Truth is, any bullet can kill or incapacitate. A lot of people have died from being shot with 9mm NATO ball, or even .22LR. Shot placement is, and always has been, #1.
A quick succession of follow up shots is #2, shoot until the threat stops.
#3 becomes an area of debate. Which load to use? Yes, there are fans of the 147. It can work, if shot placement is good and several of its brothers follow.
I am not a fan of it, because I never saw the point of trying to "fix" a loading that was horrible before and was essentially an ice pick, especially when so much street history exists to show that high speed, lightweight rounds in 9mm (modeled on the .357 Mag round) work tremendously well.
If it takes 2 or 3 generations to get a round to work, maybe the underlying principle isn't all it's cracked up to be. I'm not a ballistics engineer, nor an ER doctor. But I have in my career become aware of many shootings and know that many, many different loads in different calibers work. But each shooting is like a snowflake or fingerprint - you have to figure in the dizzying number of factors in each shooting - size, weight, angle of round, clothing worn, physical condition, mental determination, presence of drugs, pain tolerance, adrenalin, etc., etc., etc. Saying any one round can conquer all is folly. Which is why I default back to "What load dynamic has the longest, proven street history?"
If you can shoot a 147 gr accurately, quickly and stay on target, go for it. My hesitation comes from seeing test results of that round, witnessing it blow through over 22" of gelatin and not expanding at all, they couldn't even find the round to look at in some cases. Simple physics says that if you have a small, narrow cone of a hollowpoint travelling at moderate speeds, you'll get the deep penetration the FBI is so obsessed with. But you sacrifice expansion to get penetration. Only an ammo vendor will claim you can break the laws of physics, having and eating the same cake.
I'm not convinced. Too many years of street history showing the Warp Factor Rounds (125 gr .357 Mag, 9mm 115 gr +p+ and .357Sig .125 GD) show me that high speed, lightweight bullets designed to expand work great. I don't want to be responsible for shooting a round that can go almost two feet through a person and not expand reliably, if that round passes through heaving clothing, sheetrock or tin. Not all 147 gr fail like that, to be sure, and in fact it maybe only a few. But even if they don't over penetrate, they're not delivering near the same kinetic energy once inside that the Warp Factor rounds are.
Yes, the Warp rounds are harder to shoot faster as they have more muzzle blast and recoil. But if my hide's on the line, in that critical moment, I'm not going to be worried about the comfort of shooting, I just want to pour as much energy into the chassis of the impending potential murderer as I can. And a 147 gr just doesn't have enough "oomph" for me. If you have #1 and #2 covered, then #3 comes to down to what you can do best with and are comfortable with. Your still responsible for every round you shoot, and there's a hungry, greed trial lawyer attached to every bullet, so if it over penetrates and hits someone else, that's bad. A real good reason to stay away from hardball ammo for carry, period. Seriously, I know I guy still doing that. Bad, bad mojo.
If many LEO agencies are having good results with the 147 gr., then great! Maybe that round will develop a database in the future of hundreds of shootings and prove you can have a soft shooting 'range round' that works like an off switch. I hope so. But for now, and this is just my personal preference, I'll stick with the 50+ year history of the .357 Magnum model.
YMMV and I hope none of us never have to test any of this for real.
