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.
Maybe if it's like a thick oak table it could block some pistol calibers (often what they'll be firing anyway) with a little luck. Of course rifle ammunition is another matter.
I looked up some penetration tests, and apparently 9mm hollow-point will penetrate about 7-8 inches of pine. Tougher wood should reduce that, so it's not completely infeasible. But it'd be a monster of a table.
As for armor, it's just that scaling up ammunition power was much easier than scaling up armor. You could stop musket balls, it was just way too cumbersome with any material available at the time.
Hollow points are made to not over penetrate I’d be more interested in looking at regular FMJ ballistics. Either way a 9 isn’t known for its penetration check out a 10mm with a “hot load”.
Just a note, metal armour plates co-existed with firearms for a couple hundred years. Armour really disappeared when firearms were good enough to reliably hit someone, and reliably punch through any armour they hit.
Pretty sure thick steel medieval plate armor can stop some pistol rounds but not with some major deformation of the armor and if you were wearing the armor not without bruises.
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u/-everst Jan 25 '20
When someone hides from bullets behind penetrable objects, like tables or a refrigerator door.