Shot Stop Level 3+ Body Armor Testing and Review

Hey everybody, how's it going? It's the Daily Shooter and if you want to find out how to make really good body armor look like this, go ahead and stay tuned because I've got some pretty cool body armor for you. Now the body armor that we're going to be taking a look at today, the stuff you just saw a second ago, is from a company called ShotStop. They have a website called ShotStop.com. As a matter of fact, I tested out a couple of their level 3A panels last week and the results were really, really impressive. Level 3A is basically a pistol rated body armor panel. Level 3A will stop up to .44 Magnum, multiple hits, as tested by the NIJ. These were NIJ tested panels. They were really interesting. Only like a pound and they were maybe a quarter of an inch thick or just a hair over a quarter of an inch thick. I shot them with 7 rounds of .45 ACP, .40 Smith & Wesson, 9mm and both of the panels held up great. Zero pass through. I mean, very impressive body armor. Today we're going to be taking a look at their level 3 plus plates. The NIJ doesn't test up to level 3 plus. They only test at level 3, which is what these were tested by, by the NIJ. But the company has tested them far beyond what the NIJ says their standard is. So these are actually tested to a special threat level that's higher than the NIJ standard. So really interesting stuff and I was excited to take it out there. Now unlike my previous body armor tests, I'm not going to go ahead and make this a 15 minute video where we shoot, we stop, we look each and every single time. I'm going to show you guys what I had, what I used, I'm going to show you guys some of the shots and we're going to talk about it because this stuff took an absolute beating and it's really impressive. All right, so let's go ahead and start by talking about the ammunition that I chose and I chose this ammo for a specific reason. These calibers are the most common calibers that you're going to find around the world. These are calibers that are being used in today's military and civilian rifles and I feel that they represent a good swath of what this armor might actually come up against. So we have some 55 grain .223, some 62 grain .556. We have some 7.62x39 which is typically shot out of an AK style rifle but I have a 16 inch barreled AR-15 that's chambered in 7.62x39, it's 120 grain and we also have some .308. .308 is a little bit hotter than your NATO 7.62x51, that's why I decided to go with that and those calibers right there I think represent your biggest threat when you're out in the open. Okay, .308, .556, .223, 7.62x39. And so that's what we're going to use. Now we'll talk about the body armor. This is lightweight body armor. Very nice body armor, has a great curve to it, a nice coating. This type of body armor is known to protect you from spalling unlike steel body armor which when it gets hit almost instantly creates some type of spalling effect. Whether or not you have a coating on it will depend whether or not that spalling is going to last or spalling is going to penetrate at some particular point right away or after a few shots. But still, spalling will occur more likely in hard metal surfaces. So these ones right here are a little bit less susceptible to that spalling. A lightweight plate, absolute great panels, very light, easy to wear. I mean you could run around with these things all day and it's not going to wear you out because they are just so light and well made. So we're going to go ahead and we're going to put these up against a bale of hay. And basically what I did is I took a couple shots with each caliber just to see how well it would do. So I shot it a couple times with the .62 grain .556. The .62 grain is actually the round that will more typically or most typically go through body armor like this. And you know it's a really common mistake. People think that the .62 grain is an armor piercing round or a light armor piercing round of some sort and that it will blow through steel armor. Which is really not the case. As a matter of fact, .62 grain presents more of a threat to this type of armor than it does to steel because it's a little bit slower, it's a little bit heavier, and it has a little bit more of a punch through it when it comes to some of the lighter weight body armors, the ceramics, the composites and things of that nature. And it's less of a threat to steel. What's a threat to steel plates is your standard .55 grain .223. Most cases it will just go right through steel body armor. So the special threat for some of these plates are to actually be able to stop a .62 grain. If you can find a body armor panel like this that will stop a .62 grain, you know that you are looking at some really good body armor. And it stopped it, no problem. So after that I saw this thing stop the .62 grain, both panels actually stopped the .62 grain, I knew that we were going to be up against something. So it was kind of time to really beat these up and hit it with multiple rounds of the 7.62x39. 7.62x39 is a good penetrator, but it's not necessarily something that's going to penetrate body armor all that easily. So I put multiple rounds on each plate of 7.62x39 and sure enough, again, absolutely nothing went through. We had some damage to the panels, but as far as penetration is concerned, nothing. You know, it just didn't go through whatsoever. Upon further inspection, as a matter of fact, it didn't even pass the first layer of protection. So that was really interesting. And that was on both panels. Now we're going to go ahead and move it up to .308. And again, .308 is a caliber that I chose, or a load that I chose over 7.62x51 because .308 tends to be a little bit hotter. So with .308 being a little bit hotter, maybe it gives us a better chance, full metal jacket, better penetrating power, and so forth. 