EatBeef, can you comment on this post please?

Thank you!

GH Porter, apologies, I thought you were trying to be obstinate, so I became argumentative.  I flat ignored much of what you posted, but yes, steel jackets can frag.  I don't have much experience with 5.56 steel jackets, but in 308 they frag frequently.  I don't know if it is because the steel is more brittle or what.  I do know I've found jacket pieces that fragmented along the lines left by the rifling in steel jackets.

All this bantering back and forth - the difference between a high end HD specific round and 7n6 (or any surplus) is negligible when talking about home defense.

A rifle round... no... multiple rifle rounds at close range will ruin your day the same. Let's stop this gel nonsense with every damn round, every thread here turns into a gel contest and bickering.


7n6 is PLENTY effective and will kill you just as dead. OP wants to know a good HD round and 7n6 is an outstanding choice.

OK lets ignore any measurable  or quantifiable attributes of cartridges and lets debate with our feelings.

It is not really about feeling, it is just people get too wrapped around the axels about things like fragmentation etc,  Smalls arms hits to the torso are generally highly debilitating if not lethal even if fragmentation does not occur.  In AFG and Iraq there have been numerous people killed by the so called ice pick type wounds by 5.56.

The problem of lack of instant stopping has more to do with shot placement, who is shot and not understand even the "best performing" bullet shot against someone with a will to resist or on drugs will perform worse than the "worst performing" bullet against someone with less will.  

So, you wouldn't mind being shot with it?

The thing about gel-tests is people are made of blocks of ballistic gel. They have bone as stuff, they feel pain and get scared.

So, while shooting gel is a good way to compare things, it is not good at judging "effectiveness".  Short of shooting up cadavers, and that can be debated, there really is no laboratory method of judging effectiveness....

As the OP, though, I specifically excluded 7N6 because it is now banned. The ban is almost certainly forever, as to my knowledge no administration has ever reversed an import ban that had been implemented by a previous administration via "reinterpretation" of existing law, not even GOP administrations reversing bans by previous Dem administrations, so I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Obama's (assumed) GOP successor to reverse the ban (and certainly Hillary won't, if things break her way).  7N6 is therefore highly likely to dry up in the near future,  So, the effectiveness of 7N6 is kinda beside the point, since it will soon be as missing from LGS & online vendor inventories as a "phased plasma rifle in the 40 watt range".  

The question was whether any load that will presumably remain available is terminally effective enough to make 5.45x39mm a viable defensive carbine caliber for non-LE civilian use.  It sounds like if anything fits the bill it's the Hornady 60gr V-Max load, but Zhukov's point is well taken that there hasn't been a lot of incentive for the usual suspects to develop high performance loads for this caliber as they do for common LE and US military calibers.

Exactamundo.  I love 5.45, I've been a big fan of it for years, but it just doesn't have the support the 5.56 has.  I find it highly unlikely it will ever catch up WRT bullet design and availability.  If it ever does, it will at best equal 5.56, not surpass it.

For home defense, I want the deck stacked as far in my favor as possible.  (Hence I don't use 5.45 OR 5.56.)

It is more people wanting technical solutions to non-technical problems, short of destruction of the CNS if is very hard to stop someone with the will to continue to fight.

Agreed. While training is the best solution, unfortunately its expensive and time consuming while technical discussions are not.

For home defense, I want the deck stacked as far in my favor as possible. (Hence I don't use 5.45 OR 5.56.)

                                                                              <<<THIS>>>>

I just hope that either you are a perfect shot in the dark or you don't have any neighbors close to you because any rifle round, no matter what the performance will most certainly go through walls.
That's just my 2cents

5.56 penetrates less than any handgun round or buckshot after going through an intermediate wall hence its actually safer for your neighbors if you are shooting your AR.

Interesting graphic, but what is the distance between the gun and the gel for those penetration patterns?  10 feet?  8 feet?

Unless you're a famous rapper, you don't have a distance within your home that will change the external or terminal ballistics of any of those rounds.

I was thinking more of closer distances rather than farther.  If the gel tests were at even 20 yards, there could be some important differences at 20 FEET that the tests didn't reveal.

Nope. 10 feet more wouldn't make any difference.

If you are in an apartment that's one thing.  I can't hit my nearest neighbor's house with a shotgun or pistol if I'm standing on my front porch.  Once it penetrates an exterior wall?  Not an issue for me, and I'd be shocked if it is an issue for the average householder in America.  There is a heck of a lot of difference between penetrating two pieces of sheetrock and hitting a block of gel verses penetrating an exterior wall, crossing the street, penetrating another exterior wall, then hitting a block of gel.

