Sorry in advance for the wall 'o text ![]()
hey @Yusheng your original post suggests you got some kinda close, but incomplete information.
As a couple others in here have pointed out, what you are describing with “boat tail hollow point” sounds more like an mk262 or similar clone made by a variety of manufacturers (IMI, Black Hills, PPU, Winchester, etc). The “hollow point” isn’t actually a hollow point like you might find in a 9mm HST or Gold Dot for your Glock 19, the cavity is entirely for aerodynamic purposes. mk262 is a heavy fragmenting round, used alot by US Forces in the middle east as its fairly effective and is actually really accurate over distance. It’s not bad, but as civilians we have access to better options.
One thing should be really clear… Anything that is effective against a human sized target will absolutely penetrate several layers of drywall. Typical AR15 ammo will penetrate less than something like a pistol round (counter-intuitive, but true) but it will still go through several layers of drywall. There are several things you can do to mitigate over-penetration if that is a major concern:
- #1 is hit your target. A well-chosen projectile will dump most/all its energy into the target and not retain enough velocity to penetrate any further walls
- know your shooting lanes/backstops. It’s your home, you know where its “OK” if a round passes through and where it isn’t
- strategically place furniture as a backstop. Place a full bookcase at the end of that hallway to help absorb and mitigate risk of passthrough for example.
- proper ammo selection. A light fragmenting round will have less penetration issues than a heavy monolithic copper projectile
Down to the nitty gritty.
Since you are concerned with penetration I’m going to recommend the Sierra Tipped Match King (TMK) projectile. It’s used by several manufacturers, the most “known” is Black hills. So you’ll want to look for Black Hills TMK in 5.56. Corbon also makes one, AAC made/sold by Palmetto State Armory also has one. There are probably others. This is a fragmenting round with a (slightly) expanding base that gets you to good penetration amounts (FBI 12-18in criteria). It is stunningly effective in target and if you miss the fragments fall off quite easily when hitting any material (like drywall) losing both mass and velocity. The primary downside is its not barrier blind. The other downside is that since COVID it has been very hard to find and when available is very expensive.
Personally I like a good expanding soft point. Speer Gold Dots (55, 62, 75 grain options) are really good and reasonably priced (when in stock), and use the same projectile as in the Federal Fusion MSR hunting round. Grab whichever one is available for cheaper. Hornady makes several defensive rounds but I’m not familiar with them. Many “hunting” rounds will also do decently well but those are usually priced higher per round since they are sold in smaller quantities.
Do NOT run frangible rounds. They are designed to disintegrate on contact with something “hard” like steel plates. Otherwise, they behave just like an FMJ. You are literally getting the worst of both worlds that way.
You probably don’t want any monolithic projectiles like the copper TSX (loaded by Black Hills and others) as they are made to pass through pretty much everything and retain their mass as much as possible. “Tumbling” projectiles like M193 or (kinda) M855 are “OK” but are a bit unpredictable, so while effective you probably don’t want those either.
I wrote more in a previous post about the subject (sorry, another wall-o-text) which contains more info.
If you’re still awake after reading all that I hope it helps!