Its adage: “There is no life shooting at a box range.” That quote by NRA-certified instructor and gun writer David Workman sums up the issue concerning the number of shooters discussing the FBI ammunition testing procedure. The protocol is a rigorous effort to gauge handgun-bullet performance in carefully-controlled settings but is frequently employed as a crystal ball to every defensive circumstance, every barrel length, and every ambient environment.
In essence, the FBI protocol is tested with handgun ammunition in calibrated 1/10 volume of ballastic gelatin, and the most common pass/fail lane paradigm is 12-18 inches of penetration. Shot is also taken when it has gone through standardized intermediate media which is intended to represent a real world interference: heavy clothing, wallboard, plywood, sheet metal, and auto glass. It aims not at any laboratory statement of what it would stop but at repeatable performance, satisfactory penetration and controlled growth and moderate integrity.
The underlying reason behind the weight of this standard has to do with the Miami gunfight in 1986 that compelled the FBI to retest the efficacy of duty-sidearms. The moral of the story to the law enforcement procurement was straightforward, when a bullet cannot reach vital structures even after imperfect hits or in-between barriers, it will not perform at the worst possible time. Motivation behind barrier performance continues to be the reason behind the need to understand why barrier performance is important to those officers who might need to shoot at the vehicle or inside angled glass or over arms and shoulders.
The point at which the discussion becomes sloppy is where a similar “problem set of duty” is applied to civilian defense as an imperative. There are not shots being assessed by the vast majority of armed citizens through windshields and automobile doors, and the legal and tactical implications of shooting over a visual barrier are not comparable to the situation of an officer on the street. To that end, the protocol does not appear so much as a personal-defense checklist but rather as a procurement screen that is intended to weed out those who perform poorly in a highly diverse set of unforeseeable circumstances.
The number of penetration that prevails in the online discussions is also often misinterpreted. The 12-inch minimum was supposed to protect the worst-case shot paths, which included angles of presentation, hits on extremities, and the loss of velocity inherent in intermediate material. That will not necessarily make 12 inches the only “effective” depth of all armed citizens, all hits points, and all sizes of handguns. It does provide a conservative minimum required to reach critical anatomy in case the shot is not perfect.
The test also provides an incentive to the design of ammunition to a wide compliance. Since survival necessitates reproducibility over several steps, manufacturers tend to design projectiles to act like they are expected to on obstacles, and not just to grow wildly in naked gel. That engineering pressure contributed to the acceleration of modern bonded hollow points, which were now to become mechanically locked and in turn, with the great changes of caliber, the 9mm regained its place in the frontline: able to achieve the requirements of protocols with limited recoil and greater capacity.
To the civilian audience, the utility of the FBI standard is more limited than the internet would suggest, which is that it is a useful standard by which to be consistent but not a personalized prediction about a particular carry pistol, an indoor setting, or a risk to bystanders. Penetration tuned loads may affect compromises between recoil and depth of penetration, which are more important in a hallways and parking lot than in a duty. It is still a useful standard particularly in distinguishing between the “works in the ads” and the “works in the gel” provided that it is approached as we all know it is, a measurement system, rather than any assurance.
