When the Heizer Defense .223 Remington Pocket AR and 7.62x39mm Pocket AK single shot rifle caliber pistols were released to the market, the question on many people’s minds was: Out of such a short barrel, will those calibers really be very powerful or effective at all? The folks at GunsAmerica apparently wondered the same thing, prompting them to conduct gelatin tests of the two little pistols to see just what they could do. The article documenting their test is linked here, and the accompanying video embedded below:

The first note I should make is that GunsAmerica did not test the pistols against FBI ballistic gelatin, but against ClearBallistics gel, a more stable substance that has slightly different properties. This isn’t a strike against the test, but it should be noted as it’s best to only compare tests using the same kinds of gelatin. The second is that the 7.62×39 Heizer upper for whatever reason did not want to extract the fired cases. Finally, velocity for both rounds was very low, 1,100 ft/s for the .223 Remington round (the article doesn’t specify which) and 900 ft/s for the 7.62x39mm round. I am not sure what the muzzle velocity of the Lehigh round is approximately from a 16″ barrel, but that’s a velocity loss of approximately 62% for the 7.62×39, and probably around 67% for the .223 Remington. From the Heizer, the .223 Remington produced about 164 Joules, whereas the 7.62×39 produced about 301 Joules of energy.

The gel results are unsurprising. Firing projectiles at close to a third their intended velocity does not result in good expansion or fragmentation, the rounds performed very poorly.