What caliber for Carhartt?
I wear their jackets regularly. In NY, NYPD fired 9 rounds at some nutjob. Four rounds didn’t penetrate his Carhartt jacket. And it gets kind of amusing:
The bullets we have may be defective and thats very disturbing, one source said. When we fire our weapons, we want to make damn sure that our bullets hit our target neutralizing our target.
Emphasis added for the following bit:
Four of the bullets got lodged in Conrads Carhartt jacket, sources said, adding that he was not wearing a bulletproof vest.
Another shot grazed the wrist of bystander Lauran Code, a 46-year-old lingerie designer from California.
Ok, then.
May 23rd, 2016 at 8:51 pm
Pay 40% more? yep, when you get three or more times the wear. Stopping a bullet though, um, no.
May 23rd, 2016 at 9:34 pm
Dammit. NOW what am I supposed to do with this new Carhart jacket?
May 23rd, 2016 at 10:56 pm
The lady that was ‘grazed’ by that bullet was at last report waiting for the bullet, or parts of it, to be removed from her wrist.
http://nypost.com/2016/05/20/victim-grazed-by-nypd-shots-still-has-bullet-lodged-in-her-wrist/
May 23rd, 2016 at 11:23 pm
Too bad the article didn’t say what model of Carhartt jacket it was. I have 2, both are a canvas shell with thin flannel lining.
May 23rd, 2016 at 11:31 pm
Carhartt used to say you could Laugh at Thorns when you wore their trousers. Not sure I could laugh at JHPs.
May 23rd, 2016 at 11:37 pm
Montana state official jacket.
May 23rd, 2016 at 11:40 pm
Dang if I can remember where I saw this at, but remember reading that a lot of law enforcement up in Alaska liked using .45. Reasoning was that with all the clothing the people up there wear, that the 9mm just turns into a FMJ, and makes a small hole. Same thing happens to the .45, but makes a much bigger hole.
Guessing that the ammo they were using just did not expand well, after hitting the canvas outer layer.
May 24th, 2016 at 12:02 am
@Dogzard, Not expanding increases penetration. More likely is that it expanded well, pushed the tough material up against a rib or other large bone, and the material distributed the force enough that the bone and jacket were able to not be penetrated.
May 24th, 2016 at 12:12 am
Carhartt uses some pretty tough nylon denier for some of their winter jackets.
It’s getting a bit warm for mine, though.
May 24th, 2016 at 7:17 am
Don’t over think this, guys. How long had that ammo – how many wet NY winters – sat in their mags? Are they using cheap ammo, re-loads? I see a LOT of officers carrying the same ammo in the same mags for years. They shoot non-carry mags and ammo at the range. Even when they have expensive factory ammo in their mags they don’t shoot it. Because expensive.
May 24th, 2016 at 8:07 am
I would be more inclined to believe that what actually happened was that the jacket was loose and the projectiles weren’t “body-hits”. That is they missed the perp and hit on the floppy part of the coat. Popo accuracy and all that.
May 24th, 2016 at 9:18 am
Once upon a time, one of my daughters wanted some jeans with bullet holes in ’em for a costume – so we shot up a pair. Even .22LR went thru a couple layers of denim hanging in space.
May 24th, 2016 at 11:02 am
Joe,
JHP expansion does not work that way.
May 24th, 2016 at 11:39 am
Tam,
You are correct. That was extremely poor phrasing on my part. The bullet could not have possibly expanded before it encountered substantial resistance. And generally that means resistance pushing outward from the center of the bullet, such as hydraulic pressure from the bullet traversing water or flesh, to expand the bullet jacket and some portion of the core into a larger diameter.
What I was trying to get at and failed in my hasty explanation is that “not expanding increases penetration” and would have resulted in better penetration of the coat. It is more likely there was some expansion at some point in the path than no expansion to account for the failure to penetrate flesh. I imagine a soft point bullet flattening out when encountering the tough coat material backed by a solid bone. From this view of how things might occur it is relatively easy to extrapolate to a hollow point behaving like a soft point in this situation.
Also, now that I have a bit more time, I would like to suggest that if the ammo was defective most likely defect I can think of is a low muzzle velocity. But a sufficiently low muzzle velocity such that the bullet failed to penetrate would most likely have resulted in a failure of the gun to cycle. Hence, my hypothesis is the police would have reported this and there would be much stronger claims of defective ammo at this time if this were the case. I therefore reject this hypothesis and believe the evidence tends to support the hypothesis that the Carhartt jacket has some moderate bullet resistance.
Thank you for pointing out my erroneous statement.
May 24th, 2016 at 12:50 pm
Hope they kept their Model 10s in storage.
May 24th, 2016 at 12:51 pm
We may never know but my guess based on the crappy news account is that the bullets actually penetrated and lodged on opposite side in the jacket.
May 24th, 2016 at 2:16 pm
I think SPQR is correct, but I would shorten his comment to, “This is a crappy news account.”
So many things are obviously incorrect that I feel safe in saying the whole article is pure crap.
May 24th, 2016 at 3:24 pm
Looks like it’s been tested and no a carhart isnt bulletproof
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2016/05/robert-farago/ttag-exclusive-shootingthebull410-test-carhartt-jacket-gold-dot-124p-9mm-ammo-re-nypd-claim-stopped-bullets/
May 24th, 2016 at 5:52 pm
I’m sorry but don’t put too much trust in a report from a news organization whose collective firearms knowledge can inscribed on the head of a pin with a lot room to spare; when the source of the report ain’t much better.
Remember, don’t trust and verify.
May 24th, 2016 at 9:15 pm
NYPD and 4 out of 9 bullets actually hit their intended target? Something is way screwy here.
May 24th, 2016 at 9:50 pm
At steve in TN…sorry we don’t use reloads and we don’t pay for our carry ammo. Everyone hits the range at minimum once a year. Old ammo is fired from duty mags from duty belt and we reload fresh Federal Gold dot plus p’s. Hyperbole is not evidence.
At Standard Mischief…word is 7 hits out of 9. Damn good…especially for us.
May 25th, 2016 at 12:01 am
Federal HST has a great reputation for full expansion
Speer Gold Dots also are pretty good as well. But I don’t think Federal loads Gold Dots. Just the old hydra shock and HST afaik.
May 25th, 2016 at 2:06 pm
If I remember correctly, JHP expand because flesh turns liquid when a high-speed impact, causing the projectile to mushroom because of the force exerted from the inside.
What I was proposing was that the reason they didn’t expand, was the the dense fiber material filled the hollow point, but did not exert enough force to make it expand, turning it into a FMJ.
May 27th, 2016 at 12:23 am
Sorry Jim. Brain was thinking speer..fingers wrote federal.