Do you guys think body armor is something to be worried about? I guess the average crimanal wouldn't be using it, but a professional probebly would? is the .223 round capable of penetrating armor? which kinds?

Quoted: snip....is the .223 round capable of penetrating armor? which kinds?

Yes, especially if it's SS109. The round will penetrate almost all soft armor; if they have a hard trauma plate then it may not.

average criminal, professional criminal........

all the same.

go to the range and practice..practice...

shoot 'em in the head.

I thought this was why we practiced head shots?


Although it is possible that they wrap their heads in the stuff, as done in the N. Hollywood shootout.

I would think that unless they get their hands on the ceramic "chicken plate" type stuff that most rifle rounds would penetrate body armor.

Not claiming to be an expert however.

more and more criminals are using body armor, but most body armor is 2a concealable stuff. A .223 will go through 2a all the time and 3a at defensive ranges. 3a will stop 7.62x39 but .223 will go through. Use fmj if you're worried about body armor penetration. If they dont have it it'll still blow up against bone. Against balistic shields and the armys ceramic stuff you wont even go through using a .308, but thats bulky stuff and very rare. Unless the swat team comes after you.  

Getting into sniper's territory here:

All body armor has joints and there are always
some uncovered areas that are highly vulnerable.

An eye shot is a 100 percent sure disabler, if you can get it.

Same for most of the rest of the face.
Particularly the mouth.   I have NEVER seen armor that covers the eyes, nose, and mouth, short of medieval knight's armor.

The legs are rarely well covered in body armor, and if they are, the area between the thigh and the crotch will probably not be covered effectively. A shot in this area is not something that will be shrugged off by the victim.

Blunt force trauma to a sensitive area can be as disabling as a penetrating shot.  Shoot the crotch, and immense pain WILL result, armor or no armor.

Backside shots.  Back of legs, buttocks, etc. are rarely protected.  

Armpits, same thing.  And the crook of the elbow or any major joint.

HANDS.  Shoot the hands.  No armored gloves that allow shooting are adequate protection against medium or large pistol bullets or any centerfire rifle caliber.

Shooting the weapon, disabling it, is always an option.  If you're lucky you might hit it just right and cause a kaboom.

Don't forget the feet and ankles!

Don't forget the neck, either!

Use a .308 or larger and body armor suddenly becomes quite useless.  Having a nice Winchester Model 70 in .308 or .30-06 just might be a good idea as a special purpose backup weapon.
Against ceramic plate armor, a follow-up shot may be necessary to break down the plate, or use AP ammo in a .30-06 or something even meaner, like a .375 H&H Magnum, .458 Winchester Magnum, or .475 Weatherby Magnum.   Or any .50 shooting the M2 round will end the entire discussion, permanently and immediately.

This will help you take down dirtbags like the Hollywood bank robbers with ease.

Of course, we'd never DREAM of using this against any lawful representative of our governments!

CJ

Getting shot while wearing body armor is still very painful and stunning.  Your shot may not kill or seriously injure the attacker, but it will most likely stun him long enough for you to get away.  If the guy is in your house the stunning effect will give you enough time to aim a little more carefully and shoot him in the head.

I suggest shelving the rifle idea and using a pistol.  Rifles are explosively loud indoors and have overpenetration problems (except in .223 with soft points, but that may compromise armor piercing qualities).  Practice triple taps (two to the COM, one to the head) on silhouette targets with a handgun.  If you have a place to shoot at moving target, do that too.  Practice rapid displacement (ergo; running your ass off) while target shooting.  Join your local IDPA club and shoot a competition every weekend.  

You might also want to consider investing in some body armor of your own as well.  There are companies that make zipper front bullet-resistant vests that don very quickly; even the pull-over types go on fairly quickly.  Keep the vest next to your pistol and flashlight and throw it on anytime you need your pistol.

Is there anywhere that sells used vests that cops are done with?

