Frangible ammo for self defense?

Good choice if you live in a place with thin walls and don't want to kill someone in the next room or even next door.

And they will f**k someone up really bad. When it hits them it will shatter into a couple of hundred pieces and they WILL have to have serious medical help. If they were ineffective then the Air Marshals and pilots would not be using them.

It always fascinates me when people go on and on endlessly about demanding a one shot kill capability, blah blah blah. They split hairs over performance, weight, ballistics, etc.

They don't know what they are talking about. All the data shows they will likely miss with every shot. Also I am unaware of one single instance where a criminal stopped in the middle of a gun fight to ask the guy who was shooting at him what kind of gun he was using, what caliber it was and what type of ammo he was trying to kill him with.

While a bad guy may be willing to kill you while robbing you as easily as we kill a fly he is not as willing to die himself. You start shooting at them and they will have one goal and one goal only....get the hell away from the guy shooting at them. If this means jumping out of a 2nd story window or crashing through a closed door then that is what they will do. Often as not, failing to hit the guy and having them run away may be more preferable than dealing with the aftermath of shooting and killing someone. That is NOT to say you shoot to scare. No. You shoot to kill. If you miss and they run away then ultimately you have triumphed. You ended the confrontation quickly. If you do happen to nail the POS then it may be just an added bonus.

I have mixed feelings about this. Conventional wisdom says its dumb. Frang. ammo does not give enough penetration to reach the vitals of the target. And this is correct to a certain degree. There are some specialized frangible munitions out there that have taken this into consideration and will hold together longer before breaking up - thereby penetrating into vital areas (heart/lungs).

The Glaser Silver or Blue Tip are two of the cartridges. The Blue tip penetrates five to seven inches in International Ballistic Wound Association protocol testing, while the Silver penetrates eight to ten inches in the IWBA testing protocol.

From personal experiments Speer .357 SIG Frangible ammo will penetrate quite a way into soft wood before it "crumbles" apart. I know wood isn't a good representative for tissue and bone but it enlightened me in my view of Frang. ammo.

However, In general I am opposed to Frangible ammunition for self defense.

Frangible ammo has two really good points. One, they don't ricochet since they break apart when hitting a hard surface. Two, they do not generally penetrate walls. That is a nice advantage when shooting at the bad guy in the house. The disadvantage is the high cost of the ammo and the fact that it does not penetrate a well as a hollow point.

I do not trust the ammo enough to bet my life on it. I will stick to my hollow points for a while longer.

The Glaser Safety Slug is the best frangible projectile for home defense. I don't know of a target round designed to break up on impact, but a company named Extreme Shock makes a defensive cartridge called an Air Freedom Round that (allegedly) breaks up on hard impact. From their web site:

"...the Extreme Shock AFR round will turn to harmless powder if it misses its intended target and hits a hard surface."

Buyer beware.

Not a good idea. Most will not cycle reliably in autos. If you *do* shoot someone, you'll find yourself in court defending your choice of using such an "inhumane" round, and it'll cost you at least $100,000 to defend yourself.

Find a good commercial hollow point- ideally a round designed for law enforcement use- that feeds reliably in your gun, practice regularly, and stay away from the high-tech stuff. Despite all the debate about stopping power and expansion and what-not, most shots fired in gunfights miss. Actually hitting your target is more important that what kind of bullet you're using.

Personally, its the best ammo you canuse for self defense. Anyone who questions that doesn't know what they are talking about. Check out the Extreme Shock website (www.extremeshockusa.com) and tell me how it isn't effective. Also, try looking it up on youtube and I bet you will like what you see. I use the ES .45 ACP in my carry gun/home defense gun and wouldn't use anything else.

Dumb. It won't knock down as fast or penetrate as well.