Punching Protection

The Colt Super 38 became popular in the late 20's because of its reputation at punching car doors and what concealable body armor there was.

A silk vest has DR 4/2* (flexible, higher DR against piercing and cutting, lower against everything else).

Note: every ten points of damage stopped by flexible armor will impart 1 cr damage to the wearer if the round doesn't otherwise penetrate.

A car door has DR 8.

.38 Super's 3d-1 pi's average hit is going to penetrate either.  Getting 0-9 (avg 1) through the door; 0-15 (avg 5) through the vest.

This compares to the very common .38 Special's 2d pi doing 0-4 (avg 0) against the door and 0-8 (avg 3) through the vest.

.45 Auto from a Thompson does 2d+1 pi+ and gets 0-5 (avg 0) through the door which becomes 0-7 (avg 0) to the torso of the occupant.  More gets through the vest doing 0-13 (avg 6).

The Super 38 is a lot easier to hide than a Thompson.

A .45 Government Model's 2d pi does 0-6 (avg 0) to the occupant of the car and 0-12 (avg 4) to the wearer of the vest.

Modern ammo against a modern car or vest...

Cars got easier to shoot into.  Vests got harder.

A modern car door, thanks to making them lighter and lighter to serve the Gods of the EPA only gets a DR of 3 unless you roll a 1 out of six and manage to hit the DR 10 crash-bar.

A concealable vest gives DR 12/5*.

Hardly anyone packs ball anymore so the 2d+2(0.5) pi+ of hollow-point 9x19mm does 0-0 (avg 0) to a cop's vest.  Ghetto Gary firing cheap, Wal Mart Blazer with its 2d+2 pi is more likely to penetrate the vest, but still only gets a 0-2 (avg 0).

.45 ACP isn't going to hurt the cop unless they do enough to score some blunt trauma.

The ubiquitous 16" AR does 4d+2 pi.  Bog standard 55gr ball is doing 0-14 (avg 4) through that vest.  Difficult to come by M955 does 4d+2(2) pi-; doing 0-10 (avg 5).

Some Randy the Redneck and his .30-06 and 7d pi will punch 0-30 (avg 12) with practice ammo and 0-27 (avg 0) with 7d(0.5) pi+ soft points.  Barrel destroying surplus M2 "black-tip" and its 5d(2) pi- does 0-12 (avg 5).

The earlier version of the concealable vest only get DR 8/2*.  Still a common vest because it's much cheaper than the one with better protection.

Still basically immune to hollow point 9mm and ball 45.  Ball 9mm will do 0-6 (avg 0).  The AR will get 0-18 (avg 8) with ball and 1-11 (avg 6) with tungsten core.  30-06 will do 0-34 (avg 16) with FMJ, 0-39 (avg 7) with huntin' ammo and 1-13 (avg 10) with AP.