Yes, I know the next argument is what if your neighbor is standing in front of his house, etc., but what if you hit a window with your 5.56?  He's still dead.  

There just isn't a way to make a bullet deadly and safe at the same time.

Actually not.  The effectiveness of the weapon or ammunition is essentially an independent variable, except to the extent that weapon & ammunition characteristics improve the likelihood of a well-placed shot.  Mostly independent, though, or the military & LE would just issue .22 rimfires and divert the money saved into training.  However, it seems inevitable that in any discussion of gear somebody will come along and assert that it doesn't matter and the participants should just go train (as if generally people reading and writing posts on the internet are to any significant degree doing so when they could be at the range shooting, much less training under a skilled instructor).

Not that I have anything against training, as I've certainly spent my share of vacation time & money attending classes and recreational time & money practicing what the classes taught at the local range.  However, the desirability of training in no way invalidates the desire to select good gear, or the discussion of the merits of certain gear available to be selected.  If my question was who teaches the best class for tactical employment of a 5.45x39mm carbine, I'd have asked it in a forum appropriate to that question (and in fact I have, generically RE AK training in general).  This is an ammunition forum, though, so what I asked here was my ammunition question not my training question.

Once you have seen a couple dozen guys shot, you come to realize there are no magic bullets.  I have seen Iraqis shot with IP issued soft points keep fight, while other get hit with FMJs go down instantly, I have seen, enough 855, 262, 995 and M80 hits to know that the human being shot is bigger variable than what they are shot with.  There was even a guy in Kandahar in 08 who took a RPG that dud-ed out and lodged in his chest who continued to fight until he bled to death.  If an 80mm hole the chest did not instantly stop him, you think if that same person got hit with a round that gave 2-3 mm more destruction would have made a difference?

Nothing is ever 100%, but that doesn't make everything equal because none of them are 100%.  Some stuff is clearly more likely to work than others.  Some stuff works well enough a high enough percentage of the time to be reasonably considered "adequate" (although the exact definition of "adequate" is debatable), even though it is not 100% and therefore with 5-7 digits worth of people being shot annually worldwide there are no doubt a large number of incidents of failure that can be cited.,  Other stuff doesn't pass that criteria, even though there are no doubt a large number of incidents that could be cited wherein the caliber did work.  I'm personally satisfied that no load ever developed puts .22LR on the right side of that line (although you can buy both AR's & AK's so chambered).  I'm similarly satisfied that there are readily available (and presumably remaining so for the foreseeable future) loads that put 5.56mm NATO, 7.62x39mm and 7.62 NATO on the right side of the line.  The point of starting the thread was to establish where 5.45x39mm (with available non-banned loads) falls with respect to the "adequacy" line.

But the problem still remains that you are attempting to solve a somewhat non-solvable problem with a technical solution.  Yes there are rounds will create a slight marginal increase in damage, but is the marginal increase in damage within a caliber going to stop a determined advisory?  Often no, it won't because their will to continue or drug induced state will only be stopped when they bleed to death, their CNS is destroy or a structural item required for movement is destroyed.  

To illustrate this have you ever hunted deer before?  Have you ever seen of or heard of the cases where the perfect shot occurs and the deer's heart is shredded yet it runs away?  Do you think in that case a marginal increase in performance will create any different effect?   Do you think two legged mammals are that much different?  Sometimes you get lucky and who or what you shoot just gives up and sometimes you are not lucky and you just need to destroy the CNS,  open as many holes in them as fast as possible to speed the bleeding or increase the odds of causing explosive bone hits that prevent movement.  

Guy up here took out a brown bear that was charging him with a half a magazine of 5.45. I was like Who carries a 5.45 AK in the woods???

The writer is obviously a wuss but facts still stand guy dropped a charging grizzly with a 5.45 AK.
http://www.adn.com/article/20130731/another-hiker-shot-alaska-bear-dead-cue-pointless-debates
http://www.adn.com/article/20130731/another-hiker-shot-alaska-bear-dead-cue-pointless-debates

I shot a big midwestern deer thru the heart and lungs once.  the massive 12 ga. Brenneke slug destroyed the left shoulder/leg socket.

She crumpled, folded up like a card table, but when she heard me, it got  up and ran like hell about 150yds.

When I went to pull her out. the left front leg began to pull apart like a fully cooked chicken leg.

How she ran like that on 3 legs was amazing.

Another year, I hit a big doe at close range with a hot 240gr gold-dot hand load( 24gr. W296 @1405fps), she didn't even break stride, just slowly walked down into a creekbed and expired.

Others seemed to be hit with thor's hammer, and drop like a rock.

Hollywood action movies have overblown peoples expectations of what bullets do