More Plastic

People use to say what this country needs is a good 5 cent cigar.  That will never happen.  But what we want even more is a magic bullet. 

We want a round that has:

        Single shot stopping power,

                Breaches barriers like plywood, windshield glass or plaster board and retains mass,

                Low recoil,

                No ricochet,

                Accurate to ‘clover leaf’ groups at 15 yard,

                Environmentally friendly.

This search has lead us to hollow points, Glaser safety rounds, Multi Impact Bullets (bullet expands into a bolo configuration), frangible and all copper pre-fragmented rounds.  Still, no one round fits all criteria.

NOVX 9mm +P 

Recently NOVX has produced what they claim is a magic bullet.  If it’s not magic, they claim it’s damn near close enough.

It starts with an ARX copper/nylon bullet weighing in at 65gr on a unique case.  The case looks like a two stage rocket, with the base made from aluminum and the upper 2/3 made from stainless steel.  The steel portion is magnetic so they can be picked up easier. NOVX even says they can be reloaded.

Only two factors are involved in generating power: mass and velocity.  The usual tradeoff is low mass coupled to high velocity or high mass propelled by low velocity.  In this case, NOVX claims the muzzle velocity is 1800 FPS which generates 468 FT-LBS.  That’s the equivalent of dropping a 16-pound bowling ball almost 30 feet!  Ouch!  That’s going to leave a mark.

Raw energy isn’t the sole answer.  It’s energy transferred to the target that matters.  The ideal situation is the bullet stops just under the skin of the VCA opposite of the entrance wound.  I’ve got to admit the video of the NOVX 9mm blasting a wound cavity in modeling clay is impressive, especially when compared to a FMJ HP round.  If I’m faced with claymen, I’ll want this round.

In this case energy transfer is facilitated by the grooves or flutes molded into the plastic bullet.  The accompanying literature exclaims the bullet generates 120,000 RPM and penetrates 16.75 inches in ballistic gel.  

 

Let’s assume your pistol barrel is a 1 in 10 twist.  That means every 10 inches of travel will result in one complete rotation of the bullet.  If it penetrates 16 inches in human flesh simulant, it will make 1.6 revolutions before it stops.  Not exactly the fly buzz saw you envisioned.

Let me repeat, the clay wound cavity is impressive. I’d like to shoot the round out of a smooth bore to compare cavities.  Needless to say that video wasn’t found.

This cartridge is reported to have reduced recoil and can breach a pane of glass like a car window and still show good mass retention and reasonable penetration (12 inches) into gel.

On top of that the round is reported to be frangible, breaking into small harmless pieces when it strikes a hard surface like a steel plate and I assume concrete and stone as well.

All this is armchair commando talk.  How does it shoot?

When I set up at the range I usually take less than I need and cobble things together.  The walk from the parking area to the covered range is of a bit hike. 

Bag, gun, bullets, ...  sounds like the name of a book.

I typically use my gun bag as a pistol rest to support my hands and wrist.  My second group at 25 feet improved significantly over the first when I put my shooting glasses on and could focus on the sights.  I’m not especially interested in groups you can cover with a dime.  I think groups you can cover with the palm of your hand are more than acceptable from a self-defense ammo.  So the NOVX 9 mm shot what I considered a reasonable group. 

Once I put my shooting glasses on so I could focus on front and rear site the froup shrunk from 3.5 to  2 inches

The recoil is very manageable.  No worse than factory 9mm ball round.  Perhaps even less.

One of my concerns with self-defense ammo is misses.  It alarms me that a round which misses will rattle about and skip down the street endangering others.

 

This is especially important in my home.  My neighbor’s house is too close.  A fired bullet in my house has a high probability of exiting my walls and striking a neighbor’s house.  Frangible sounds promising to me.

If the ARX bullet was fragmented, I would have three feet of travel to let the pieces spread apart.  Some of the smaller ones would not penetrate the paper and cardboard, at lease that was the design of experiment. 

I set up a quarter inch sheet of plywood and a second target about three feet behind it.  I hoped the round would shatter passing through the wood.  The resulting fragments would be less dangerous.  The NOVX 9mm punched a round hole in the wood and a round hole in the target.  The wood wasn’t hard enough to shatter the bullet.  That’s good for mass retention, but not so hot for my neighbors.

But what about an angled shot?  A shot where the round had stress applied sideways as well as head on.  Would this stress induce the magic behavior I want?

Nice skid marks, but no evidence of fragmentation.

I ran a couple experiments and the holes looked like a solid metal round punched through the board.  I’m unable to recover the bullet so I can’t really say what happens.

Would I carry it?  It fed okay in my Glock.  The recoil is mild and very controllable.  Even if the terminal performance shown on the website is hogwash, it seems to perform as well as 9mm ball.  Sure, I’d consider carrying it. 

So what’s stopping me?  It’s the lack of performance data.  I need to see a couple of articles on hog hunting with this configuration of plastic bullet and high velocity.  I’d like to see a couple police departments issue this to their SWAT or STAR teams.  Price isn’t the problem.  It’s not inexpensive, but I’d carry it and then swap it out for ball when I practice. 

It’s not Merlin-in-a-box magic.  But with the ease of injection molding, no lead fumes or precautions to take and no EPA landfill issues, I think it could be the future of ammo.