Parker Smith set up what sounded, at first, like one of those goofy range questions that has no business producing a useful answer. Then he stacked roughly a thousand paper plates, started shooting through them one round at a time, and turned a joke into a surprisingly revealing penetration test.
In his Yee Yee Life video, Smith said he wanted to find out how many paper plates it would take to stop everything from a tiny .22 all the way up to a .50 caliber sniper rifle. The idea sounds ridiculous on its face, and that was part of the fun, but the results ended up showing something a lot more interesting than simple “big bullet beats small bullet” logic.
That is what made the experiment watchable. Some rounds behaved exactly how you would expect, while others did something stranger. A couple of the biggest names on the table did not dominate in the clean, obvious way many people might assume, and by the end of it the winning round was not the one most casual viewers would probably guess.
Smith, keeping the tone light the whole way through, lined up the plates on his private Texas range and worked upward from rimfire to handguns, then to shotguns and rifles, all with his usual banter in the background. But underneath the joking, the test itself was fairly simple: shoot the stack, recover the projectile if possible, then count how many plates actually stopped it.
The Tiny .22 Started The Day With A Surprise
Smith opened the test with a Ruger 10/22, and right away the little rimfire overperformed expectations.
Before the shot, his cameraman Zach guessed the .22 would make it through only about 20 plates. Instead, as Parker and Zach started peeling the stack apart, the bullet kept going and going until they finally found it buried deep in the pile. When Smith counted it out, the .22 had punched through 97 plates before stopping.
That result set the tone for the rest of the video. A lot of people tend to dismiss the .22 because of its size, but Smith’s test showed that even a small round can travel much farther through a soft layered medium than people might expect. It was bent and hot when they pulled it out, but it had still carried through nearly a hundred plates.
That is a good reminder that “small” and “harmless” are never the same thing, even in a test built around paper products and jokes.
Handguns Started Trading Places In A Hurry
From there, Smith stepped up to the Glock 19 and sent a 9mm into the fresh stack. This time the result was even more dramatic. The 9mm made it to exactly 300 plates, which gave it a massive early lead and instantly made the .22’s result look modest by comparison.
Then came the .45 ACP out of a 1911, and this is where the test stopped following the usual barroom mythology. Plenty of people love to argue over 9mm versus .45, but Parker’s plate stack gave the edge to the faster round. The .45 ACP stopped at 213 plates, well short of the 9mm’s 300.
Smith and Zach recovered that .45 slug in decent shape, though it showed clear deformation. The round was fatter and slower, and in this particular test medium, that worked against it. It is one of those moments where velocity and shape mattered more than old-school caliber reputation.
The 9mm stayed on top only until Smith brought out the .44 Magnum. That round pushed through 370 plates, taking over the lead with a healthy jump. Then the Desert Eagle, chambered in .50 AE, went even farther and landed at 495 plates, which gave the big handgun category a very strong showing.
At that point in the video, Smith even wondered aloud whether the Desert Eagle might end up winning the whole thing. That did not sound crazy in the moment, because some rifle bullets can fragment or yaw so badly in odd materials that they do not always dominate the way people expect.
The Shotgun And AR Changed The Pace
Next up was the 12-gauge slug, fired from what Smith jokingly claimed had been gifted to him by Winston Churchill. The humor stayed silly, but the result was serious enough. The slug chewed through 355 plates before stopping.
That put it behind the .44 Magnum and well behind the Desert Eagle, which may surprise some viewers who automatically think “shotgun slug” means unbeatable force. But slug performance through a thick, layered stack like this can get weird fast, especially when shape and drag start working against it. Smith recovered the slug and found it heavily flattened, which looked about right after that much resistance.
Then came the first rifle round of the day, a .223 fired from an AR. This is where the leaderboard changed again.
Smith said that in past tests, the AR round sometimes went so fast that it broke apart and did not always penetrate as deeply as expected. That was not what happened here. The .223 kept driving until it finally stopped at 565 plates, pushing past the Desert Eagle and taking the lead.
