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Bulletproofing Your House
March 27, 2012 2:15 PM Subscribe

"Not only did the .30-30 go through, but this is you." Ballistics expert Paul Harrell demonstrates the stopping power of various objects.

wall vs .30-30

9mm vs 1993 Mercury Sable wagon

90 rounds from an M4 and two M16s vs a wall and a bookshelf

12gauge buckshot vs wall and fridge

All this and more courtesy of Very Low Budget Productions.

posted by dubold (70 comments total) 10 users marked this as a favorite

Isn't this every episode of myth busters?
posted by mattoxic at 2:22 PM on March 27, 2012 [3 favorites]

I appreciate the informative nature of the videos and the lack of fake Russian accent.
posted by zompus at 2:23 PM on March 27, 2012 [6 favorites]

Definitely not the scientific method, but I like it.
posted by mrbill at 2:24 PM on March 27, 2012

They should think outside the box. I bet people would also be interested in seeing a 1993 Mercury Sable wagon vs a wall and a bookshelf. Hell, I think I'd even be willing to watch a wall and fridge vs a wall and a bookshelf.
posted by crunchland at 2:26 PM on March 27, 2012 [9 favorites]

I once clipped a paperback book (a Scholastic Book Club edition of Frank Bonham's Durango Street, if that matters) to my backyard clothesline and took a shot at it from about a foot away with a .410 shotgun with a slug load.

What I envisioned was a book with a perfectly round hole drilled straight through the middle, something I could take into my English class as an editorial comment on what we'd been assigned to read.

What I got was a cloud of confetti that proved completely impossible to clean up, and was basically there until the next hard rain.

Just thought I'd mention that.
posted by Naberius at 2:27 PM on March 27, 2012 [9 favorites]

How did this guy know I was a plastic bottle?
posted by not_on_display at 2:27 PM on March 27, 2012 [7 favorites]

I am waiting for Rocket Launcher Proofing your house.
posted by Chekhovian at 2:27 PM on March 27, 2012

Although the nerd gun nut in me does not see the need to differentiate between a "M4"-style carbine and a longer-barrel "M16" (plus, I don't see that any of them are full-auto, therefore they're all really just different AR15 configurations), especially at that distance. It's the same ammo through all three weapons. A better use would have been to run a different type of 5.56 NATO round through each gun.
posted by mrbill at 2:28 PM on March 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

The Wadsworth Constant: still frustratingly true.
posted by demonic winged headgear at 2:30 PM on March 27, 2012 [8 favorites]

Now I want a Hot Pocket.
posted by shakespeherian at 2:30 PM on March 27, 2012 [4 favorites]

If you're eating a Hot Pocket on your couch, isn't he doing you a favor?

Just kidding, I love hot pockets.

And couches.
posted by thewumpusisdead at 2:33 PM on March 27, 2012 [5 favorites]

Caliente Pocket.
posted by shakespeherian at 2:35 PM on March 27, 2012

I always carry my trusty 20MM.
posted by Burhanistan at 2:35 PM on March 27, 2012

See also the Box o' Truth.
posted by jedicus at 2:36 PM on March 27, 2012 [2 favorites]

I bet people would also be interested in seeing a 1993 Mercury Sable wagon vs a wall and a bookshelf.

But how would they fit the Sable into a gun?
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 2:36 PM on March 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

Here we have a thread about a guy testing what is and is not bulletproof, with commentary from a guy named mrbill. This has "oh noooooooooo!" written all over it.
posted by Hoopo at 2:38 PM on March 27, 2012 [4 favorites]

That was definitely not a 9mm vrs a 1993 Mercury Sable
posted by Bovine Love at 2:39 PM on March 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

These videos should be shown in film school classes, so filmmakers will stop making movies with shootouts where people use sofas as shields.
posted by El Sabor Asiatico at 2:40 PM on March 27, 2012 [6 favorites]

You mean the Ikea DROTTIR can't stop a bullet moving at the speed of sound?
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 2:42 PM on March 27, 2012 [3 favorites]

This is older and not videoy but Don at The Box o' Truth has been doing penetration testing for quite a while.
posted by jarvitron at 2:44 PM on March 27, 2012

I always carry my trusty 20MM.

