I know a disadvantage of .45 is penetration, and 9mm usually have capacity and penetration on its side. That key shot with a 45 may be blocked by an object that the 9mm would pass through.

What do you think, for your bedside gun, staggering .45 hollow point and some kind of hot .45 Buffalo Bore or extreme penetrator? I'm thinking best of both worlds, my .45 is 15 rounds so half penetrator and half HPs. Would cover your situation if the target is in the open or behind cover.

p.s. I know a rifle is better. I would use my pistol to lay suppressive fire and fight to my rifle. Sure would be a shame if the .45 didn't make it through whatever the intruder tool cover behind.

Multiple shots make it through. Use the best round that feeds in your gun.

Fair enough, thanks

A quality defensive round in .45 is going to perform just as well as a 9mm. HSTs, Critical Duty, Rangers, PDX1, DPX, etc. There’s no shortage of viable options. With some barriers, like auto glass, they may even perform a bit better.

If you’re committed to the deacribed approach, I’d vote for the Lehigh rounds over FMJ.

If you're complaining that your 45acp doesn't penetrate enough, the answer isn't (ever) FMJ's, the answer is to stop buying bad ammo.

Hornady 230gr XTP +P gets 18.6" penetration while expanding to 0.60"

Remington 230gr Golden Saber gets 16.3" penetration while expanding to 0.74"

Remington 185gr Golden Saber +P gets 15.5" penetration while expanding to 0.75"

Winchester 230gr Ranger T gets 14.5" penetration while expanding to a freaking 1.00"

Do research. Buy good ammo. Alternating is a bandaid on a broken bone, your problem isn't that 45acp doesn't penetrate, your problem is that you're not feeding your gun with ammo that penetrates. If you load your 9mm up with any number of loadings that look like nice ammo, you'll under-perform even the "low penetrating" Ranger T listed above and lose 0.30-0.70" expansion per bullet.

Good ammo is good ammo. Crap ammo is crap ammo. It doesn't matter what caliber you're shooting if the bullets can't do their job when they hit.

Interesting, I have heard a lot of people praise 9 for penetration but not 45. Maybe they were just 9 fanboys. Thanks for the feedback

That's pretty sweet, thanks for the info! Ranger T, what the heck that's crazy.

I always heard that 45 wasn't as good as 9 for penetrating barriers. I didn't mean gel, just tests on random household objects/vehicle parts, places where a target may take cover.

My thinking was hollowpoint 45 won't penetrate barriers like 9mm hollow points will. But 45 shines on soft targets in the open. Just things I've been reading (Im no expert, here to learn)

Its seems that everyone is against loading two different types of ammo in the same mag. 2 different "specialties", is there a main reason why that's a bad thing? Considering you used two top-tier loads.

I'll keep reading, just asking these questions to get various opinions. So much solid knowledge contained on these boards, it's amazing.

You'd generally be correct on the barrier penetration. 45acp is a fat round that moves slower. 9mm (38) is a smaller diameter bullet that's moving faster. There's a reason why when you want to penetrate things, you use sabots or interior cores surrounded by the rest of the lead and copper, and push them to the highest velocities you can. It's why the 5.7x28 will rip right through armor that'd stop a notably larger bullet.

In pistols, however, that difference is generally marginal. I'm not aware of any armor that'll stop a 45 and not a 9mm. Even in regular barriers - drywal, vehicles, trashcans, windows and windshields, etc, there's so many variables that it's a bit hard to figure out.

The high-end number gets tossed around a lot between 14-20in, but it's generally accepted that the minimum penetration goal is 12in. Personally I look for the 12-18in range, and want to tend towards the higher end of that. If I can get two loads that expand similarly but one penetrates notably more than the other, I'll go with the higher penetrating round, so long as it's not something that's going to punch on and never stop (hence, 18in or so max goal).

If you are worried about barriers, then you're going to want to look specifically for a bonded bullet. The more I watch things such as Active Self Protection though, the less common it actually seems to be for shooting through barriers. The one thing that does seem to get shot through quite a lot is vehicles, in which case your main concern is the windshield. Car doors are surprisingly thin metal that doesn't do all that much for most bullets, but windshields will mess up pretty much anything. At that point you're largely just fighting variables that you can't much prepare for. One round may go through a Civic and fail on an Escalade, while another may deal with the escalade just fine and fail completely on something as small as a Civic.

Just look for a bonded bullet with over 12in penetration, good expansion, and consistent performance. Some of the bullets that lucky gunner tested may have some great averages, but what you really want in nigh all aspects of shooting is consistency. That's why the Ranger T and 185gr Golden Saber my two main considerations, because they have some exceptionally consistent performance. If you don't know what your bullet is going to do, then you can't much bet on it. This is part of why alternating isn't usually recommended. Also just because FMJ's suck for defensive use, and most the other "extreme penetrators" do exactly that, to a level much higher than we want in a defensive situation. Things like Hornady's 185gr Hydra Shok or Critical Defense may look good at 18.8/0.59" and 17.6/0.59" each, but if you look at the actual test data and not just the averages, there's 4 different depths for the Hydra Shok and 5 for the CD's, each one notably different for the either. What happens if you need that 16in of penetration, but end up with one of the rounds that only went 13in in? You've no idea what that bullet's going to do, just that it's probably going to perform somewhere in there. While the 14.5" penetration of the Ranger T may initially seem worse, 4 of the 5 rounds landed within 1in of each other. The Golden Sabers are similar, with all 5 being within 1.3" of each other.

