Ok, so I hear people saying "ban armor piercing rounds! They kill police! They're very dangerous" etc. and it makes me wonder.

Even I have to admit that it sounds a little absurd when people fight for the right to own them, though such a right does certainley exist. So I sometimes have a hard time rationalizing keeping them legal.

But then I got to thinking.

Aside from the emotional weight that comes with the ability to "PIERCE ARMOR!!!!!!!!!111ONEONEONE" are AP rounds really that much more powerful than regular ones? I mean, there's only so much you can do to a bullet, right?

How much more likely are they to "pierce police armor" than regular or FMJ rounds? Certainley sabot shells or depleted uranium slugs would be much more likely to do so, but, for all practical purposes, is 7.62X39mm AP really that much more deadly than your run of the mill 7.62X39mm round? I was under the impresssion that any bullet can defeat body armor, so is there any merit to the controversy about AP ammo (aside from politicians, the media, and concerned parents all being morons)?

If anything, wouldn't the increased penetration power would make such rounds less lethal when fired at soft targets?

Are they at all practical for home defense? I'm not saying we should ban them or anything of the sort, but wouldn't there be superior alternatives for non-military applications?



I guess I don't really know much about the art of piercing the shells of tyrants, so please, TOTSE, enlighten me.

high velocity rifle ammo will pierce a pistol rated vest anyway. It pointless.

The whole "armor piercing" red herring is just another example of gun grabber incrementalism. Any bullet can be "armor piercing". The strategy here is to first go after more exotic rounds like the .50 cals because they're "armor piercing", eventually moving onto hunting rounds and finally pistol rounds.

Yeh, they want to ban ammunition designed to expand, because those are very dangerous, they are designed to kill people! And they also want to ban bullets designed to not expand, for the exact same reasons!

Of course it's more deadly.

It'll go through like 15 more babies than regular FMJ ammo.

It's already been pretty much answered, but I'll weigh in anyway.

All ammunition could be said to be "armor piercing" as anything with enough velocity to leave the barrel is capable of piercing some kind of armor (if the armor is thin enough).

Generally, the faster a round gets going and the better its sectional density (the relationship between the weight of the projectile and its diameter), the more armor it will be able to pierce.

Purpose-designed AP ammo usually contains a hard metal penetrator core, such as steel or tungsten, to allow it to pierce harder or thicker materials without deforming or coming apart like copper or lead would. An exception to this are the solid brass Arcane handgun bullets that were lubricated with teflon to prevent excessive wear on the rifling. This, BTW, is what kicked off the "OMG! Teflon bullets can go through armor" legend.

As noted above, most body armor will not stop a centerfire rifle bullet unless it has solid plates of ceramic or metal in it. And even then, there are rifle cartridges that will go right through those too, AP bullets or not.

The big stink over AP rounds is not that it makes weapons that could already defeat armor somehow more deadly, it's that AP rounds give small, easily concealed weapons that were formerly marginal armor defeaters (such as handguns) the increased capability to do so.

Head over to that box-of-truth site, they set up three level IIIa vests at either 100 or 200y (i forget which) and a .308 shooting 168gr Matchkings went completely through 2 of them, including the ceramic plates, and was stopped half way through the third one .

Personally i don't have a problem with stopping civilian AP sales, really what the hell are you going to use them for anyway?

^ It's not just cops who wear body armor.

For instance: what if I'm out hunting and run into a kevlar-clad deer... or a bear in a Brinks truck... or 50 Cent?

Defending myself from agents of the State, if necessary.

You know, its that kind of mentality that allows people (i'm not going to list off the scumbags one by one) to get into a position to take stuff from us in the first place. You say we don't really need AP ammo. Well thats fine, you can think that all you want, but once that gets banned, the people who banned it just move on to something else. Eventually we will have nothing left. Everything pertaining to guns rights is closely connected. If one area falls the rest could easily go with it.