That result felt like the test was entering a new phase. Handgun rounds had performed better than many would guess, but now the rifles were starting to show what centerfire speed and sectional density can do when the bullet stays together long enough.
The Bigger Rifles Took Over, But Not In The Way You’d Expect
Once Smith grabbed the SCAR and fired a .308, the numbers climbed again.
The .308 cut through 700 plates exactly, which was a major leap and gave the rifle rounds a firm grip on the top of the chart. When Smith held up the recovered bullet next to the .223, the difference was obvious. The .308 had carried more momentum, punched deeper, and looked every bit like a serious contender for the top spot.
Then he added a surprise guest to the test, a .30-06 deer rifle that was not originally part of the planned lineup.
That round ended up becoming the star of the day. Smith sent the .30-06 through the stack, and it just kept going until it finally came to rest after 964 plates. That was a huge number, and at that point it looked like the challenge was basically over unless the .50 BMG could blast through the remaining stack in a straight line.
The funny thing is, the .30-06 winning makes more sense than some people might think. It is a classic full-power rifle cartridge with excellent penetration characteristics, and in a long stack of paper plates, a round that stays stable can sometimes matter more than raw size or raw hype. Smith seemed genuinely impressed by how far it went, and honestly it was the most revealing result of the whole test.
The .50 Cal Had Power, But It Couldn’t Stay Straight
Of course, the whole video had been building toward the .50 caliber shot.
Smith loaded up the .50 BMG and fired dead center into the stack, expecting either total domination or at least a clean win. Instead, something more complicated happened. The bullet entered strong, traveled deep, then veered off to the side before making it as far as the .30-06.
On the first .50-cal shot, Smith and Zach could see that the round ripped through much of the stack but exited off the right side at roughly around the 900-plate range. It had not stayed straight, which meant it lost the head-to-head competition despite the massive energy involved.
Not satisfied, Smith fired a second .50 BMG round.
That one did essentially the same thing, except it veered the other way. Again, the bullet made it deep into the stack, around 900 plates or so, but again it could not hold a straight path long enough to beat the .30-06’s 964-plate mark. After the second try, Smith admitted the test had to be called as it stood.
That gave the win to the .30-06.
It is the kind of ending that makes a stunt test memorable. The .50 cal was obviously devastating, and it did enormous damage to the stack and even clipped poor Fred, the mannequin waiting behind it, but in terms of pure straight-line penetration through this very specific medium, it lost. The plates disrupted it enough to keep it from finishing the job cleanly.
What The Test Actually Showed
By the end of the video, Parker Smith’s final ranking told a clearer story than most people might expect from a pile of disposable dinnerware.
The .22 stopped at 97 plates. The 9mm reached 300. The .45 ACP made it 213. The .44 Magnum got to 370. The Desert Eagle’s .50 AE hit 495. The 12-gauge slug reached 355. The .223 went to 565. The .308 landed at 700. The .30-06 won the day at 964. And the .50 BMG, despite its sheer violence, veered off course at roughly 900 plates both times.
Smith closed the video by joking that if someone wanted “everyday practical protection,” they might need to carry around a thousand paper plates in a plate carrier. That was obviously the punchline, but the real takeaway was a little more interesting than the joke.
Penetration is not always about which round sounds scariest. Stability matters. Bullet construction matters. Speed matters. Shape matters. And sometimes the old hunting cartridge beats the monster round because it simply stays on track longer.
That is what made this one fun. It started as a silly question, but by the end it delivered a result that was odd, memorable, and just surprising enough to be worth watching.
Raised in a small Arizona town, Kevin grew up surrounded by rugged desert landscapes and a family of hunters. His background in competitive shooting and firearms training has made him an authority on self-defense and gun safety. A certified firearms instructor, Kevin teaches others how to properly handle and maintain their weapons, whether for hunting, home defense, or survival situations. His writing focuses on responsible gun ownership, marksmanship, and the role of firearms in personal preparedness.