150 grain, it's a pretty average round. So I decided that that's what we're going to shoot next. And we're going to go ahead and shoot multiple rounds of .308 per plate to see how that holds up. We're using an 18-inch Criterion barrel. I should mention also for the .223, we're also using an 18-inch Criterion barrel. So .223, .556, and .308, both out of 18-inch barrels. And I'm only, and no joke, I'm only about 30 feet away from this plate. Not 30 yards, not 50 yards, not 100 yards, 30 feet from these plates. I'm shooting next to my truck. So here we go, .308 and absolutely nothing. Both plates took multiple hits of .308 from only about 30 feet away. And yeah, I mean, it pummeled the plates. That's pretty much what took the front portion of the plate off of the back portion of the plate because the backstop that I'm using was kind of soft. And so when you get that hit, you know, a lot of that kinetic energy is really shoved through the back portion of the plate and that kind of pushed it into the hay bale, you know, and that's what separated it. But if that was going to be something that's worn against your chest or in a plate carrier, you're not going to have that type of separation. It was simply because of my backstop that you had the separation that you see. Nonetheless, multiple rounds of .308, 7.62x39, .223, .556, and nothing. I am just absolutely impressed because it took every caliber that I chose and stopped it completely. Okay, so here's one of the panels. This is the first panel that I shot, and I put the fewest rounds on this one because the backstop started to wear out. I had used the same backstop for the previous level 3A test, and so it started to get like a hole in the back and it was pushing the body armor into that hole. So it wasn't a very good backstop, so I stopped testing this one, switched it over, rotated it around, and then I used a different spot for the next panel, and you'll see that it's kind of located a different spot on the bale of hay there. But still, this one took .223, .556, 7.62x39, and .308, multiple hits, and absolutely nothing went through. And it was really impressive. There are some tears, there are some missing, you know, spots or whatever in the back where you can see that it kind of shredded the material there, but still absolutely nothing passed through. And you can still hear some of the rounds and some of the shreds that are in there. We had separation of the back portion. You can see right there, we had separation of the back portion and some of the lighter materials that are in there separated from the front. There's a composite front, and then as you can see, a fibrous material right here. It's those two that separated, and again, that was my backstop. Now, the next one is the one that I shot the most. This thing took the most abuse and was, to me, one of the most impressive that I've seen because, and I'll see if I can show you guys this, even with all the rounds that I put through it, one thing that you'll notice, even though we had separation of the back, which is, as you can see, just literally the panel that they put on it, and you can see the back here that there has been, you know, no pass through, it's still actually nice and clean, it just kind of tore this off. This right here, even after all of those rounds, all those calibers, the bullets that I put in this thing, there was zero spalling even at the end. So if I show you guys right here what it looks like, you'll see that there is no spalling material coming through, there's no sharp spots, nothing like that. So it held all of these rounds in there, and we'll see, I don't think I'm going to be able to pull this, I don't know if I'm going to be able to pull this apart to get, to show you guys what's in there, but underneath here, you can actually feel the squished bullets. So the bullets went in, even the .308 squished it, and it becomes almost like a flat coin, but zero spalling. You know, spalling is one of those things that's a little bit more major than people give it credit for, because if you have steel body armor and you end up with spalling, where do you think it's going to go? It's going to go into your arms, it's going to go into your neck, I mean, just that alone, you stop the bullet and you still end up bleeding out. So something like this that's going to stop all of those rounds and still not have any spalling is kind of a big deal to me. So I think that that's pretty incredible. Even though we had the panel come off the back, no big deal, nothing came through. As a matter of fact, I bet you I could even shoot this some more and nothing else is going to go through it. So pretty impressive stuff, I got to say. If you guys want to check them out, and you're looking for good body armor, and you want to maybe avoid some of what steel body armor can give you, go over to ShotStop.com. Their stuff is fantastic. It passed all my tests, it passed the NIJ test, which is the most important thing, and the information that they give you is fantastic. They sent me these sheets. These sheets have specific information on them regarding the NIJ testing, what they tested it with, what the panels can hold, you know, withstand, the weights, the powders that they used, the bullets that were used, the velocities, I mean, even the humidity, the temperature at 66.3 degrees, barometric pressure, the barometric pressure, as a matter of fact, it was 29.4. So everything is available to you. You can see all of the information that was used when they were testing their plates, all the NIJ information, and it's great stuff. So definitely check it out. You know, I know I get a little bit excited about things sometimes, but when I go out with the intention to put a hole in something, and even though I used all this stuff and it doesn't put a hole in it, I get genuinely excited. That's just the type of person I am. If I go out to break something and it doesn't break, I get, you know, I just get excited about it. So I thought I would share that with you guys. Anyway, thank you all very much for watching. Please like, subscribe. Have a great day.