I'm guessing you don't run very much, then.
(I'm guessing you're not the one doing the running, at any rate.)
posted by Ryvar at 2:45 PM on March 27, 2012 [2 favorites]

Shooting stuff is fun. Once my dad shot an empty mason jar with his 30.06 and it disappeared in a cloud, all that was left was the base of the jar. Man, that was cool.
posted by zzazazz at 2:46 PM on March 27, 2012

You mean the Ikea DROTTIR can't stop a bullet moving at the speed of sound?

In my experience, an Ikea couch can barely stop a cat moving at the speed of cat!
posted by El Sabor Asiatico at 2:47 PM on March 27, 2012 [20 favorites]

That was definitely not a 9mm vrs a 1993 Mercury Sable

Sorry, the link was correct at first... but then my html stopped a bullet.
posted by dubold at 2:56 PM on March 27, 2012 [2 favorites]

So a guy with a bunch of guns who can shoot at stuff makes a "Ballistics Expert." In that case, my dad is the Albert Einstein/Howard Hughes/Mark Zuckerberg of "Ballistics Experts!"
posted by hot_monster at 3:06 PM on March 27, 2012

What if the wall is padded with sticks of dynamite?
posted by TwelveTwo at 3:28 PM on March 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

This man is frighteningly good at shooting things through walls.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 3:39 PM on March 27, 2012

The Great Big Mulp, are you saying that he is using wall hax?
posted by TwelveTwo at 3:45 PM on March 27, 2012 [3 favorites]

All of those videos could have used longer titles and credits. He could have padded them out to be at least 5 minutes long each with a little more effort. Like instead of having each word have it's own sound effect, he could have had each letter have their own gunshot sound effect.
posted by crunchland at 3:57 PM on March 27, 2012 [6 favorites]

How about instead of bulletproofing my fucking house, we live in a world in which you can't go into a Walmart and buy a firearm that can kill me through walls while I'm eating a Hot Pocket on my couch?

I was going to point out that Walmart had stopped selling guns back in about 2006... but it turns out that they started selling guns again last year. From that article:

"We made a business decision to sell them in certain stores because we have realized the appeal was perhaps broader than we thought," said Wal-Mart spokesman David Tovar.

You think?
posted by Forktine at 4:08 PM on March 27, 2012

"It shoots through schools."
posted by kirkaracha at 4:22 PM on March 27, 2012 [2 favorites]

Just reinforces my conclusion that guns have one and only one use at which they are better than anything else: killing people (and animals) while at a safe distance.

They are spectacular at making cans of cheap beer explode in an amusing manner. If I buy a gun, it will be for the sole purpose of murdering paper targets and wily beverages.
posted by flaterik at 4:25 PM on March 27, 2012 [2 favorites]

flaterik: "They are spectacular at making cans of cheap beer explode in an amusing manner. If I buy a gun, it will be for the sole purpose of murdering paper targets and wily beverages."

That's a wasteful use of good beer, and... Oh, you're American. Carry on.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:29 PM on March 27, 2012 [3 favorites]

I specified cheap. Some beer's are for shootin', some are for drinkin'.

When you're out in the hot desert, sometimes those two overlap.
posted by flaterik at 4:32 PM on March 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

I think about how little gun nuts consider the consequences whenever I see pictures of e.g., victorious rioters shooting into the air. If only the slugs would rain down on the shooters...
posted by Cranberry at 4:33 PM on March 27, 2012

Just reinforces my conclusion that guns have one and only one use at which they are better than anything else: killing people (and animals) while at a safe distance. The proof continues to mount that the claims of firearms being useful tools of self-defense are just blatant false advertising. So, not being an animal hunter, I'm repeating what I have written here in gun threads before. If I ever purchase a gun it will be solely for the purpose of murdering somebody. And if I ever decide, for whatever reason I cannot currently conceive, that I intend to murder somebody, it won't matter if there is an internet record of my future intent.

It can't happen here amirite? Regardless of your own personal feelings about owning a gun the fact still remains that sometimes people need killing and those people are usually the ones with a monopoly on violence. Hence the 2nd amendment. The 2nd amendment has nothing to do with self defense and everything to do with defense against tyranny....I will grant you things haven't worked out so well on that front...but on the glass half full side it has, for the most part, deterred our government from acting tyrannical towards middle and upper class whites in this country. I mean have you seen what they do to people in other countries? The military I mean. Now our government is incrementally normalizing police powers of the military inside the U.S. I would argue that now is one of the most important times in the history of this country to own a gun.
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 4:35 PM on March 27, 2012 [3 favorites]

