in-law into smacking one of those “two hits for a dollar” cars when we went to an Arts & Crafts show back in Williamsburg, KS. While not a firearms-related event, most people have a passing acquaintance with the force of a sledgehammer, and it’s a lot easier to compare outcomes when you use an item that everyone actually understands. Of course you’re getting a much blunter strike, and it’s fairly easy to see in the video the shockwave that spreads out from each impact. I found it interesting that we didn’t even get a tear in the outer skin from the hammer. I’d guess that this is actually the type of trauma that car manufacturers actually plan for; this seems much closer to a side impact than any of the shooting tests we actually perform.

9mm, 38 Special, .40, .45 ACP, and .357 Magnum

All of these standard pistol rounds penetrated with no problem. As the videos show, each generally has a nice little whole in the front, and various size exit holes in the back. The most definitive seems to be the .357 Magnum, but given it’s the most powerful (in terms of pounds of force at that range), it wasn’t really a surprise.

See the various pistol videos

12 gauge shotgun with buckshot and slug

While the 12 gauge has been an undisputed champ in our tests so far, this was the first metal object we’ve really tested. The slug again performed as expected and left no question about penetration. The entry hole was actually bigger in diameter than a 12 gauge shell, and we could easily still wiggle it around.

The buckshot on the other hand was rather interesting. Generally, we got a good amount of penetration on the front skin, with a rather wide pattern. Remember, we’re still shooting from 25 yards, and from what I’ve read (see my review of The Tactical Shotgun), buckshot has an effective range out to 20 yards. So we’re getting a lot of spread (as you can see the entire door took strikes but there isn’t any area that’s easy to see as the focus). The back skin was heavily dented, but suffered only one or two penetrations. As stated in many a place, the effective use of the shotgun is heavily dependent on the round choice matching the situation.

.223 and .308

While widely different in size and power, for our purposes we’ll group the .223 Remington and .308 Winchester for this write-up. Again, both were fired from 25 yards. Neither round really slowed down on hitting the first skin. From the exit video on the .223, it’s apparent that the round started to tumble after hitting the first skin. That’s fairly interesting, in that none of the other rounds we shot that day exhibited that same behavior.

The .308 didn’t slow down on hitting the back skin and the shot is pretty much what you’d expect from that round at that range.

I’d say the tests proved worthwhile. Some things went as expected (.308) while others we’re a bit more interesting (.22 and buckshot). Of course, the complete set of videos is located over on www.stoppingpower.info.