We will not tolerate people "stomping newbies." If you see someone who hasn't followed the guidelines and are tempted to respond with a personal attack, then just don't. Leave it be. You're going to attract negative attention from the moderators by doing so. If you feel compelled to respond, let it be a simple "This information is already covered in the FAQ/whatever. Please read the tack at the top of the page" and provide a link to the topic.

Furthermore - this is a TECHNICAL FORUM, not General Discussion. The management has set forth a higher standard to be upheld here than in GD. If the original post is questionable to you, IM one of the moderators and alert them. DO NOT troll other people's posts who annoy you. You're not doing anyone a favor and will probably get in trouble yourself.

NO FOR SALE/WANT TO BUY ADS, OR RELOADING QUESTIONS IN THIS FORUM! There are dedicated forums for reloading and selling ammo. Posting topics of this nature will probably cause your post to be moved or locked without warning.

Handgun Ammunition FAQ

1. Best choices for self defense ammo. This is hopefully going to answer all your questions about what ammunition to pick for your rifle, pistol, or shotgun. Lists of well-performing ammunition are provided.
2. Exotic Ammo FAQ - answers your questions about ammo such as Extreme Shock, Glaser, RBCD, etc.
3. Wound Ballistics - research papers that provide a wealth of information about bullet terminal performance.
4. The Box O'Truth - Arfcom's own Old_Painless's website. Practical information for what happens when you shoot various things with different bullets. A very informative website - please make sure to check it out.
5. Factory load velocity data - database of factory load chronograph results for many popular types of ammo.
6. Headstamp IDs - how to identify the ammunition manufacturer based on headstamp codes.

If you discover a common question that isn't answered by this FAQ, please contact myself or the other authors so that we can get that information added.

Wound Ballistics

For more background about wound ballistics in particular, please note that there is some excellent background reading you can do. I strongly suggest you educate yourself on the merits of why bullets work the way they do if you plan on using a firearm in a defensive situation.

1. Theodore Kocher and the Scientific Foundation of Wound Ballistics (1.3M)
2. Ordnance Gelatin for Ballistic Studies (170K)
3. Bullet Fragmentation: A Major Cause of Tissue Disruption (1.6M)
4. Effects of Small Arms on the Human Body (608K)
5. Wounding Mechanism of Projectiles Striking at More than 1.5km/sec (1.5M)
6. A reconsideration of the Wounding Mechanism of Very High Velocity Projectiles - Importance of Projectile Shape" (1.4M)
7. Wounding patterns of military rifle bullets (4.9M)
8. Wounding Potential of the Russian AK-74 Assault Rifle (606K)
9. Ballistic Injury (390K)
10. The ideal police bullet (376K)
11. Applied Wound Ballistics: What's New and What's True (436K)
12. Performance of the Winchester 9mm 147 Grain Subsonic JHP Bullet in Human Tissue and Tissue Simulant (2.9M)
13. The Shockwave Myth (1.4M)
14. What's Wrong With The Wound Ballistics Literature, And Why (hosted at www.rkba.org)

A note about file sizes: Some articles had to be scanned grayscale, and the size ballooned up quite a bit. I tried scanning in B&W as much as possible, but some pages needed the detail of grayscale. JPG's would have been smaller, but I would have had individual files for all pages, and that was too much of a hassle for me. The quality of the material varies. Some were original articles, other were copies made by Dr. Fackler before sending them on to me - sorry that they don't look nicer.

For a medical view on the subject you can check out an online version of the textbook Conventional Warfare: Ballistic, Blast and Burn Injuries. It is a textbook of military medicine series on combat casualty, published by the office Department of the Army.

Federal has also published PDFs of several wound ballistics workshops they have run, primarily to show off the HST and Gold Dot handgun rounds. They do show a wealth of data for all FBI protocols:

Fort Collins 6-26-08
Aurora 6-24-08
Los Angeles County - California 7-30-07
Riverside - California 7-12-07
Santa Clara - California 5-8-07
Fresno County - California 5-9-07
Kern County - California 5-10-07
Sacramento County - California 5-24-07
San Angelo - Texas 3-9-06
Pierce County Workshop - Washington 11-19-03
San Diego County Workshop - California 10-2-03
Portland Police Bureau - Oregon 9-6-02

Revision history