what is the risk of a hollow point bullet ricocheting (40. cal)?

Answer 1

Know where the bullet is going before you shoot and it is not as much of a problem.

Answer 2

Ricochet should be fairly easy to prevent with hollow points. The bullets will deform on impact and not have enough force to return to the shooter. However, at shallow angles the bullets can still bounce off the target and continue in a new direction. The other thing you need to watch out for is the jacket separating from the bullet. When the hollow points expand the jackets can be stripped off and send fragments back at the shooter. 25-50 feet is not uncommon for a jacket to travel. For this reason, you should wear safety glasses. The jacket will not be lethal but it is hot and could damage your vision.

Answer 3

Any bullet can ricochet.
It depends on the angle, material of the target, and the type of round you are shooting. Some bullets are made to fragment upon impact, some are made to mushroom, or expand. If the target is hard enough, all of that energy has to go somewhere, in many cases the smallest angle will result in either a change in the original path of the bullet, or it bouncing off in a random angle-ricochet.

If you are really curious, go to a range, with steel silhouette targets and shoot at some at about 15M while watching to see where the rounds land after they strike the target. You will be surprised at where some of the bullets land.

If you get the angle just right, you may even see a few where they literally fall straight to the ground right under the target.

Be safe

Answer 4

The .40 is quite obviously significantly harder hitting than the 9mm and more effective in stopping power. The case holds around 30% more charge and the projectile is 11-12% larger on the face. We have people arguing on the one hand that recoil is to hard, then on the other that there isn't much difference in effectiveness. HELLO? Where did you people come from? There is absolutely no argument here, to say a 9mm compares to the .40 is just stupid. It has significantly less speed per grain of lead, less over all mass, smaller diametre so less effective energy to target. Any idiot can look that up, it's even in Wikipedia for hecks sake. History of .40 S&W: The .40 was developed from the 10mm case which some law enforcement had loaded down to take the edge off the recoil, but still RETAIN MUCH HIGHER EFFECTIVE TOTAL ENERGY TO TARGET. The .40 was developed in a shorter version of the 10mm, same case size just less length. I can see some of these idiots LOVE their 9mm, but that's not what it's about. It's about facts not emotional attatchment to a freekin weapon. Some of these responses are unbelievable and I have to wonder if it's not the same guy in different ID's because I don't think you could round up this many idiots on the subject to outnumber the rational thinking people on the subject of fire arms. EDIT: Sure, you can down load anything and push a lesser round to the max and come close. The .40 itself resulted from the downloading of the 10mm, but you can't reasonably argue that a cartridge that has much less recoil puts out the same energy, HELLO? that's just stupid. More energy = more recoil. It's a scientific fact. Newton's law even, look it up, lol!

Answer 5

A Ricochet is simple physics. The angle of incident equals the angle of reflection. There is no way to stop it from happening.

Where a hollow point comes in as being "safer" is once it hits something it is far more likely to disintergrate or at least be very deformed as compared to a full metal jacket. If it disintergrates, the little pieces will not go very far and can not do much harm. If it is deformed, it will be less likely to carry on any great distance due to greatly increased wind resistance.

Answer 6

I dont think there is a very high chance a hollow point will recochet, usually if a hollow point strikes a hard object (ie: steel or water) it expands rapidly into little pieces, but the fragments are still very hot and sometimes can cause injury.

Answer 7

any bullet can ricochet, even off glass depending on the angle.

Answer 8

both above make great points

On hard surface and dead on, a hallow point will Mushroom or Explode

But on an angle there is a chance the bullet will deflect

Answer 9

As with any bullet, it depends on what you hit and its hardness and what the angle is.

Answer 10

little less than the roundball, but nevertheless, bring the glasses and put a good distance when shooting metal targets.