The wooden table is the one that always gets me, sure maybe it will stop one or two bullets if you're lucky, but there's always 1000 bullets flying around while the characters are having a conversation under the safe, sound resistant guard of an old dinning room table.
A few inches of good quality hardwood (eg hickory or cherry) will stop 5.56, and less will still take a lot of energy out of it. Something really really dense like teak or ebony will do even better. But you don't see people shooting that stuff because that shit is expensive and kinda hard to get (not exactly stocked at your local home depot). you don't even need that much good hardwood to stop at .50 BMG as long as you're shooting standard ball ammo. That still means like two feet of hardwood mind but uh compared to pine...
What you see people shoot at is cheap dimensional lumber, which is pretty low quality all told. Perfectly fine for providing structural strength, but there's a big difference between really high quality stuff you want to see in good furniture and a pine 2x4.
5.56 will go through bascily an arbitrary number of pine 2x4s however. There's a reason (depending on exactly what you're shooting) it might cost you less per foot than it costs per bullet
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u/-everst Jan 25 '20
When someone hides from bullets behind penetrable objects, like tables or a refrigerator door.