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
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.
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