The Very Real Danger of Over-Penetrating Bullets
Bullets Do Pass Through and Hit Others
This 147-grain 9mm Speer G2 ammo was designed to deliver maximum impact without exiting the body of the offender to endanger unseen innocents behind.
One canard you’ve seen in print in the gun press and on the Internet is, “Don’t worry about over-penetrating bullets going through your attacker and striking an innocent bystander. A missed shot going at full velocity is a lot more dangerous.” That’s like saying, “Don’t worry about herpes; AIDS is much more dangerous.”
If you have a three-digit IQ and common sense, you don’t want either thing to befall you!
Many who tell you over-penetration doesn’t matter will say, “If there’s someone behind the bad guy, just don’t shoot.” They haven’t thought things out in the total dimension of gunfight reality. Why are you shooting at this person at all? He is an immediate threat to your life and everyone on your side of the fight.
In the principle of the Doctrine of Competing Harms, sometimes known as The Doctrine of Necessity or the Doctrine of Two Evils, the danger his wanton, murderous gunfire presents to you and those near you exceeds the danger your hopefully trained and disciplined defensive gunfire presents to anyone behind him. The tunnel vision research of Dr. Alexis Artwohl impacts more than half of defenders. The opponent may be so large and close that he physically blocks your view of anything behind him. It’s shoot or die, your choice, even though circumstances are such that you can’t fulfill Rule Four of Firearms Safety and “Be sure of your target and what’s behind it.”
If you’re one of those who have confused the rule of hunting (through and through shots are desirable) with responsible use of deadly force in self-defense, you have a problem. The very rules of firearms safety demand that the bullet stays in the backstop — in this case, the body of the violent offender.
Bullets designed to “mushroom” also have a “parachute” effect that slows them down, hopefully keeping them in the body of the criminal.
On Point
Those who emphasize deep penetration often cite the work of the late wound ballistics expert Dr. Martin Fackler. When I met Dr. Fackler 30-some years ago, he had two diagrams on the wall. Each featured the approximately 30″ trajectory of an FMJ pistol bullet. One was superimposed over a Bad Guy in a dueling stance aiming a pistol at the Good Guy, whose bullet strikes the Bad Guy’s gun hand and travels all the way up his arm and into his chest to the heart. The other had three men standing in a row, and the same bullet went through the chests of two of them and into the chest of the third, showing that even Fackler, the strongest proponent of deep penetration, recognized the possibility of a bad outcome with the wrong ammo.On Point
Documented Cases
Advocates of hardball and other deep penetrators often say, “Show me a case where it went through the Bad Guy and hit a Good Guy.” OK. September 2024, Detroit: The initial aggressor draws a gun, and an armed citizen outdraws him and shoots him in the head. The bullet passes completely through his head and strikes the head of an innocent bystander. Both men die of the headshots. The shooter is cleared on the principle that a shot responsibly fired in good faith should be treated as if it struck only the lawfully intended target. I’ve seen commentators say, “So what? He didn’t get charged.” That soulless thinking ignores the grief of the innocent victim’s family, the lifelong guilt trip for the man who pulled the trigger, and the possibility of a massive lawsuit.
For a bigger picture, look at how NYPD finally got hollow points in the late 1990s after decades of the union and the Firearms Training Unit begging for them. Clueless politicians and media had made hollow points an avatar of police brutality, and one top cop had famously said, “I’m not going to be the commissioner who gave New York cops dum-dum bullets.” That all changed when the New York Times published an NYPD study that included this: “According to statistics released by the department, 15 innocent bystanders were struck by police officers using FMJ bullets during 1995 and 1996, the police said. Eight were hit directly, five were hit by bullets that had passed through other people, and two were hit by bullets that had passed through objects.” The report also noted, “In that same period, 44 police officers were struck by police gunfire using the old ammunition: 21 were hit directly, two were struck by bullets that ricocheted, and 17 were struck by bullets that passed through other people.”
Wait, who just thought, “That’s cops; it’s not relevant to me, an armed citizen?” Suppose you are grappling with a home invader. He has you down and is on top of you, trying to stab you. As you fire into him, his body physically blocks your view of a loved one, your spouse or eldest child, who is running in to pull him off you.
If that was a deep-penetrating hardball round, when you see what you’ve done, you may want the next bullet for yourself.
