Cartridge Size Comparison: .30-06 to 9mm
What This Image Shows
A top-down photograph of five cartridges laid out side by side in descending order of size on a closed black spiral notebook, on a granite counter. Each has been labelled in the image: 30-06, 556, 357, 45, and 9mm.
The photograph exists to make one point visually that is otherwise buried in numbers. A .30-06 cartridge is far larger than the handgun rounds most people picture when they hear the word bullet, and the energy figures follow the size — roughly 2,914 foot-pounds, about 3,950 joules, for a 180-grain .30-06 at 2,700 feet per second, against roughly 356 foot-pounds, about 482 joules, for a 115-grain 9mm.
The argument built on that gap is that a round carrying eight times the energy of a 9mm is expected to pass through a neck and keep going rather than deposit fragments and stop. Analysts who accept the official account respond that soft-point construction, bone strike, and fragmentation change that picture substantially. Both are laid out at .30-06 Energy Mismatch and Alternative Calibers and Weapons, with the recovered fragment record at ATF Fragment Inconclusive.
Related Areas
- Cluster: Ballistics and the Gun
- Section: Gun & Bullet Analysis
- All photo evidence: Photos