Safe Life Defense Level 3A Body Armor Review and Test

Hey everybody, how's it going? It's the Daily Shooter and today I've got a review and ballistics test of this level 3A vest from Safe Life Defense. Now Safe Life Defense actually sent this vest out to the channel for review and I've been wearing it pretty frequently now for the past couple weeks. So now I'm pretty excited to get it out here, test it, and see how well it actually holds up. But before we get to the shooting part of this test, I want to talk a little bit about the vest and the plates. Now I found this vest to be very comfortable. It's extremely lightweight, it has a nice breathable mesh on the inside, the panels, everything's not too heavy, and it's very concealable. I actually wore this out in public on multiple occasions and I don't think anybody ever noticed. Now before we get too far into the discussion of this vest, I do want to point out that the vest itself offers no protection whatsoever. It is simply a shell to carry the panels that offer you your ballistic protection. So it's the level 3A panels on the inside that are going to stop the bullets and save your life, okay? So that's one thing I want to point out so somebody doesn't go out there and just buy the vest by itself. You have to Now you can see here the level 3A panels, they do say that they've been tested to level 3A standards by the National Institute of Justice. That's what you want to see on plates. That's what confirms that this will stop the rounds and the threats that it says it does. This will stop up to a 44 magnum, even 12 cage slugs, so it's a really nice strong vest. Now another thing I really came to like about this vest after testing it out the past couple weeks was the fact that it I can still extend my arms completely forward, back, rotate my shoulders, bend over, lean, kneel, do whatever I need to do, and it's not cumbersome in any way. It doesn't get in your way when you're doing those motions. Even though it has a full front threat protection, full back threat protection, and it also has side threat protection, it still allows your body that range of motion that you might need if you're going to be fighting for your life. Now another thing I think I should mention before we actually start our is the fact that you can actually get this level 3A vest as you see it right here on their website for only $3.99, so it's definitely worth the money, especially for something that's been NIJ tested. Okay, so here's our setup for the ballistics test. We have our ballistics gel torso on the left with a t-shirt on it, and we have our safe life defense level 3A vest on the right. What we're going to do is we're going to take some shots using different types of ammunition. First we're going to start with standard federal 115 grain ball ammunition. Then we're going to move up to something a little bit heavier. This is 135 grain plus P defensive ammunition, so it's heavy and it's moving fast. We're also going to try a little bit of lead-free frangible ammunition, see how it affects the armor. And then we're going to shoot it with something I'm actually expecting to go through, and they're expecting to go through as well, and I'll explain that later, the Liberty Civil Defense 50 grain round. It's going about 2,000 feet per second. Now the first thing we're going to shoot it with again is this federal champion. It's just a standard 115 grain ball round. Then we're going to move up to the 135 grain plus P self-defense round. This is by Atomic Ammunition, and that is a very hard-hitting round. The next one is actually this alchemist ammo. Now you might remember the alchemist ammunition from a recent ammo squared video that I did. This is the round that has the smiley face on it. It's frangible ammunition, completely lead-free, but it's supposed to be pretty hard-hitting, so we're going to see how that performs. Now we also again have the Liberty Civil Defense, and believe it or not, Safe Life actually told me they expect this to go through. It will defeat most level 3A body armor, if not all level 3A body armor, but they do have some new body armor coming out that they say is going to stop it. So what we're going to do today is we're going to shoot it with this, see if it actually goes through, and if it does, we're going to try out their new level 3A after this and see if it's able to stop that 50 grain 2,000 foot per second 9 millimeter. So now what we're going to do is we're just going to set up our test scenario. We have our vest. We're going to open that up, throw our ballistic gel torso on top of it, and we'll get to shooting, see how it performs. Now while I'm setting up for the shot, I do want to mention that even though they sell several sizes on their website and they do have a pretty good sizing chart there as well, the amount of adjustability on this vest really does allow you to kind of customize the fit to you. So if you get the correct size, it's going to fit you really nice and tight. Now the gun that I'm going to be using for today's test is going to be a Glock 17 with a Lone Wolf match barrel, and I think having a full-size gun with the long barrel, that's probably going to give us our best ballistic performance or at least the most velocity. So again, we're going to start with our standard 9 millimeter 115 grain. Now you can see right here our impact is on the upper right portion of the panel, which is pretty much exactly where I wanted to put it, but surprisingly