The Range Bag

April 24th, 2005 - Shooting Locks

I've often noticed in movies and TV shows how people are able to go up to a padlock, take one shot with a pistol and have it fly off. For some reason, the question popped into my head recently, "How easy is it in real-life to shoot a padlock off?"

A guy on AR15.com that goes by Old_Painless has been doing some ballistics tests over the past several months on various items (plywood, drywall, etc), so we sent him some funds to buy some padlocks and do some tests for me to satisfy my curiosity. BTW, check out his web site for all the different tests he's done so far: The Box O' Truth. Lots of great pictures and the .45-70 test is quite impressive. :) The following is a reprint of Old_Painless' "Lock 'O Truth" report.

Here's the set up: The locks were "MintCraft, 2 inch Laminated Padlocks", a knock-off of Master type locks. They were heavy-duty and turned out to be tough. We shot from a distance of about 15 feet, mostly to be far enough away in case of lead splattering. Guys on the movies sometimes place the muzzle against the lock, but I'm not that crazy.

First, we shot a lock with 9mm ball. You can see that it flattened out and dented the lock. It froze-up the lock and it could not be unlocked. But it held tight.

I decided to shoot the same lock with a 9mm JHP. As you can see, it dented the lock, but bounced off.

Next, it was time for John Browning's finest, the .45 ACP. The .45 ball flattened out against the lock, but the key would still open it. Not much effect.

So, it was time for the .44 Magnum, "The most powerful handgun in the world and capable of blowing your head clean off!", at least according to Dirty Harry. I used a 240 grain JHP. I'll admit to a bad shot that only hit the bottom of the lock, but the second one centered it just fine. You can see where one of the pins on the lock was blown upwards. The lock was frozen shut. But the lock held like a rock.

Well, it was time for the rifles. Now, just to get a little technical, rifles, when shot at close range, have what is called "sight-offset", which means they will shoot low due to the sights being higher than the bore. I tested one shot before taking the shot at the lock. The sight offset for an AR is about 2 1/2 inches: It was now time to shoot the lock, and aim 2 1/2 inches higher than the desired impact.

First, an AR-15 shooting XM193 Ball. The 5.56 went through the lock like a hot knife through butter.

Here's the exit on the back of the lock. The lock was frozen, but still held. We also tried a round of Remington .223 Soft Point, with the exact same results

Next, we shot the FAL, with Australian M1A2 .308 Ball. Here I am busting it.

Here's the lock. I am holding the new lock on the right just to compare. The .308 blew the bottom half of the lock off. But, once again, the lock held and did not come off, even when pulled. I also loaded up a round with a pulled .30 AP bullet and got the same results.

We were not able to get a "Breeching round" for a shotgun, but my friend Blain had sent me a sample 12 gauge Brennke slug to test and this seemed like a good time to use it. Here I am getting ready to test the shotgun.

Here's the result. It blew it to pieces!

This next picture shows where we found the biggest piece of the lock, 50 feet behind the target.

Here's the rest of the lock.

And here is a look from where we found it back to the target area.

Lessons learned:

"How hard is it to shoot off a lock?" Answer: Very hard.
Pistols won't shoot a lock off or even penetrate the lock.
Pistols are pistols and rifles are rifles. Enough said.
I now understand why our troops are often seen carrying "breeching shotguns" on their backs and a rifle in their hands. Shotguns will blow a lock off. Rifles will blow holes through a lock, but will not reliably shoot one off.
The rifles went through the locks with ease. It is obvious that you could "knaw" off the lock, little by little with a rifle, but a shotgun does it with one shot.

Ain't retirement great!