Austin Thomas Jones is an Aerospace Engineer with a less than favorable view of Federal Firearms regulations. It is this attitude that caused Austin to depart from the aerospace industry and enter the firearms industry with the goal of resurrecting armor-piercing ammunition in order to provide equality under the law with regards to armor-piercing ammunition. Austin and Atlas Arms have worked hard to produce what he calls the Dagny Dagger – an unrestricted Armor Piercing ammunition that skirts around the ATF regulations to give “the common” access to reliable AP ammunition.

Atlas Arms New Open Source Dagny Dagger Unrestricted AP Ammunition

I was able to get some direct information from Austin and he shared much of his data and current project status. Currently, Atlas Arms is operating under a 501C3 non-profit and the Dagny Dagger ammunition is technically still under development. However, the short 8-minute video below should give you a good overall perspective on what Austin and Atlas Arms hope to accomplish beyond the 9mm Dagny Dagger ammunition.

Austin shared the current performance statistics with me over e-mail and said that his 9mm cartridge pushes a 48.5gr bullet up to 2300 fps in a 4.5″ barrel with the help of a +P+ load operating at 42,000 psi. While this pressure is still pretty high, it is much lower than some other loadings available on the market that are also labeled as +P+.

Austin’s bullet design which he calls “APHP” (Armor-Penetrating Hollow-Point) makes use of a 42.5gr penetrator core and a 6gr bonded jacket. According to his tests the round “exhibits significantly more devastation in ballistics gel than standard hollow-points due to extreme expansion of the jacket and rifle-domain velocity. The exotic alloy (kept secret for now for legal prudence) required to keep the bullet federally-legal is quite expensive“.

Austin has made it clear that he is going to open source the projectile construction and loading data to increase the availably of the round to hand loaders. In addition, he also plans to open a manufacturing branch to commercialize the property and to help develop hardware and software that will be made available to the public so that the construction of the round can be accomplished at home.

As Atlas Arms is a non-profit organization they are currently in need of donations. Many people who are already following the project are asking when the product will be available and that largely is dependant on access to funding as their current mode of operating is the “slowest and cheapest” approach while the company is underfunded. However, for those wanting to get advanced access to the Dagny Dagger, donating $100 to the project will get you on the list for advanced access to the rounds as they come out.

More information as well as an FAQ will be available on the website. For those interested, there is a demonstration of the ammunition below of the Dagny Dagger penetrating some level IIIA armor and while soft armor is a start, Atlas Arms plans to improve the design to move towards penetration of certain alloy armors. Comments and thoughts are always appreciated below.