Well since we are talking about criminals, Then I guess we have to talk about body armor at criminal encounter ranges, It would be kind of hard to explain to a judge why you found it a life saving self defence move, to dust a bad guy at sniper ranges, body armor or no body armor.

7.62x39 Not penetrating level 3 armor?, Gee he must have been an awful long ways away. At any real life criminal encounter range, 7.62x 39 will sail thru level 3 armor like a hot knife thru butter and probably exit thru the bach panel as well, you trauma plate on a concealable vest will be no help at all.

Under the shirt body armor is designed to stop pistol bullets at lean over the car ranges and was never meant to stop full house combat rifle bullets.

Frankly, a guy with a riot gun and 1 1/2 oz. 2 3/4 in. slugs will screw up your whole day even if he happens to hit you square in the trauma plate out to 100 yards. And if L.A. PD had issued it officers slugs, the fight that you are talking about, with the two AK wielding bad guys might have been over long before the time it took for officers to go and borrow AR's from a local gun dealer.

While I think if you are going to invest in body armor. you should buy new. I understand that people have money concerns, that might lead them to consider used armor as better than no armor at all....So with that caveat, I would direct you to E-bay where I have seen lots of used armor at pretty reasonable prices.

Do some armor and brand research on the net first however, because it's easy for a newbie to get hooked on those E-bay deals.

And remember. Body armor is a safety net, Not a magic shield.

Maybe we should open a Body armor thread?

Yet another legitamate reason for 50 cals.... Home Defense against vested criminals!!!

Keving67

Seeings how most criminal avoied schelling out $350+ for a good handgun i seriously doubt that any substantial number of them will shell out the cash for body armor. does Lorcin make body armor?




lib

Quoted: Seeings how most criminal avoied schelling out $350+ for a good handgun i seriously doubt that any substantial number of them will shell out the cash for body armor. does Lorcin make body armor? lib

Lorcin? Of course they do!! sure it may be made out of paper mache, but hey if you dont have any armor paper mache is better than none!

I've been a cop for 14 years. I have encountered 4  bad guys all drug dealers in possession of soft body armor. I say in possession because only 2 out of the 4 were actually wearing it at the time of arrest. Yes it is something to be mindful of. Shoot low(lower abdomen or groin) or high (head) if you have time to think about shot placement.

Ok, Lets think about the trend. Here are the reasons that we will see more body armor in the hands of criminals in the future.

1.} Body armor has come down in price over the last 10 years.

2.} The police body armor revolution, which put more officers into body armor than ever before, is now more than 15 years old, many officers have retired or left police work taking non dept vests with them, many of these have found there way into the used vest market.

3.} Many military flack jackets from the Reagan and Bush the first era have reached the end of their service life and for one reason or anouther are on the surplus market.

4.} While you probably will not run into body armor on the Loricin and Raven .25 crowd of criminals, lets not forget that Body armor is showing up more and more often in the African American and Hispanic Gang sector, Where Body armor is becoming a prestige item. Body armor is also showing up in The Biker/Meth culture, and brother, Since I come from a state where meth pruduction has risen 800% in the past 3 years, let me clue you in on something, That skraggly  biker dude down there at the bar may look like hammerd Caca, But you better belive that he is very likely just as well armed as you are, if not more so. and that born  to lose tatoo on his arm is not an idle threat.

Lets not lull ourselves into the trap of underestimating and dismissing the criminal threat.

Assuming that all the bad guys out there are Loricin carrying moronic sub humans, is about the best way to become a dead officer I can think of.

An officer's situational awareness is a bigger asset than that AR-15 in the trunk. Roughly 75% of police officers shot in the last ten years did not know they were in a gunfight until the first bullet slapped into their vest. That is, if they were smart enough to be wearing a vest.
80% of the smart ones are still around to talk about it....Nuff said.

3.} Many military flack jackets from the Reagan and Bush the first era have reached the end of their service life and for one reason or anouther are on the surplus market.

