MD Home Defense Laws?

LazyGuru · Nov 4, 2010

hairba111 said:
I keep two of my 1911s cocked and locked next to my bed. Both with full ten round mags plus one in the chamber. If someone breaks into my home they get to see a fireworks show before they take a dirt nap.

Sameish. I'm not quite confident enough yet to keep it ready to go though, so I just keep the mag in it... all I have to do is rack a round and go. They're apartments though, so I'm using those Glaser Silver guys that aren't supposed to penetrate through too much. As a special bonus, they seem like they should shred anything they /do/ enter.

Boondock Saint · Nov 4, 2010

LazyGuru said:
Sameish. I'm not quite confident enough yet to keep it ready to go though, so I just keep the mag in it... all I have to do is rack a round and go. They're apartments though, so I'm using those Glaser Silver guys that aren't supposed to penetrate through too much. As a special bonus, they seem like they should shred anything they /do/ enter.

Any gun beats no gun, but that ammunition cannot reasonably be expected to stop a fight. Over penetration is a concern for those in apartments, but anything that will stop a bad guy will necessarily have to go through drywall.

LazyGuru · Nov 4, 2010

Boondock Saint said:
Any gun beats no gun, but that ammunition cannot reasonably be expected to stop a fight. Over penetration is a concern for those in apartments, but anything that will stop a bad guy will necessarily have to go through drywall.

What makes them less than effective? I think the idea isn't necessarily that it won't go through drywall, but that it won't exit the attacker in the first place. Aren't they meant to expand and get huge, and shred things?

Boondock Saint · Nov 4, 2010

LazyGuru said:
What makes them less than effective? I think the idea isn't necessarily that it won't go through drywall, but that it won't exit the attacker in the first place. Aren't they meant to expand and get huge, and shred things?

Ballistics are complicated, and I'm hardly an expert on the matter, so take what you read with a grain of salt and then conduct your own research.

FBI standards for a "reliable" defensive round require 12-18" of penetration into something called ballistics gel, essentially a human flesh analogue. Anything less than 12" can't be relied upon to hit something of critical importance inside the body, thus involuntary stopping the attack. More than 18", though, is apt to carry too much of its energy outside of the target and potentially hurt something/someone else.

HP rounds are designed to expand on impact, kinda like a mushroom head (giggle). The idea is to slow the round down, dumping more of the energy from the round into the attacker while creating a bigger hole in the bad guy. As long as there's sufficient power behind the HP round, it'll still penetrate deeply enough while giving the added bonus of wider wound channel and less risk of over penetration. The key with HPs is that they stay largely whole, that is, not shattering and breaking apart into a bunch of tiny pieces.

Frangible ammo, like yours, is designed to break up almost instantly. Instead of one relatively large projectile with enough energy to sufficiently penetrate, you'll have a bunch of flecks that won't have enough energy to drive themselves into the attacker.

The most important aspect of a defensive shooting is shot placement. I'd rather hit you once with a .22 than miss you 10 times with a .45.

Next is penetration. You might be dumping rounds into center mass, but if they're stopping after 1/2" of skin, they're not doing more besides pissing off your attacker.

A well distant third is expansion. All things being equal, I'd rather put a .75" hole in my attacker than a .45" hole.

I hope this helps. If you have more questions, take a spin or three with the search button. If you can't get your answers that way, come on back and we'll see what we can do.

LazyGuru · Nov 4, 2010

It makes enough sense to me... I guess the next on my list would be Fed Hydra Shok ammo in a .45 ACP? I'm pulling that in particular from a book I have on combat shooting (http://www.amazon.com/Gun-Digest-Bo...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1288910669&sr=8-1) and, perhaps foolishly, based my purchase of the Glasers off of the claims and video on their website, which did seem like they provided great penetration through ballistics gel.

LazyGuru · Nov 4, 2010

Boondock Saint said:
Any gun beats no gun...

Oh... and yes, it does definitely beat my previous plan of peppering a home invader in the face with my airsoft gun on full-auto, back when that was all I had on-hand.

Oreo · Nov 5, 2010

One main reason frangible ammo was created was for close-range live-fire practice. I've seen youtube videos of people dumping mags into steel plates at just a few feet.

Check out the ole' Box-o-truth website though. There are some good practical tests of what those rounds will & won't do. Surprisingly often those frangible rounds didn't fragment at all & instead remained solid much like a FMJ.

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