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
Pistol ammunition is limited in length by what can fit in the handle of the gun. So the bullets have typically higher diameters but are shorter than rifle ammunition.
Kinetic energy is mass * (velocity) ^2 To get high velocity you need large chamber pressure but that requires a thicker and stronger material. The result is most pistol calibers have heavier bullets than rifle calibers that have higher speeds. A ponty buller can require different shape feeding mechanisms to get it in the right position when loaded
If you make a 9mm bullet pointy is will be smaller and lighter and have less kinetic energy, there is a pressure limit in what guns are designed for
Pointy bullets often called spitzer bullets are designed to reduce air resistance and therefore range not to penetrate what they hit better.
Terminal ballistics is how a bullet behaves when it hits the target. You want the bullet to transfer all energy to the target, which means stopping. To do that a bullet needs to expand and deform. If it is hade and does not deform it likely passes through the target without transferring all energy that does less damage. Bullets are intentionally designed to expand to transfer more energy unless the are made for military usage where that is not allowed.
Bullets that stop on the target and do not pass through them have the advantage there is less risk of damaging someone behind them. This includes behind the wall. So for police and civilian usage low penetration is a good idea.
For armor penetration, the material is more important than the shape. Bullets typically have an outer thin copper layer and an internal lead filling, So it is quite soft. You want harder metal like steel to penetrate amour. You can put it inside the softer lead so you both have some part that deform to transfer more energy and to penetrate the armour
So bullet design is a compromise between what they do against a target with no armor versus a target with armor. The common 9mm Parabellum was designed in 1901 when body armor wasn’t a thing. The pressure you can have with metallurgy of the time was not as high as today.
There are more modern pistol calibers like FN 5.7×28mm that have a smaller bullet diameter that is pointed and travel at higher speed with similar kinetic energy. It is most known for its use in the FN P90 PWD but also the FN Five-seven pistol. Both weapons and the caliber were designed on a NATO request to replace 9mm parabellum for troops behind the frontline so they have weapons that could penetrate Soviet body armor used by paratroopers and other units that units behind the frontline could run into.
The trial of it and weapons based on HK 4.6×30mm was conducted in 2002 a lot of time after the required in large part because the Cold War ended. There has not been a need for weapons like in military units and the adoption like is was intended has been quite limited. The drawback of both is with armor-penetrating ammunition they do less damage on targets that do not have armor.
In practice, most of the time guns need to penetrate body armor rifles and carbines will be used. It is a simple solution then to adopt a pistol caliber that can do that. One of the main limitations of pistols is that the practical accuracy is a lot lower than rifles. The range is also quite limited.
You’re having trouble accepting it because, as your vest example shows, you’re assuming that the ability to penetrate personal protection is always preferred or at least relevant. Most targets outside the military will not be wearing any such thing.
Why are you hanging up on body armor?
First, it’s pretty rare to hear of a crackhead busting into your house to steal your social security cards wearing a vest. The vast majority of these large-caliber handguns (in America, anyhow) are in the hands of civilians seeking self-defense. It’s all but unheard of for us to need self-defense against someone wearing body armor.
Second, you definitely don’t want to risk overpenetrating a target. EVERYTHING that bullet hits, is the responsibility of whoever fired it. “But I was shooting at the criminal!” Yup. And your shot domed little Tiffany, so you’ll be lucky if you don’t go to prison before her family sues the shit out of you. SHE WAS A GIRL SCOUT, you fucking MONSTER!
Third, see everyone else’s points about the Admiral-General Aladeen pointy-versus-rounded thing. https://youtu.be/vV30irsal-w?si=zJ_ufJofjMnJzEne That’s you, with the beard and the uniform. I’m the fat guy in the labcoat in the back- you know what? Let’s just move on.
Designing a cartridge is tricky business. Usually you want the bullet to hit at a certain velocity, so it’s the gun’s problem to have the right barrel length to get it there for the range you want, and to apply the right twist (I mean, SMOOTHBORE?! What is this, a TANK?! Pfft!) to stabilize it and blah blah. But that bullet needs to act right. The gun gets it to the target with the right velocity, and now we need one half the mass times the velocity squared, right? If that bullet pops out the back of its target, even just at paper airplane speed now, then there was energy unnecessarily expended to do that. And there’s poor little Tiffany. SHE OVERCAME DYSLEXIA you BRUTE!
Unless…
Poor little Tiffany might be up to some shit.
You know what? You go on with your pointy bullets.
The short and simplified answer is that at low muzzle speeds you have to make up for the lack of momentum with size and weight to maintain decent stopping power. A slow pointy bullet won’t do that much more penetration and with small handguns the assumption is that you’re shooting at unarmored targets and you want to do a decent amount of damage. A chode bullet that breaks apart inside the target does more damage than a small dart which might just pass through.
you wouldn’t necessarily use a low caliber weapon if you need to pierce armor. The first answer is basically the correct one. lower caliber bullets are generally for close range and a blunted round transfers energy to the target better. and you can have a heavier round in the same “size” as a pointed one. a pointed bullet at close range would possibly just go straight through with a clean entry/exit and not necessarily do what you need it to do……which is stop whatever it is you are shooting.
the more pointed a round is (assuming fired from the same weapon) the shorter the casing has to be……ie, less powder.
rifle rounds need to carry velocity over longer distances, which being pointed helps. and when we’re talking about rounds in assault rifles, they also need to pierce armor. a standard 5.56 round is going like 3x as fast as a standard 9mm.
You COULD load a 5.56 with a heavier bullet that goes around the same speed as a 9mm if you were doing some CQC type of stuff where you needed close range stopping power, but different bullets and guns are designed for different types of engagements.
Besides what others said, if your goal is stopping someone you don’t want the bullet to be too piercing.
A piercing bullet will get straight trough someones body and keep flying afterwards, thus lot of kinetic energy is still in the bullet when it exits the body. Unless it hits a vital organ /brain, upper spine, major vessels, major airways) you won’t be immediately unconcious and thus able to respond.
A normal bullet will stop in your body, thus 100% of the kinetic energy of the bullet has been applied to your body. Hollow point bullets are actually designed exactly for this, the bullet opens up like a blooming flower on impact, making sure it doesn’t pierce trough.
Latest Answers