Thoughts on HPR ammo for self defense?

[vito]

I read about HPR in a small article in the NRA magazine First Freedom but know nothing about them. The idea of totally frangible rounds seems to make sense and wondered about buying some of their ammo for concealed carry and/or home defense. Anyone familiar with this ammo and have some thoughts?

 

[Iron Mike Golf]

There's frangible and there's frangible. That type of ammo was developed to reduce ricochet hazards in urban training scenarios (room clearing in cinder block house type ranges). That type needs to hit something hard to break the projectile up. There are occasional stoppages from rounds breaking up during the feed cycle (nose hitting feed ramp, etc).

It looks like the HPR offering has a core that breaks up easier and is held together with a copper jacket. Watched a video of 9,, from a 4 inch barrel through 4 layers of denim into clear gelatin. Most damage was very shallow, less than 2 inches. The fragments that penetrated were quite small. Looked to me less than half a dozen fragments penetrated beyond 3 or 4 inches.

 

[OldePhart]

My personal feel is that frangible is not the way to go unless you are anticipating a situation where you don't want to penetrate walls, have ricochets, that sort of thing. If you live in an apartment that might well be a valid concern...I'd feel pretty bad if I was shooting at an intruder and took out a neighbor in the next unit...of course for home defense my preference is a shotgun anyway.

I can remember twenty or thirty years ago frangible ammo was the "big new kid on the block" and all the rage because "it uses up all it's energy in the target and cuts lots of wound channels" - time has proven that scenario really doesn't work great in a typical defensive case. Yes...it's very likely that a frangible round might (eventually) kill your attacker but the problem is that it isn't so good at very quickly disabling him. In fact, these days bullet manufacturers put a LOT of effort into ensuring that their bullets expand without fragmenting...because every fragment that brakes off carries away energy without making as good a use of it.

Frangible rounds might actually be more likely to cause death. I'm not sure of this, nor if studies have been done. It would seem that the wounds from a frangible round could be more difficult to treat meaning eventual death might be more probable. However, the ultimate death of the attacker is not the goal...it is merely sometimes the result of achieving the goal, which is stopping him from hurting you or yours.

If you want the (somewhat mythical) "stopping power" the answer seems to come from cutting a wide, deep channel and, if possible, generating enough hydrostatic shock to scramble the nervous system.