when i was a mere pup, my best friend and i were taking turns shooting holes in stuff with a .22 rifle. when it was my turn, i had the brilliant idea of shooting a hole through a quarter laying on the ground. being a good shot, i put the coin about 6" from my foot, between me and my audience. as i pulled the trigger i wondered, "what would happen if instead of perforating the quarter it ricocheted". bang, my friend started hooping around and screaming. oh oh. my first words of wisdom at this sight was, "you're not going to tell your dad, are you?" pulling up his pant leg revealed a tear drop looking piece of lead sticking out of his calf. of course we pulled it out of his leg to let the blood out. it quit bleeding after awhile, but he says he can still feel a chunk of lead still in there. and that's 50 years later. you'd think he'd let this episode go.
posted by goutytophus at 4:37 PM on March 27, 2012 [4 favorites]

This is why I make sure my house remains very still and avoids any sudden motions.
posted by klarck at 4:39 PM on March 27, 2012 [4 favorites]

And my apartment is under no circumstances allowed to wear a hoodie. Or bow tie.
posted by flaterik at 4:40 PM on March 27, 2012 [2 favorites]

They are spectacular at making cans of cheap beer explode in an amusing manner. If I buy a gun, it will be for the sole purpose of murdering paper targets and wily beverages.

They also seem to be spectacular at making larger things explode or fall apart. If you buy a big enough gun.

If I ever buy a gun, it will be the for the sole purpose of murdering defunct vehicles and other pieces of industrial-sized junk. And it will be at least a .50BMG, if not a cannon.

In the best of all possible worlds, I would use a trebuchet to throw a cannon into the air so that it shoots at a junk car full of watermelons.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 4:42 PM on March 27, 2012 [7 favorites]

How about instead of bulletproofing my fucking house, we live in a world in which you can't go into a Walmart and buy a firearm that can kill me through walls while I'm eating a Hot Pocket on my couch?

My local grocery store (ok, more like a department store---it's a Fred Meyer) not only sells guns, but fishing rods, and bikes, and canoes, and paint, and tents, and baskets for Easter eggs, and, well, pretty much it's where I do all my shopping.

Not sure why guns should be excluded. But then, this is Alaska, and guns are viewed somewhat more like tools than in other places.
posted by leahwrenn at 4:45 PM on March 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

I guess I didn't really think through my plan to bulletproof my house with 1993 Mercury Sables. What a waste.
posted by cmoj at 4:46 PM on March 27, 2012 [2 favorites]

I think about how little gun nuts consider the consequences whenever I see pictures of e.g., victorious rioters shooting into the air. If only the slugs would rain down on the shooters...

Has this been on Mythbusters or something? I actually wonder how lethal a falling bullet would be, with all the tumbling around mid-air and a terminal velocity probably quite a bit less than when it left the barrel.
posted by ymgve at 4:58 PM on March 27, 2012

Yeah, it has been on Mythbusters. Shooting straight into the air, the bullet would tumble and then fall back on the ground at terminal velocity (not fast enough to kill someone). But there are documented cases of people shooting into the air and killing other people some distance away, probably because the trajectory remained ballistic -- the bullet didn't tumble enough.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 5:01 PM on March 27, 2012 [2 favorites]

I would argue that now is one of the most important times in the history of this country to own a gun. posted by AElfwine Evenstar
Absolutely, yes.
posted by blaneyphoto at 5:10 PM on March 27, 2012

I guess I didn't really think through my plan to bulletproof my house with 1993 Mercury Sables.

You should use Scholastic Book Club books. Mythbusters did that, too, but with phone books.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 5:39 PM on March 27, 2012

This is a good thread to point out how "cover" differs from "concealment"....
posted by c13 at 5:54 PM on March 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

My high-school girlfriend had a large piece of 1/4" T1-11 covering the back wall of her bedroom to prevent stray bullets penetrating her aluminium siding house from the crackhouse behind. It hadn't happened again since they put the plywood up so I don't know how effective it would have been. Helps you sleep better at least.
posted by BinGregory at 6:08 PM on March 27, 2012

Guns don't kill people, rappers do.
posted by Damienmce at 7:54 PM on March 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

How about instead of bulletproofing my fucking house, we live in a world in which you can't go into a Walmart and buy a firearm that can kill me through walls while I'm eating a Hot Pocket on my couch?

