Shooting Vest Navy

.44 Magnum vs Level IIIA Body Armour?

I have an old Level IIIA Kevlar vest that I don’t wear anymore and i’d really like to bring it down to the range and shoot it with my S&W 629. If I wrap it around a phone book, what do you guys reckon would happen? Going to try out a JSP round. I’ve always been curious – anybody else ever done a trial like this?

When I was in the navy we put some 7.62 x 51 through some old flak jackets and that was hilarious, but they wern’t rated for anything above .22LR.

depending on age of the vest, etc, and how much it has broken down with age, it SHOULD stop the .44mag. In real life, just stopping the round is not enough. Unless the vest has a trauma plate, the round will depress the material enough that it will disrupt your internal organs. This is called “blunt force trauma”.
I did some testing for a department I worked for, many years ago. We switched to a new vest, and I was allowed to take two of the old vests (including the one I had been wearing on duty) to the range and test them against several different caliber weapons.
I was amazed to see several of the rounds it was rated to stop, penetrate the vest. The most spectacular part was that every time I fired into the vest, it would launch itself into the air.
Let us know how it performs.
Shoot safe

Shooting the Sig P226: Total Auto Perfection