A perennial Internet topic that refuses to go away is the search for the perfect bullet, capable of that all-important one-shot-stop. The search is further refined by gun type. For example, a bullet leaving a 5” Model 1911 will hit harder and have different penetration and expansion characteristics than when the same bullet is fired through a three-inch barrel. Prior to the 1960s, bullets for use in semi-autos were full metal jacket, or “ball” while ammunition loaded for revolvers were loaded with soft lead projectiles, mostly round-nose.

Here are three actual shootings that seemingly defy the odds. Owney Madden, (1891-1965) was an Irish street tough on New York’s West Side. I’m not trying to denigrate those of Irish ancestry. The fact is, if you were involved in organized crime and the rackets in the early to middle part of the twentieth century, you were probably Irish, Italian or Jewish. As such, Owney enjoyed the gangster’s lifestyle where lots of money could be made but stepping on the wrong toes usually meant a death sentence.

Owney became involved with a woman named Freda Horner. Problem is, she belonged to Little Patsy Doyle, a member of the rival Hudson Dusters. On November 6, 1912, outside a dance hall on 52nd Street in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, three gunmen, associated with Doyle, ambushed Owney Madden with the handguns and ammunition of the era and riddled him with bullets. Owney was shot eleven times across his chest, shoulders and groin.

The gunmen fled, leaving Owney for dead but he was rushed to the hospital where doctors managed to save his life. They removed five bullets but six more remained in his body, which he carried until his death from natural causes in 1965.

Fast forward to Chicago on February 14, 1929. After years of open street warfare between the South Side Italian gang under the command of Alphonse Capone and the North Side Irish gang controlled by George “Bugs” Moran, Capone struck what he hoped would be a fatal blow to the North Side Gang at their garage, S.M.C Cartage, located at 2122 N. Clarke Street, forever known as the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre.

As luck or fate would have it, Moran was running late and a spotter misidentified one of Moran’s men as Moran himself. The trap was sprung and seven members of the North Side Gang were put against a wall and executed. The gunmen used two Thompson sub-machineguns, handguns and shotguns from a range of perhaps fifteen feet.

One of the seven victims was a guy named Frank Gusenberg. Investigators say that the killers fired a total of seventy bullets and depending on which account your read, Gusenberg caught anywhere from eight to as many as eleven of those rounds in his back, including .45 ball. When police arrived, the found Gusenberg clinging to life. However, he died of his wounds the following day.

There’s also that shooting in Cook County Illinois where a meth-head was still standing after absorbing thirty-three 9mm bullets. Rifled slugs ended that situation.

With modern or contemporary bullets, these shootings would have probably had different outcomes. Yet, I know of at least two shootings in which the victims fell stone dead from a single .25 ACP ball round. Despite what the prop department supplies to actors in mob-related movies, the weapon of choice for mob hits is the .22 rimfire. Years ago, the parents of a member of my band were involved in a long-running domestic battle. The so-called marriage boiled over and the wife pulled out a recently obtained .25 Auto and shot her husband six times in the face across the kitchen table. Each of those bullets deflected off his skull to lodge between skin and skull. He survived the shooting with relatively minor injuries.

Having the most effective ammunition available is an important part of the equation but as any police firearms instructor will tell you, the elements of surviving a shooting incident, in order of importance, are: mindset, judgment, tactics, marksmanship and firearm. A hit with a .38 Spl is more effective than fifteen misses from a 9mm. Survival does not begin and end with the gun or its ammunition. It is but one member of a “five-man team” that determines who leaves the crime scene under a sheet. Food for thought.