When you have consistency, you know what to expect. When you know what to expect, you better know how to respond and react.

TL;DR: Look for the following:

12+in penetration
Consistent performance
Accuracy and reliability in your gun
And if you're worried about barriers, bonded bullets tend to do better.

Man, that is a fantastic summary, thank you for breaking it down.

I never considered consistency as far as penetration goes, taking the average from a gel test, that is very logical. You need to know what it's going to do, as you said.

I have always used the Gold Dot 124 + p in my CCW pistols since NYC PD has had great luck with them and lots of shootings (lots of officers/crime). I assumed they were consistently lethal, just never really read much into their consistency when it comes to penetration and expansion. Just kind of trusted it by reputation without researching. Also, it was a plus knowing that it must penetrate well through heavy clothing (NY is cold many months out of the year), just assuming it does.

I'm pretty sure Gold Dot is bonded too. I have 230-grain Gold Got currently loaded in my FNX as well. Just copying off of my 9, I'm new to 45, so using a familiar brand.

I'll look into Ranger T and Golden Saber as well. My old Army roommate is an alphabet agency guy, he's given me cases of .40 Golden Saber that I shot up over the years. Now that you brought up the 1 inch expansion of Ranger T and predictable penetration, that has me interested....so badass.

From what you said, it appears that the rounds that expend less, penetrate further and vice versa. Makes sense, physics.

Thank you for the breakdown and all the results, I will continue on with my research. This helped!

"I don't even own a Miata anymore. I just can't change my username"

That cracked me up

No problem! I love ballistics, so I've done quite a bit of looking into it, but I'm by no means an expert. Lucky Gunner as linked above is probably the best source of data I've found yet, since everything is tested rather fairly to the same standards across the board and presented exceptionally well, but you do still need some idea of what to do with that data. And then you can go buy it straight from them as well, much nicer than what I've ran into time and again of finding one load that's heavily recommended across multiple forums only to learn it was discontinued two years prior to my searches.

I'm just so glad someone finally read the signature. I still get called out for it because reading is hard.

Love it! I'll let you know what I decide on brother. This forum is badass, very grateful for all the feedback.

I, too, no longer own a Miata, and second what the other no-longer-owning-a-Miata Man said, and add the following cautionary note from someone who examines gunshot wounds for a living:
Consistency is often overlooked, but it is actually quite important, perhaps even the most important factor.
Ballistic gelatin is the standard test medium, and it is a reasonable approximation of a homogenized person. It is homogeneous, and therefore allows valid comparisons between loads. Without that homogeneity, it would be a lousy test medium.
Actual people, however, are not homogeneous, so bullet performance in people is more widely variable than in gelatin. Multiple rounds of the same load fired from the same gun from the same distance into the same person may penetrate anywhere from 2 to 20 inches, and have expansion ranging from none to complete fragmentation. Sometimes hitting bone matters; sometimes it doesn't. No, these are not exaggerations: I have tracked these wound pathways and pulled these bullets out with my own hands.
Good ammo (as suggested in above posts) is not only far more consistent in gelatin, it is also far more consistent in people. With good (consistent) ammo, the 1 - 2 inch variability in gelatin penetration will translate into 3 - 4 inches variability in people, which is a far cry from a 1 foot variability.
Be wary of ammo testing that draws firm performance conclusions based on only 1 or 2 rounds into gelatin, and expect bullet performance in people to be more widely variable.

I have never heard that. There is virtually no difference in the penetration and expansion of most premium loads in combat calibers when compared through barriers and gel. Obviously there are marginal improvements with marginal caliber increase.

Thank you guys

My carry ammo in my 45 is the Golden Saber 185 grain +p. It's traveling at a velocity of 1150 FPS with muzzle energy of 540 Ft-lbs. I don't think I'll have an issue with penetration

Edit for some bad spelling and grammar

He's not concerned about penetration in people.  He's concerned about penetration through intermediate barriers like sheet metal or logs or walls or something like that.

The thing is though, 9mm doesn't necessarily penetrate intermediate barriers better.  Depends on the barrier.  9mm penetrates sheet steel better, 45 does better on windshield glass.

Personally, I can't think of anything in my house a .45 acp won't go through other than maybe the clothes washer.

I have to try the golden saber, used to shoot them in .40 by the buckets, police issue stuff, was nice

Thats good to know, thank you man

My 2 cents would be to mentally think of your handgun as the weapon you will be forced to kill the bad guy with to save your life instead of something to mainly provide cover fire. In most self defense scenarios I think you'd need to kill the intruder with your handgun or they would kill you.

My personal preference specifically for a bump in the night (well one I'm concerned with at least, like people going past closed gate and trespassing around windows after 10pm) is to keep a pair of easy to turn on electronic earmuffs on the nightstand and grab the shotgun/rifle in those cases. If I am going to answer the door or prefer the handgun for whatever reason I just use the handgun.

The FBI designed the barrier tests with precisely your concerns in mind, and in general the rounds designed for LE are designed to still penetrate the minimum after passing through those barriers. Also the FBI tests for car doors and angled safety glass (windshields) and in your home the barriers are probably not as challenging as that. If you are into defeating barriers you could choose 230gr Gold Dots, Critical Duty or XTPs. I also like to choose the rounds that do a little better on barriers and penetration.

A good bonded HP will likely penetrate better than a cheap FMJ. The lead tends to be a little harder.

IF you hit a barrier and it fails to expand (as designed)  of course.