A ballistic vest placed on a hard surface is nothing better than a t shirt. Placed on a soft human body like backer such as a thick phone book an the vest will stand up to its rating.
Body armor today will stop rated threats.
Frag vests of yesteryears will stop fragments of rounds of ammo or parts of their vehicle or aircraft that are damaged.
My Barrett M82A1M with commerical or military ball will trash any body armor. Now military AP or APIT will really do damage to any form of worn body armor.
Is that a good explanation ....?
No soft armor on hard surface.
Stay safe...
You have a Barret? I would be jealous but even if I owned one I couldn’t afford to shoot more than once a month.
Several years ago I was at a gun show in Dothan, Alabama. There was one guy selling a bunch of high end rifles including one of the first Barrets. He had five or six different guns with serial numbers 1, 2 or 3. The Barret was one of those. He had a Voere .22, serial number 1.
He must have needed to raise money because they were all very reasonably priced. If I remember right, and I might not, he wanted only $2000 for the Barret. It was a bolt action one. I still wish I had bought that Voere .22 as I once had a dealer in Garden City, KS order one and he couldn’t get it.