OK, Admiral Haddock. Are you going to build a time machine and go back and inform the Founding Fathers that they shouldn't have been so damned specific about the importance of bearing arms, or are you just going to restrict firepower to BB guns? Because every other gun on earth can go through walls. House walls are two layers of drywall. Hell, my fist can go through walls (ah, my 20s... how I don't miss you).

If you're going to argue about guns, please learn about guns.
posted by IAmBroom at 8:55 PM on March 27, 2012 [4 favorites]

goutytophus writes "you'd think he'd let this episode go."

I'm not much to hold a grudge or even form a grudge in the first place but I'm pretty sure if someone shoots me, even if it's my best friend, I'm not letting that go any time soon.
posted by Mitheral at 9:04 PM on March 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

...shouldn't have been so damned specific about the importance of bearing arms...

Isn't half the mess of the 2nd Amendment that they were not specific enough? Despite that whole preamble about a well-regulated militia, it keeps being interpreted as the right for persons to bear arms, rather than the people.
posted by explosion at 9:36 PM on March 27, 2012

When I wuz a keed, my dad subscribed to the NRA's American Rifleman. There were ads for surplus guns of all sorts... including, I not you kid, 20mm antitank rifles (fireable!) for under a hundred bucks. I wanted one of those things SO bad. My fifty-cent-a-week allowance wasn't up to the task, though.
posted by drhydro at 9:37 PM on March 27, 2012

Does anyone have any tips for finding harmony between my glee at seeing things get blown up real good and my conviction that the 2nd amendment is well past retirement age? 'Cause right now they are painfully dissonant.

They blew up that bookcase real good
posted by I've a Horse Outside at 10:00 PM on March 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

Does anyone have any tips for finding harmony between my glee at seeing things get blown up real good and my conviction that the 2nd amendment is well past retirement age?

Michael Bay movies?

As for 2nd Amendment Gun Ownership being an even-flawed deterrent against overreaching authority, I can't recall a single news story about a citizen with guns vs. police that has NOT ended with citizen dead or in prison for the rest of his life. The best you can expect when the Stormtroopers storm in is to take one or two of them out with you. TODAY, the response to "may be armed" is usually to back off... until absolutely overwhelming force can be assembled.

it has, for the most part, deterred our government from acting tyrannical towards middle and upper class whites in this country.
No, the best protection is still BEING middle and upper class white. You could even wear a hoodie!
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:27 PM on March 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

I myself think this is useful information for people who don't have enough experience with various loads/calibers to judge for themselves.
I also think is is directly tied to muzzle velocity, as rifles of any caliber (even .17 or .22 RF are faster than a shotgun. But a shotgun has a much larger payload, especially at short ranges. Pretty intimidating and much more effective at close range. But big shot (buckshot) will travel almost too much in close quarters.
Remember the scene in No Country for Old Men when Chigurh used small shot so he wouldn't bust out the window behind his victim?
My bedside 870 is loaded with trap loads (small shot), even though my nearest neighbor is well out of range.
Neighborly courtesy, you understand.
posted by primdehuit at 10:49 PM on March 27, 2012

Isn't half the mess of the 2nd Amendment that they were not specific enough? Despite that whole preamble about a well-regulated militia, it keeps being interpreted as the right for persons to bear arms, rather than the people.

I myself am concerned about an argument that would exclude a person or persons from "the people"; if that logic can be applied to the 2nd Amendment, why not the others?
posted by dubold at 3:13 AM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]

It can't happen here amirite? Regardless of your own personal feelings about owning a gun the fact still remains that sometimes people need killing and those people are usually the ones with a monopoly on violence. Hence the 2nd amendment.

ima just leave this old slashdot comment here

Have fun in your little made-up universe where the government comes to round you up and you manage to fight it off.

In the real world, fascism is when the corporations and governments work as a single entity, and you can wander around with your fucking gun all you want. In fact, you'll have to wander around, because the government/corporations took your house and your car, and no one will hire you.

At which point you'll be arrested, not as some big anti-government hero by jackboot thugs, but for stealing bread to live on, by a perfectly normal cop who's just doing his job, a job that absolutely no one except you disagrees with, so when you shoot and kill him you're getting the electric chair and no one thinks you're a hero at all.

There are different types of totalitarian governments, and assuming a fascist one operates like a communist one is faulty. Fascist governments don't put troops in the streets...they work with corporations to make sure 'the wrong sort of people' do not have any economic power, and do not have anywhere to peddle their ideas.