Not to flame but flack jacketes are just that. they will barely stop a.22lr, some don't.

I agree with the posts above.. even if someone has a vest on and you hit them COM with a good handgun round it will hurt like hell and you should have time to get your head or groin shot it.

Quoted: Yet another legitamate reason for 50 cals.... Home Defense against vested criminals!!! Keving67

words of wisdom...  

I never said that flack jackets would stop all pistol bullets.

The argument was that surplus military body armor was increasingly availible to criminals.

.22 of the right brand and configuration will penatrate many models of law enforcement body armor as well. One of the gists of my post was that no body armor is perfect.

But if I had the choice of being hit by a .45 hollow point with a PASGT vest or without one...

I would take the vest every time.

Quoted: Yet another legitamate reason for 50 cals.... Home Defense against vested criminals!!! Keving67

like I said...

Just to le all you guys know. At the local gun shows around here there is always a guy selling used cop body armor w/trauma plates for under $150. I have never seen a usual Gun show patron buying one of these. But I have seen numerous member of the baggy pants, backwards hat, ebonics speeking croud snatching them up. I keep an ar with a 30 rnd mag w/62grn FMJ,s. Short of level 4a, bad guys die at close range. The north hollywood shootout ended when the cops got ar's with fmj's. They supposedly had two layers of soft armor.

If your really worried, buy a FAL or G3 and end the whole conversation.

You can get used body armor all day long on E-bay...many criminals nowadays have body armor and computers, heck most of the meth dealers downloaded their German cooking recipy right of the internet...does anybody doubt that they can find cheapo body armor on the net. it's probably bookmarked right between AnachistcookbookII.com and Outlawbiker.com

Long post but I think you'll be interested in this.
About four years ago I was walking down second ave in downtown Minneapolis.  While I walked past the downtown mall entrance I saw a group of 5 black males, wearing all black clothes.  They were dressed in the usual urban street apparel, stretched nylon hair cap, quilted down coats, baggy pants, the usual except the were all dressed nearly identical and walking together in a tight pack.
I didn't really take much note of them until I realized the one front and center had his coat hanging open and he was wearing the heavy tactical body armor (the kind that does not fit under your clothes) with the pocket for a truama plate and an apron that hung over his crotch.  It looked like it was too big for him, but I could tell that this vest was thick. It was not a flak jacket but about as thick.  As I caught a glimpse of a large piece of flat black metal hanging under his right arm pit I went cold.  I think I actually stopped in my tracks, and I wouldn't be surprised if my jaw was hanging open.
Only then did I notice them as a group and realize that the guy I was gawking at was the smallest in the group, about 5 feet tall and maybe 120 lbs.  He was about 14-15 years old!  They were kids!
For a second I was worried that they would notice me staring at them, but I realized they were looking around nevously.  I think they just choose to strut down this strip(it's a teenager hang out) with this gear for the shock value and to impress there peers.
I for one was shocked and impressed.  It is something I will never forget.  If this kid had this stuff just for the cool factor(I hope that is what it was), then you can be sure there are some out thier who have more meanacing purposes in mind.
My AR15 is loaded with alternating rounds of TAP urban and Q3131A.  Just in case.

There's a lot of good info posted here already, but I thought I'd add something to Troy's comment about soft body armor degrading over time.  There have been a fair number of test programs conducted over the last two decades on this.  The pieces I can recall are that sweat, salt water, detergents, heat and sunlight all will degrade soft body armor.  Kevlar, at least the early varieties, is much more rapidly degraded than Spectra.

And just FYI, the joint Army-Navy lab at Natick did develop 'soft' body armor that would stop a .50 BMG AP round at short ranges.  Tested it on a pig.  Pig survived, but his/her comments are not recorded.  The sandwich was roughly an inch thick, very heavy, and very stiff.  Can't recall if it had any breakup/tipping plates in it or not.

