I won’t claim high confidence on this, but the overpenetration thing sounds wrong to me. I thought the chambering for AR-15s was naturally FMJ and piercing to some degree. Meanwhile, buckshot from a shotgun splits into many lighter projectiles that would stop at the first soft layer.
I even remember a talk from COD developers where they admitted the loud, powerful boom of a shotgun would make you think it’d go straight through walls, so they coded the game that way even though the buckshot would stop early.
Check out theboxotruth.com. They’ve tested all sorts of ammunition against all sorts of barriers.
Rifle bullets are relatively small, lightweight, and fast. When they impact building materials, they tend to shatter. They’re dangerous on the other side of the first wall, but they’ll lose a lot more energy a lot faster.
Pistol bullets, buckshot, slugs, etc are relatively large, heavy, and slow. They tend to remain intact and carry more energy through multiple walls.
A lot of law enforcement agencies switched their long guns from pistol-caliber carbines to 5.56 rifles specifically because they over penetrate less.
55gr FMJ BT–which is pretty much the most common .223 ammunition–tends to fragment pretty dramatically inside about 300y after hitting something solid. Once it hits something solid, it starts tumbling and tears itself apart pretty fast, in part because it’s moving at supersonic speeds. That’s part of the reason why it’s so lethal at short ranges; it’s turning into a lot of small fragments… (That, and the cavitation that is produced by bullets moving >2600fps; that will produce a temporary wound cavity that exceeds the elasticity of tissue, and turns into a permanent wound cavity. The cavitation produced by subsonic bullets isn’t great enough to turn into a permanent wound channel.) At subsonic speeds, it doesn’t fragment, and just ‘ice picks’. A shotgun with birdshot would definitely not over penetrate, but then you run the risk of not being adequately lethal on your target. Buckshot is still going to penetrate exterior walls pretty handily without being deformed significantly or fragmenting, even if a lot of the energy has been eaten up by a house’s cladding; it might not kill easily, but it can still wound. But then you’re back to the original problem: large/long firearm, heavy recoil, very limited ammunition in a tube magazine, and slow to reload.
I won’t claim high confidence on this, but the overpenetration thing sounds wrong to me. I thought the chambering for AR-15s was naturally FMJ and piercing to some degree. Meanwhile, buckshot from a shotgun splits into many lighter projectiles that would stop at the first soft layer.
I even remember a talk from COD developers where they admitted the loud, powerful boom of a shotgun would make you think it’d go straight through walls, so they coded the game that way even though the buckshot would stop early.
Check out theboxotruth.com. They’ve tested all sorts of ammunition against all sorts of barriers.
Rifle bullets are relatively small, lightweight, and fast. When they impact building materials, they tend to shatter. They’re dangerous on the other side of the first wall, but they’ll lose a lot more energy a lot faster.
Pistol bullets, buckshot, slugs, etc are relatively large, heavy, and slow. They tend to remain intact and carry more energy through multiple walls.
A lot of law enforcement agencies switched their long guns from pistol-caliber carbines to 5.56 rifles specifically because they over penetrate less.
55gr FMJ BT–which is pretty much the most common .223 ammunition–tends to fragment pretty dramatically inside about 300y after hitting something solid. Once it hits something solid, it starts tumbling and tears itself apart pretty fast, in part because it’s moving at supersonic speeds. That’s part of the reason why it’s so lethal at short ranges; it’s turning into a lot of small fragments… (That, and the cavitation that is produced by bullets moving >2600fps; that will produce a temporary wound cavity that exceeds the elasticity of tissue, and turns into a permanent wound cavity. The cavitation produced by subsonic bullets isn’t great enough to turn into a permanent wound channel.) At subsonic speeds, it doesn’t fragment, and just ‘ice picks’. A shotgun with birdshot would definitely not over penetrate, but then you run the risk of not being adequately lethal on your target. Buckshot is still going to penetrate exterior walls pretty handily without being deformed significantly or fragmenting, even if a lot of the energy has been eaten up by a house’s cladding; it might not kill easily, but it can still wound. But then you’re back to the original problem: large/long firearm, heavy recoil, very limited ammunition in a tube magazine, and slow to reload.