frangible or hollow point?

Frangible would be good for home defense because it would be less likely to penetrate lethally through walls. Not to mention it will do horrific damage immediately to a meat target.

Hollow point is the same thing with more penetration. Humans don't require much. Especially inside your house. Blow that mother fricker up.

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.223 cause I heard its good for home defense

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I hope you live alone and don't have any neighbors within 1/2 mile radius

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Nope, but worse comes to worst and I unload both barrels of the shotty things may have to get third world. I'm not saying .223 is ideal for home defense but like I said I'm curious about the ballistic performance.

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JJ, Don't worry too much about excessive penetration of a 223 Rem when shot in a house if you're using the appropriate bullet. A number of studies have shown that, depending on the bullet used, the 223 Rem fired from a rifle intot sheet rock penetrates MUCH less than many handgun rounds. In this study, the 223 Rem HP and SP loads penetrated much less sheet rock than did the JHP 40 S&W. Part of the deep penetration of the JHP was due to the HP filling getting plugged up w/ sheet rock, effective changing the bullet in to a round nose.
LINK

Here's another study:
LINK

Some of the conclusions from the second study:

"Moving away from rifle rounds takes us from fascinating discoveries into the realm of mythbusting. Handgun rounds, for instance, may penetrate less than rifle rounds--but only if the rifle rounds in question are full-power ball ammo. The relatively slow speed and heavy weight of handgun bullets make them a poor choice for limiting interior wall penetration, which is why professional door-kicker types have abandoned pistol-caliber submachineguns in favor of .223 carbines.


Shotguns may be the most powerful repeating shoulder-fired gun available, but when stoked with 00 buckshot they are certainly not a low-penetration option. In fact, the way the pellets spread out after passing through intermediate barriers makes the safety of anyone or anything within three rooms of a shotgun blast highly dubious."

I just keep #7 bird shot in mine. I had a box of these and after a few shots at the range I would never fire this inside my house.

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See this is why I come to this place

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If I used an AR for home defense, I would use Hornady Vmax or some other varmint round. It dumps all of it's energy into the target and is the equivalent of dropping a grenade in the chest cavity. It also doesn't overpenetrate.

But I do agree with Faxis about a shotgun being the best HD piece out there.

I hope the OP is referring to (fragmenting) M193 ball ammo and not referring to frangible ammo. The M193 is often/usually (?) an efficient round (asuming adequate velocity to achieve feagmentation), but there have been many recorded instances of failure to fragment.

Frangible ammo is a lousy idea for anything but training (in shoothouses, etc.)

Doc GKR is the nation's foremost authority on .223 terminal ballisticss (and on many more calibers, as well). This link gives you a summary of his recommendations: LINK-- I don't think you'll find frangible ammo, nor any V-max ammo, listed.