Originally Posted by Number1gun

Only looking at raw energy available. Yes there are issues with terminal ballistics and it is as hotly debated as the caliber issue.
To me the correlation is clear regardless of bullet type. As the energy goes up so does the damage. Having a bullet open up just right is a bonus. A .50BMG producing about 10,000ft/lbs is so massive not too many people survive. The hole is only 5/1000ths of an inch larger than .45. The bottom line is that there is a huge disparity between energy but not the size of the hole. If you can transfer enough energy then you could have an absolute 1 shot stop. You can not get there in a hand gun. Well you could it is not practical though. More over most people start to have issues with recoil in the heavy .40 S&W range. Never mind 10mm and up. Just saying as a practical matter that there is no real difference in caliber as it relates to self Defence if the energy produced is the same or pretty close. A great read...? Can't find it. May be on Glock Talk. Study on actual shootings. Bottom line was that 70% of the time the attackers stopped doing whatever it was that needed stopping with one shot reguard less of caliber between .22 and .44mag. None of those were fatal. They stopped because they did not want to get shot again. The study broke it down to a point where number of rounds to complete incapacity was averaged out. No caliber averaged as 1.0 if I remember correctly .44mag was 1.3 and .22 was 1.8 or 1.9 everything else fell in between. If you find it read it and think about it. To me it sounds perfectly logical.