Pat

One inch thick Huh.....Hmmmm, doing a little quick weight calculation in my head.....Nope, nope, Thats not body armor, That would be a bunker with arm holes.

I'm waiting for someone to suggest body armor with Ablative and reflective layers to ward off lasers and Plasma Rifles in the 40 watt range.

Or better yet Reactive body armor panels just in case the bad guys have Anti Tank guided missles.

Quoted: I'm waiting for someone to suggest body armor with Ablative and reflective layers to ward off lasers and Plasma Rifles in the 40 watt range.

I suggest a well made tin foil hat, shinny side out.

Your right I do need a shiny foil had to keep out the evil BUY ME messages, That the guys at Norola Tactical keep beaming into my head from the black helicopters.

The message keeps repeating " $210 Rock River compleat lowers , You can afford it, DO IT, DO IT NOW " Those guys a Norola are evil for putting ideas like that in my brain, Even with the Shiny foil hat, I'm not sure how much longer I can hold out.

Bad guys are wearing body armor in increasing numbers. Some of the seminars I have been to, the East Coast folks are reporting that they encounter armored bad guys every day. The response to this has been some laws in different states barring felons from owning body armor (Texas has one now). The street-level response is increased emphasis on "Failure to stop" (AKA Drugs & Armor) drills.

I don't know about this "body armor degrades with age" thing. I get my vests replaced regularly (more because of the smell than anything else. I almost wonder if this isn't an income generation thing from the armor companies. For fun and educational purposes, we shot up a 10 year old level IIA a year ago. This had been a patrol vest for five years, and spent another five sitting in a closet. Level IIA is almost as low as it gets. It stopped every handgun round (+P duty loads of .40, .45 & 9mm)we threw at it, including 30 bursts from a subgun at close range. The closest any of the pistol rounds came to making it through was one .45 that almost made it through the last layers of Kevlar (it was peeking) and it impacted in the same spot as several other rounds, near the neck where the armor has rolled down and was slightly thinner All .223 rounds sailed right through it, regardless of load, although some barely made it through the back panel after exiting the front. A trauma plate might have stopped some of them, but plates are durable, and a lot of folks layer two or three plates, so there were no old ones to get shot up.

Top of the line tactical armor can go as high as $10,000 for a vest, with $1000-1500 being the standard range and concealable running from $350-600 for the decent stuff. The current trend for tactical armor is to armor a large amount of the body at IIIA. If that isn't enough, the Army's new standard for aircrew armor (stuff under development) is supposedly a "Level V" vest, that will stop a .50 BMG and not cause terminal blunt force trauma. We'll see if that works, but I suspect that armor technology will stay close to the envelope of current threats.

Body armor just makes a sound investment.  A good Level II or Level IIIA vest can be had for the price of a decent autoloading handgun.  The Level IV head-to-toe crap is really kind of pointless unless you routinely raid crackhouses and storm military barracks.

Buy a good vest, keep it next to your pistol, flashlight, and cell phone and you will be prepared for any threat.

Quoted: Body armor just makes a sound investment.  A good Level II or Level IIIA vest can be had for the price of a decent autoloading handgun.  The Level IV head-to-toe crap is really kind of pointless unless you routinely raid crackhouses and storm military barracks. Buy a good vest, keep it next to your pistol, flashlight, and cell phone and you will be prepared for any threat.

I agree, it seems like a vest and a gun are better than two guns when things go bump in the night.  The whole object is to protect yourself and your family not _necessarily_ send them to meet their maker.  Maximize the burglars risk with your firearm (and practice) and minimize yours with a vest.
http://www.bulletproofme.com seems to have useful, honest information without lots of ninja  suit hype.

I would bet that civilian or at least unregistered purchase (as if that would help) of armor is probably something whose days are numbered.  Even though the benefit and non-agressiveness of passive defense devices seems intuitively obvious to the casual observer.

What do you think would happen if you wore armor on a plane?