there's not any, almost any deformation to the front of the plate whatsoever. Now obviously this is going to stop standard ball 9 millimeter rounds. That's nothing really interesting whatsoever, but I did want to demonstrate the fact that there is almost no damage whatsoever. Just a little tiny bump. You can feel the bullet inside. It didn't even rip the sticker on the back of the vest. So now we're going to go ahead. We're going to step it up. This is going to be the 135 grain plus P round, and we're going to try and shoot it opposite to the previous. Okay, so here's the impact hole from our defensive round, and I have to say that I was actually a little bit worried about this particular round because it is everything I want to see a plate to stop. It is a heavy round for its caliber to 135 grains. It's a hollow point, a defensive round, and it's also plus P being fired out of a full-size handgun. So I was the most curious to see what type of damage it would do over some of the other rounds. So you can see right here, it did not pass through. It did very minimal damage to the panel and very minimal damage to the actual vest itself. You can see that it just kind of ripped the back of the material there, but as far as pass through, absolutely nothing. Okay, now let's move on to the frangible ammunition. This is lead-free compressed copper, and the reason that I really wanted to try this out is because typically it is velocity that will beat body armor, not necessarily weight of a bullet, because that's what people expect with like a .45. But this is a 100-grain round. It's traveling at about 1,500 feet per second. So even though it's a compressed copper, it's still moving very fast, and I wanted to see what this armor would do against such an interesting and different threat. So let's go ahead and check it out. Well, it definitely didn't go through, and what I can tell you is unlike the other rounds where you can still feel the bullet inside, this stuff has actually kind of disappeared. You don't feel even a dent inside the body armor at all. It still feels flat. I don't even feel a bulge. I couldn't find even a warm spot. So that was really interesting. So now let's move on to the round that even SafeLife told me is going to go through this armor, and this is going to be basically for our comparison test to what they're calling their level 3A-plus plate, which is going to be my next armor test. This is 2,000 feet per second and a 50-grain hollow point projectile. Again, lead-free. So here you can see our impact kind of low on the plate. I was actually aiming a little bit higher, but I pulled it a little bit. So since it's low on the plate, I am definitely expecting a pass through. Even though I was a little bit optimistic, maybe, you know, I'd be the guy that would shoot it and it would stop that ammunition. You can already see the hole in the t-shirt right there. That Liberty Defense basically blew through the level 3A, through the vest, and into our ballistics gel. So you can see the hole in the back of the vest there. You obviously saw the hole in the t-shirt. Okay, now I'm going to go ahead and take another shot using the Liberty Civil Defense ammunition. This time I'm going to aim at the center of the panel. I'm doing this just to verify that the first shot wasn't a fluke and that this stuff can actually penetrate consistently level 3A armor. And you can see right there from the shirt behind it, the hole in the front of the panel right there, that it definitely passed through, no problem. So it passed through twice, no problem. That stuff is definitely amazing ammunition when it comes to penetrating level 3A. Now, the other reason that I'm doing that was simply to make sure that we had a good base for our comparison. Because again, I'm going to be comparing this to a new plate that they're developing that is level 3A+, that is supposed to be able to stop this. So I want to make sure that I had those two shots on plate to verify that if it can stop it, it's definitely A+, versus the standard 3A that you saw being tested there. Either way, great stuff, very comfortable. It definitely stops all the threats that they say it can stop, and it does it at an affordable price. This is definitely something you might be interested in. Very nice and concealable. You know, it's going to take me like a week or so, maybe even two weeks to actually do the shooting test of this new body armor that I'm trying out. But I just want to show you guys that I actually wear this stuff and I use it prior to doing my review. So you can see right here, I've got the Safe Life Defense body armor concealable on right now, and it's comfortable. Now, I just wanted to throw that little clip in right there to show you guys that on my Instagram, at the Daily Shooter 76, you can see sort of pre-review videos that I do when I'm testing certain particular things, and that I've actually been testing this for a little while now and wearing it out in public, like I say that I do, just to add at least a little bit more credibility to what I say here in my videos. So there it is, the Safe Life Defense Level 3A body armor vest. This is some really cool stuff. Please stay tuned, like and subscribe. Have a great day. Hey everybody, how's it going? It's the Daily Shooter. Back out here in the desert doing some more shooting, and I wanted to do my Ammo Squared unboxing for the month for you and show you guys exactly what I got. You know, I don't