I saw Army issued body armor plates shattered by M16 rounds at close range (say, 100 feet) in Iraq.
It made me a little less confident that it would stop an AK round, but I was a fobbit who pulled the occasional convoy and/or guard duty, so I didn’t think about it too much. I figured I’d be protected from most shrapnel.
I’m assuming most grunts got fired at from farther away, because you don’t hear about failed body armor all that often. In fact, the Army liked to show us a video, taken by an Iraqi sniper, of a soldier who was shot, but then got back up and killed the perpetrator (complete with the sniper’s own arabic speech saying “Allahu akbar, how did he do it?”). So I know they worked.
First off I will site my experience as a former gun nut who, with my friends, has shot thousands and thousands of different caliber bullets at all kinds of materials including heavy steel plates. Sadly the answer to your question depends on the circumstances.
Range is a big factor and if you are shot at from only 10 feet away the bullet might penetrate the armor you are talking about. However the bullet that exits the armor will be have lost so much velocity that it is probably not lethal. This armor will definitely save your life. If you are shot from 100 yards then the bullet will not penetrate the armor and you will be safe.
Also if a bullet does penetrate this armor then it will not be shaped like a bullet anymore and the deformation of the bullet will also reduce the bullet lethality tremendously.
Angle of impact is important. If a bullet strikes the armor at a perfect perpendicular to the armor then it will penetrate more. The more off-perpendicular a bullet hits the armor then the more of the bullets energy will be deflected rather than spent to penetrate the armor. This is good except the bullet might change trajectory to which direction??? It is in which direction the bullet deflects to that could be to your advantage or disadvantage.
Just an added advice: with the threat you have in mind, you must be at least 40 feet away and moving. Very few shooters can hit a moving head at 40 feet.
Not sure. I was shown it a couple of times in training. But I know a lot of the other videos I saw were straight off of Youtube, so I’d bet that one was too.
Could you just lock the classroom door instead? The shooter is likely to just move on to an easier target. Or are you worried about the threat coming from within? Those six year olds can conceal quite a lot in their “diapers”
I have absolutely no idea how such a scenario would or could play out. Fortunately for me, I’m at laboratory school right now and campus police are only three minutes away at most—on foot. They’re literally right on the other side of a small parking lot. And they already stick their heads in the door every five minutes to make sure everything is copacetic. I couldn’t ask for a better or safer environment. Which is fortunate, as the school is not taking the (albeit extremely remote) chance of an armed assault seriously. I have no idea where I will be five years from now, or what the policies will be there, or what resources I will have available to me. All I know is that if it ever comes down to a situation where I am the only thing standing between my students and an armed lunatic, then chances are I’m going to go Cato Fong on his ass. I’ve lived long enough, and anybody who works day in and day out with children that young and is not willing to take a round for them should seek employment elsewhere. I’ll try everything at my disposal to stay alive myself, but seeking safe refuge after I have secured it for my students would in all probability be an unacceptable course of action. It would most likely simply enable the intruder to seek an easier target. Ideally, I get all my children to safety right when law enforcement shows up. Life, however, rarely deals us ideal hands. If $130 and a small sewing project is all it takes to buy me a fighting chance, then it’s well worth the time, money, and effort spent.
I use a sheet of AR500 armorplate 3/8" thick as a backstop. It shows no damage from .308, .223, or 7.62x39 fired from 15 yards. The plate is inclined at 20 degrees from vertical.
Hope this might help.