If I load my gun with armour piercing cartridges, will I achieve better penetration?
Getting your hands on armor piercing rounds may be problematic. What in the world do you need that kind of penetration for? Defeating body armor and perhaps automobile doors is about the only thing that comes to mind and unless you are in law enforcement you really don’t need to worry about doing that. A typical handgun fired at 7 yards will penetrate to various depths in 10% ordnance gelatin. The diameter of the bullet, the velocity and how much it expands once it enters the media will all be factors. Ball ammunition tends to be the hands down winner for penetration in a given caliber simply because it does not expand and has less frontal area and therefore less resistance. Armor piercing ammo typically has a steel core that doesn’t expand at all, and since the bullet is lighter than a lead bullet it leaves the barrel at a higher velocity. Without the weight it doesn’t have the ability to retain that velocity over any real distance however so its ability to penetrate is limited to sho