do too many unboxing videos on this channel. The reason that I do one for Ammo Squared is because I like to share with you exactly some of the stuff that they offer, because it's not just your standard ammo. You can get your standard ammo, you know, your regular plinking stuff, but you can also get specialty rounds, self-defense rounds, match ammo, you know, pretty much anything you can think of, including .22 short, .22 long rifle, and stuff like that. So let me go ahead, I'm going to open this up, and I'll show you what I got for this month. But that's some pretty cool stuff in here. As some of you know, I recently got a new .308 bolt-action rifle. So in this month's box, got a little bit of .308. Here you can see we have the Remington. This is the Remington Core Lock, 20 centerfire cartridges right there. Got a little bit more .308. This is the 7.62x51, and this is by Aguila, or Aguila. I'm not sure exactly how people pronounce that, but that is a brand that I really like. So we got that right there. Now also, what we have here is some other rounds. This is a .300 Blackout Remington UMC. So you can see here, this is the supersonic round, 120 grain. And you can see that right there. Also, what we have here is, and this is some really interesting stuff. This is kind of what I was talking about. This is Alchemist ammunition, okay? So you can see, compressed copper cartridge. The great thing about this is the ability to shoot it at steel targets up close, okay? As a matter of fact, frangible ammunition is what they use for Sky Marshals. Trying to think of the word here. Sky Marshals use frangible ammunition because you have less of a chance of overpenetration, but at the same time, you have a really good hard-hitting round. So you can see right here, we have some Alchemist ammunition. This is, again, the frangible stuff. Got two different boxes of that. This one right here, you can see, box of 59 millimeter. And this right here is .300 Blackout frangible. So pretty cool stuff right there. Now, this one right here is going to be very similar, okay? This is lead-free ammunition. A lot of times when you're talking about frangible, or pretty much every time, you're talking about lead-free ammunition. They use some different stuff like tungsten and even some, I think, some composite material in some of that ammunition. But what we're looking at right here is some lead-free ammunition. And, you know, when you're talking about states that are moving away from lead-based ammunition for hunting, it's always nice to know where you can find this stuff. So this is Z-Clean ammunition right here. And let's see if there's any more information on the box I can share with you. Okay, so there you go right there. This is a 9 millimeter, 100 grains zinc. Okay, zinc ammo. So it's definitely kind of interesting there. Let's go ahead and put the box back. Okay, so also in this one, you can see right here that we have some .22 Target. Okay, some .22 Target ammo. So if you've been looking for .22, if you're having a hard time finding .22 in your area, here you go right here, okay? Also, what we have here is some more .22. Okay, this is a Sellar and Bellet. And I believe this is actually going to be some subsonic, 40 grain round. Okay, so if you are somebody who likes to shoot a .22 pistol, like to shoot it suppressed, or whatever the case is, you've got some subsonic and some Target ammo. We've got some people that are shooting around me here. So we've got .308, 9 millimeter, 300 blackout. And then the last one that I wanted to show you, this is pretty cool as well. IMI Systems, 77 grain, open tip match. Okay, now the 77 grain open tip match is going to be some of the most accurate ammo that you can shoot out of your rifle. For a 5.56, this is definitely one of the heaviest grains that you can get. You find that pretty much anything over 70 grain is going to be a heavier projectile. It's going to be a little bit more accurate. So that's something to consider. So here we have IMI Systems. They make fantastic ammunition. They make some really good stuff, 5.56. I don't think I've ever seen them sell actually .223, just the 5.56. So here you go, IMI Systems, 5.56. By .45, 77 grain. So again, some really cool stuff. And you can see that I have just a combination of things that I want. And each month, I can either change this and get different stuff. You know, depending on my needs, I can get self-defense ammo or whatever. Or if I want to just leave it like this, I can just leave it like this and order the same thing. I can order a couple boxes of .308, a couple boxes of 9, a couple boxes of everything that I need. And then just have it reoccur each month. So it's a really cool service with a bunch of different calibers and different brands, different, you know, items. But still, I just think it's such a cool service. Definitely worth checking out. So I'll put a link to Ammo Squared in the description box, where you can see what they're actually offering as far as their services are concerned. Because even though it's a monthly service, it's not a subscription box. Okay, you know what you're getting. You know exactly the calibers and stuff that you're going to be getting. And what service type, whether or not it's a duty round, whether or not it's a target round or practice round, those types of things. So anyway, definitely check them out. Ammo Squared, really cool stuff. Thanks for watching. Please like, subscribe, and have a great day.