So pretend a law enforcement officer (FBI, for example) is on the case, and reaches a door locked with a padlock. He has to get through it (to save a victim, catch a suspect, etc.) and minutes count.
He doesn’t have the key, or bolt-cutters. But he does have a gun.
Does he draw his gun and blow the padlock off the door?
It happens in TV shows and movies all the time, and I’m curious how often it happens IRL.
MythBusters tried this one and it was, at best, really unlikely to work, especially with a handgun. (IIRC, you could demolish a lock with a shotgun slug.)
Also, there would be significant safety issues with firing off a gun in such a frankly ridiculous manner. On the one hand, the bullet (or debris from the lock) might fly back and injure the officer, or ricochet off and hit an innocent bystander behind him. Conversely, if the bullet goes through the lock and door, then he’s firing blindly into a closed room–never a good idea. (The room could be full of innocent toddlers being held for ransom for all he knows.)
I believe SWAT teams use battering rams when they need to knock down a door.
The padlock may be strong, but isn’t the hinge it’s on pretty weak? I thought the usual method for busting through a door was a swift kick or a thrown shoulder…
I don’t know how often it happens, but there are frangible shotgun rounds specifically designed for blowing away locks without risk of ricochets, so apparently it does happen from time to time.
Or of course you could use one of those compressed air gizmos like Chigurh.
I wouldn’t try it with a handgun unless it was an extreme life-or-death situation.
Our Special Operations Team does have special shotgun rounds, made pretty much of powdered lead, that are great for blowing off locks and hinges.
Have you ever tried that on any door stronger than your average house internal door? I have, and it didn’t take very long to realize that it was way stronger than I was. TV != real life.
There’s a fellow who tries this stuff out, his website is “The Box Of Truth”. He tried shooting padlocks with various guns to see how it worked - admittedly not your standard deadbolt door lock but I think it gives an idea of what would happen, and it pretty much matches what Mythbusters found (pistols don’t do much, a powerful rifle or a 12ga shotgun gets the job done).
http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/bot5.htm
There are a bunch of specialized door breaching devices; the plain old battering ram seems to get the job done quite well judging by all those episodes of “Cops” and “Dallas SWAT” and so forth. Thalion is the Hatton round the powdered lead slug? I’ve also heard that another technique is to use a 12ga but to fire at the hinges (I assume the idea is that bad guys might have a really strong lock or the knob braced but they tend to forget about the other edge of the door). Then there’s the old standby of explosives, I’ve seen video of a big flat charge that is pressed against the door and detonated while the team stands off to the side. Poof, door vanishes. Ditto with a special rifle-launched grenade (manufactured by an Israeli company IIRC).
Yes, I am aware of the difference between TV and reality. A hard kick was enough to take the front door off my apartment in Costa Mesa a few years back. I imagine an interior door would have been much easier- in fact, they were hollow, so I could have probably splintered it myself, and I am a petite thing.
I find that house internal doors are much weaker in real life than on television.
Correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn’t it be more effective to shoot around the lock thus weakling its attachment to the door and perhaps allowing it to be separated from the door itself with a strong blow? I’m assuming a non-metal door here.
That would be why I excluded them from my point. (American) internal doors are very weak. But external doors do not give way with a sharp kick as easily as shown on TV.
I’ve been told an average padlock will yield to a sledgehammer blow if you get the angle just right. The one time I’ve seen it tried, either the angle wasn’t right or the padlock was above average.
I’ve seen two solid front doors that had been kicked in by burglars. In both cases the door was pretty much undamaged; it was the frame that gave in.
BTW: In the latter case, the burglars got into the front room, but didn’t get past a baby gate to the rest of the house. Why? I can only guess, but the gate had our boxer Sam behind it.
Good dog!
Amen. A standard US interior door is made out of garbage. It’s two pieces of 1/8th inch thick wood with a sandwich of zig-zags of cardboard inside. The only bits of solid wood are at the top, bottom, sides and a segment where the door handle goes. Anyone can kick through that crap.
If you happen to have a Terminator, or have recently been issued a Burn Notice, you ignore the door and go through the adjacent wall.
I could probably push my way through one, forget kicking.
I like the enthusiasm in the replies from everyone.
I’m really talking about a padlock though, not a deadbolt. And it might be a door, or a metal sliding door (harder to push through the frame than a wooden door), but might also be gates, or some other blocking mechanism.
I’ve been Netflixing Bones lately, and Booth often shoots padlocks off of doorways. Brennan has been asking for a gun for a while and had been turned down, but that was just a department-issued gun.
She eventually went out and bought her own (a .50 caliber monstrosity that was far too big for her to handle). In season 3, they’re entering a place, and Booth casually shoots a padlock off of something and pushes a gate open.
They get to another door, and Bones asks if she can shoot it. Booth says no, but she shoots it anyhow, and the ricochet hits his leg, giving him a flesh wound. (Interesting someone already mentioned the ricochet thing). And, inside that room was a hostage they were trying to rescue!
The implication is that the FBI agent knows when to blow a padlock off, but the doctor who’s not on the force does not.
I’ve seen this behavior from law enforcement in other movies and TV shows though. Don’t get me started on Alias and her usage of fire extinguishers to open locks… (Apparently they freeze the lock so it can be knocked off casually…)
I personally saw a Master combination lock blown clean off a gate by a 12-gauge shotgun with something like #4 or #6 shot, something which I would have bet $20 was not possible before I saw it with my own eyes. And the lock wasn’t just torn free, it was destroyed to where the largest piece was the loop.
Can I try that at home? 
I am picturing a padlock with the hasp through a metal loop, which is held to the door and the frame by metal plates. Wouldn’t it be easier to get under those plates with a pry bar (such as the tire iron in my trunk) and avoid the padlock entirely?
Maybe not fast, but would it work?
Technology presumed to have advanced sufficiently so that none of the team setting it up is hoist by it…