No - poor performance in tissue. Any handgun round can and should be expected to go through walls and retain most of its mass and KE.
Unless you're in the military and carrying a weapon in circumstances where the 1st Hague Convention applies, there is no rational reason to ever put FMJ rounds in a firearm that might be used to shoot people.
Cheap FMJ ammunition is for training and practice with targets at a range. Expansion, penetration, or over-penetration are non-issues there.
Hollow point ammunition is so far superior in every respect for rounds loaded for self-defense purposes, that there's almost never a reason to not use it. I think .380 is a borderline area because .380 JHPs out of a short barrel are not likely to penetrate the 12" deemed necessary. If your gun won't reliably cycle JHP rounds, you need a different gun, not FMJ ammo. Hence my statement that debating the ballistic performance of 9mm vs .40 FMJ is irrelevant. You're going to be using JHPs anyway. And the truth is the difference between quality HPs in 9mm or .40 is not something to obsess about.
As an aside, Blade has argued that one of the beauties of .45 acp is that it's an effective person stopper even with FMJ ammunition, and he's right ... to an extent. JHP are better, of course. Lots of us think our military was unforgivably wrong in switching standard issue sidearms from .45 acp to 9mm, because we're stuck with FMJ.
of that decision explained? I haven't.
