Tempered glass is a completely different animal than plate glass. And then, there are different versions of tempered glass. Car windows are of a tempered glass that even hammers have difficulty breaking. While on the other side, plate glass can be broken quite easily with just about anything including a punch with a fist, but one will likely get severely cut doing this.
Tempered glass that is used in glass doors like at a store, is similar to the side windows on a car, but is more easily broken. This is a safety glass, in that someone crashing through it is unlikely to get severely cut. The side windows on a car will behave similarly but are more resistant to breaking in the first place.
Laminated windshields can stop some powder burning pistol bullets, though they will crack and spider the surface glass. To pierce through this material requires fairly hard projectiles at significantly high velocities.
Tempered glass, however, will break quite easily (and in spectacular fashion) with little effort if the projectile hitting it is harder than the glass and is very sharp. A small crack in the surface will propagate rapidly due to the significant compression stresses built into the glass. There are YouTube videos showing this with small broken pieces of insulating ceramic from spark plugs. While there are others showing that a hammer swung mightily has a lot of difficulty with this.
A soft lead pellet from normal airguns will break a fairly thick house window with ease, but will have difficulty with a car side window, and may only crack or chip a windshield. But, it is more likely to ricochet in some unknown direction but fairly parallel to the surface of the windshield. If the shot is nearly perpendicular, then it is more likely to flatten and spatter in all directions fairly parallel to the surface. This is know as spalling when dealing with body armor.