Modern fascist states don't even bother to kill those people, and pretending they're going to show up in some stormtrooper outfit and start a gun battle with you is insane. They'll show up with a court order to evict you from your home because you failed to pay your mortgage, because pressure came from the top at your company to let you go. Or they'll just sue you and ruin your finances.

America is not a bunch of tiny castles where, as long as you can hold off the invading armies, you will be fine. The idea that that is how the world works is astonishingly naive. Almost all the population of America lives in housing they do not fully own, they get food from places they do not control like the supermarket, they require operating in society for money to obtain said food and shelter, a society where economics are controlled by some very large players that can crush them like bugs.

And a fascist state isn't going to 'assume control', you asshat. There's not going to some insane coup, there's a going to be a slow change, which has, in fact, already happened, or have you not looked at the telecom immunity stuff? That's classic fascism. The government breaks the law, the government gets private companies to break the law, the government gives said companies huge amounts of cash, the government attempts to make such behavior legal retroactively. We've got government officials and AT&T officers leaping back and forth between each other in an incestuous loop. Your government spying on you, sponsored by AT&T. It's not 'totalitarian' yet, as evidenced by the fact Democrats managed to stop the immunity, but it is fascism, at least the start of it. (And the same thing's happened with Blackwater.)

Oh, and before you start ranting about gun control some more, be forewarned I'm against it. I'm just not stupid enough to think that the US government being slowly corrupted by business is something that can be fought off with gunpowder. Guns are useful to deter crime and to deter invasion. They aren't useful against a corrupt government in any meaningful way.
posted by p3on at 3:59 AM on March 28, 2012 [3 favorites]

erm stawman....? I don't have any fantasies about me fighting off any government. But humans have this cool ability to form groups with a common purpose thereby foregoing the need to act as a lone wolf. Either way the purpose of the right to bear arms it is deterrence, not some stupid hollywood strawman. As for the rest of the comment it seems pretty spot on.
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 5:20 AM on March 28, 2012

Speaking of groups.
posted by AElfwine Evenstar at 5:26 AM on March 28, 2012

I can personally attest that unopened #10 can of re-fried beans shot with soft-nose hollow-point 30-30 explodes in a spectacularly satisfying way. Well, satisfying to a couple teenage boys.
posted by achrise at 6:26 AM on March 28, 2012

Isn't half the mess of the 2nd Amendment that they were not specific enough? Despite that whole preamble about a well-regulated militia, it keeps being interpreted as the right for persons to bear arms, rather than the people.

explosion (why are these posts always so damned eponysterical???), the language of the Constitution is intentionally vague, in many respects. Even if it hadn't been, Congress and the SCOTUS would find ways to waffle it (corporate spending = protected free speech).

As for your bizarre suggestion that persons aren't people, dubold covered that already.

(Full Disclosure: I'm agnostic on gun rights. Show me the proof it works, before we remove liberties.)
posted by IAmBroom at 9:19 AM on March 28, 2012

Show me the proof it works, before we remove liberties.

Do I really need to show you relative gun-related violence rates compared to other countries?
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:28 AM on March 28, 2012

> Do I really need to show you relative gun-related violence rates compared to other countries?

I'm not sure how useful it is to even have this conversation in a thread about videos of a guy shooting up shit, but that would probably not be an even comparison. Many countries don't have long histories of personal firearm ownership like the US does.
posted by Burhanistan at 9:52 AM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]

Also there are countries out there where everyone owns a gun and they manage lower rates of gun violence than the States. Guns aren't the issue rather it is the culture of violence.
posted by Mitheral at 12:55 PM on March 28, 2012 [4 favorites]

But humans have this cool ability to form groups with a common purpose thereby foregoing the need to act as a lone wolf. Either way the purpose of the right to bear arms it is deterrence, not some stupid hollywood strawman.

that's exactly my point, do you think that at any point people are going to be able to overthrow the US government with with hunting rifles
posted by p3on at 7:07 PM on March 28, 2012

that's exactly my point, do you think that at any point people are going to be able to overthrow the US government with with hunting rifles

No. Nobody thinks that.
posted by cmoj at 9:55 PM on March 28, 2012 [1 favorite]

Machine guns and C-4, on the other hand...
posted by Burhanistan at 10:12 PM on March 28, 2012

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Bulletproofing Your House March 27, 2012 2:15 PM Subscribe

Bulletproofing Your House
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