I have seen a lot of answers, that are telling that it has more damage area and it fits in auto loaders better. I accept the second one, but not the first. Imagine a 9mm hits a vest and… nothing, probably a couple of broken bones, even though it has a larger damage area. Then the person takes their gun and shoots you. Your shots were probably useless. But if that 9mm was pointy it would, depending on the vest, penetrate it and hit the person, severely damaging the person. You’re now safe. That’s my scenario. So why are low caliber bullets not pointy?
In: Engineering
Solid lead slugs are shaped for aerodynamics not for penetration and low caliber rounds are less subject to aerodynamic forces. A tapered slug will not penetrate a vest any more than a blunt slug. Armor piercing rounds require some harder material, for example steel cores – and there is a low key attempt to diminish civilian access to armor piercing handgun ammunition in general.
Pointy bullets are not really better for penetration. Collisions at those speeds work nothing like collisions you’re used to. A pointy tip squishes even easier than a blunt one. Lead and soft steel are like play doh at bullet speeds. If your opponent has a vest that can stop a bullet, the shape isn’t a huge deal.
If you want armor penetration, you need faster, harder, and longer projectiles. The 5.7 pistol cartridge was designed for this purpose, being a higher pressure smaller bullet. Hardened steel or tungsten core bullets are also an improvement. These still have the regular copper and lead body because it’s better for short range aerodynamics and will do more damage without armor, but the hardened core is much more capable of penetrating plate armor.
As for non-plate armor, energy is key. Hardness is somewhat less important but weight and speed are critical. Spitzer (pointy) rounds are lighter.
To add to the other comment, the shape of the bullet affects what happens when it hits you.
Many types of ammunition aim to stop inside the body for three reasons. First, the round often spreads out or fragments which causes more damage, second, the bullet stopping means all the energy has been transferred to the body (more damage) and finally it means that you’re less likely to hurt someone behind the thing you’re shooting. Rounds that do this are typically not pointy.
Firstly you use low caliber when you mean low energy. For example the 9mm pistol round is almost double the caliber of the 5.56mm caliber rifle rounds used in the M-16. But the later have three times the energy. The shape of the bullet is primarily to make it stable in flight and to reduce drag. In general the tip of the bullet is crushed on impact anyway. And confusingly round tips are better at penetrating hardened steel then pointed tips. The bullets are therefore shaped for the flight, not the impact. And air behaves differently for faster bullets then for slower. So a large slow 9mm is going to behave very different to a fast light 5.56mm bullet. Round noses tends to reduce friction with the air while pointed bullets have less shockwaves.
Another big difference is that the 9x19mm ammunition was designed before we really looked into the aerodynamics of supersonic bullets. Ammunition is updated with new bullet designs but they still needs to fit into the same guns and magazines, and the guns gets designed for the ammunition currently in circulation. With 9x19mm ammunition it is much better to have a heavy round nosed bullet then a lighter pointed nose bullet. If you make a pointed nose bullet with the same weight as the current ones it is not going to fit into the guns. This is however just a partial reason because there are more modern pistol ammunition which is still designed with rounded noses.
Caliber has nothing to do with it.
There are tons of pointed tip bullet options for .17 to .25 caliber cartridges.
The design of a bullet is more dependent on its intended function and use. Aero plays a huge role too, as a variable relating to powder charge and bullet mass.
Next, over-penetration is a thing. You’re concerned with under-penetration, but a bullet that goes clean through a target without enough internal disruption is almost as useless.
Hunting bullets, for example, are designed to penetrate fur and hide and then mushroom to cause catastrophic internal bleeding for a quick and humane kill.
You ask, why low caliber bullets aren’t pointy… I present to you that all of the traditional “elephant gun” safari calibers (typically greater than .37”) use round nose bullets. These are guns designed for piercing the armor-like hides of elephants and rhinos. And they use round nose bullets.
In other words, this is a totally false premise with no standing in reality.
I’m guessing you’re talking about rifle rounds versus pistol rounds (since there is a rounded tip pistol version of the .50cal). It really boils down to “intended use”:
1. **Distance**: Rifles cover larger distances with pointed projectiles for better aerodynamics and precision. A rounded tip would create more drag. (9mm effective range: 55 yards, 5.56: close to 1,000)
2. **Application**: Pointed rifle tips (**USUALLY**) cause less overall damage. Surprisingly, someone can survive a clean through-and-through if no major organs or arteries are hit. Pistol rounds with rounded tips aim for maximum close range damage, allowing for more accuracy flexibility. (Miss an organ, and the 9mm hollow point can still cause serious damage at 10 yards.)
Geometrically speaking, the peak volume to material ratio is a sphere. Meaning that in order to add a point to a low caliber round, you have to add material. Material has weight. Adding weight to the bullet means that you would need to add propellant (gunpowder) to maintain the same velocity. By keeping the bullets compact, you minimize the powder needed to achieve the desired velocity.
To expand on what the other guy said, shape doesn’t have much to do with penetration, more about cross sectional density, material density, deformation, and velocity. Things don’t behave the same at high velocities as they do at low velocities, like a knife would. To penetrate armor, you can make a bullet go really fast, be super dense and deformation resistant, or ideally some combination of both. Solid copper flat nosed projectiles have great penetration because they are relatively dense and don’t deform as much as lead on impact. Rounds like the 5.7 have high velocity and high cross sectional density. Most “armor penetrating” rifle rounds are going to be lead around a steel or tungsten penetrator that has high density.
Lower caliber rounds, especially defensive handgun rounds and small game hunting rounds, are often specifically designed to expand on contact with soft surfaces since that is what the target will most often be. You want all the rounds enegry to be transferred to the target, not just poke little holes in it.
If you are using your sidearm fighting people in body armor, something went wrong.
The short story is that there’s not really much point to trying to make handgun cartridges armor-piercing.
First, just as a point of clarification, “caliber” only refers to the diameter of the bullet, not its power. A 9x19mm cartridge (a very common pistol round) is actually higher caliber than, for example, 5.56x45mm (what a typical AR-type rifle fires), but the 9mm is far, far less powerful than the 5.56.
What we’re talking about here is more of a rifle vs. pistol cartridge comparison. When looking at rifle cartridges, most *do* have pointy bullets, in fact. However, unless it has a penetrator core, a pointy lead bullet isn’t going to be significantly better than a blunt lead bullet.
For pistol cartridges, they’re generally low-power enough that modern body armor doesn’t have any trouble defeating it (with few exceptions, like purpose-made armor-piercing cartridges).
Additionally, handguns are primarily used in non-military settings (police and civilian use, mainly), where facing an armored target is a lot less likely, so handgun cartridges that are designed for defensive use are generally designed for maximum effectiveness against unarmored people, and in that context, expanding hollow-point bullets are a lot more effective than a hardened armor-piercing bullet would be.
Plus, modern body armor can stop the vast majority of small-arms fire – only exceptionally high-powered or purpose-built armor-piercing cartridges can defeat a level IV plate, for example. Certainly nothing that can *reasonably* be fired out of a handgun (although I know there are some wacky exceptions)
> So why are low caliber bullets not pointy?
some actually are. 5.7x28mm (the standard cartridge for the FN p90) is even smaller than 9mm and it’s pointy.
you can find blunt nosed ammunition in large calibers, usually meant for big game.
in general, pointy ammunition is higher velocity. it needs to be more aerodynamic to stay accurate.
in handguns, the barrel doesn’t have enough length to let a high velocity round get up to speed before it’s out of the barrel. a stubby bullet is more massive for the same length, and gives the propellant more time to put its energy into the bullet.
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