poliorcetes said...

I just cannot identify any meaningful justification of putting AP rounds in civilian private hands

Sadly, there is a significant number of US citizens who are convinced that they will eventually need to battle government troops.  They see any restriction related to firearms as a deliberate attempt to weaken their ability to fight back against their oppressor (again, the US Government) .  Some even see the Second Amendment of the US Constitution (the right to bear arms) as meaning civilians should have the same level of firearms as the military in order to prevent government tyranny.

There are, of course, also those who take delight in defying restrictions by inventing legal work-arounds.

autogun said:

An interesting new general-purpose pistol round from Atlas Arms, combining expansion with penetration.

I believe its actually a mixture of fragmentation and penetration. 

Essentially, the black part is a non-discarding sabot, that on impact will fracture via hydraulic pressure, similar to the Liberty Defense 50gr. 

I had a similar idea years ago when looking into saboted 9x19. I had been thinking discarding sabot (similar to the discarding sabot used for the .223 Timbs 7.62x25) but then came across the 80's Thunderzap:

https://www.defensivecarry.com/threads/thunderzap-ammo.476349/

We or he received reports, unconfirmed, of how well the .38 Special and .45 ACP worked. According to one report a pistol owner was attacked by a mugger in NYC and he/she shot the attacker in the shoulder, removing much of the flesh and muscle tissue. The would was peppered with white granular polymer pieces. The hospital staff was able to save the mugger’s life but he had to mug one armed after he recovered since the shot arm was “shot”.

The second report came out of South Africa. In this case the round was a .45. As the story goes an armed robber entered one of the 6X8 bars that are around SA and announced the holdup. The bartender/owner proceded to fire one shot center mass which caused the robber to drop dead. The story we received was that the flesh was separated from the ribs all around to the spine and the heart was puree. We could never get any police reports or conformation on any use of the rounds on people.

Having read that, I figured using the sabot as a 'thunderzap' style fragmenting projectile, with a steel arrowhead, would make for a pretty useful round, while also being easier to make then a discarding sabot. 

i subsequently abandoned the project after getting into 5.7, and then with the advent of various high performance copper 9x19 projectiles on the market. 

In terms of Dagny (or similar design) he's using a Shell Shock 9x19 case - 1/2 the weight of brass.

30gr case

3gr primer

7gr powder

48.5gr Dagny bullet

= 88.5gr / 5.75g cartridge weight 

Virtually all rifle rounds will penetrate light body armor. So will sabot slugs from a shotgun. Do you wish to ban civilians from owning most long guns?

There have been a few cases of criminals wearing armor. There have been more incidents where body armor has been seized during investigations, but it wasn't being worn.

They actually have been being arrested with body armor heavily for quite awhile now.

And that was even before this year and the riots happening several places where it's trivially easy to find Twitter strings showing "protestors" requesting that their supporters purchase and send them body armor and their supporters dutifully complying and sending both 3a and rifle rated soft/hard armor and ballistic helmets in very large quantities.

People can poo poo this all they want but the people who do have Actively chosen not to seek out information on whether this is a real and pressing threat or not.

This is in addition to the shockingly routine and shockingly large interceptions of full auto weapons parts body armor and other very illegal things going to very questionable people.

Yes they are APHP rounds loosely based around the same concepts and construction of some Russian AP pistol ammo.

I'm actually in line for a preproduction box so I'll keep you guys posted if and when I get mine.

poliorcetes said:

I just cannot identify any meaningful justification of putting AP rounds in civilian private hands

Why should a meaningful justification be required?

I'm a fan of exotic AP pistol ammunition.

My main objection to the Dagny is that its deliberately provocative - designed to grab attention - and will likely result in new legislation being crafted that expands the definition of what constitutes 'AP' - likely resulting in the banning of a number of unrelated but useful projectiles. 

Whereas previous kevlar penetrating, legal bullets were extremely careful not to make any mention of that capability - allowing those in the know to have that ability, without creating any backlash. 

Being inoffensive and sub Rosa has done nothing but cost us more and more ground.

Especially because there are manufacturers out there who depend on DOD and Leo contracts as their bread and butter who have been willing to sell us down the river.

I very much agree with what they're doing why and how they're going about it.

At the Crux of this are very stupid very badly written laws and policies that were and are designed as a means of shadow gun control by progressively marching things like environmental regulations and other policies up to the gates and by default creating a situation where it will eventually become cost prohibitive or outright impossible to make ammo for civilians.

In that respect, drawing attention to this is a very good thing.