All that said above, I'm in agreement that the ballistic gelatin proponents might be missing some of the point. Ballistic gelatin is great for measuring expansion under repeatable laboratory conditions, but it's a consistent medium, and people are not made of consistent material, which raises serious questions about whether that reliable, consistent and repeatable laboratory data actually has much validity in a real world shoot.
On the other side, you have the data folks who do statistical analysis of real world shoots and then try to draw some conclusions on bullet effectiveness while dealing with a multitude of variables in real world shoots and trying to isolate the effects of bullet performance.
Invariably these two groups are in opposition, as one is dealing with consistent, reliable, repeatable testing and the other is dealing with actual shoots, which are messy and involve both a lot of variables and very limited control over a long list of variables.
What the gel folks seem to forget is that the standard of 12"-18" penetration with at least 1.5x expansion was based on some assumptions that may or may not be all that valid in the real world. The also tend to forget or ignore that real world results are what they are. You can argue about sample selection, methodology, etc, but at the end of the day, there are a large number of stops made by bullets that don't reliably meet the ballistic gelatin criteria.
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I like a minimum penetration of around 12", and expansion is nice to have if I get it, but in the end it's shot placement that matters and absent one of these things you are not going to get rapid incapacitation:
1) a CNS hit (brain or the upper portion of the spinal column, which produces an immediate stop)
2) a cardio vascular hit to the heart or large arteries above the heart (which will produce a stop in 10-15 seconds if the upper chambers of the heart or arteries above the heart are hit and perhaps 2-3 times that long if the more muscular and more self sealing lower chambers of the heart are hit)
3) a psychological stop where the person stops simply because getting shot sucks and they don't want to get shot anymore (which occurs in about 50% of all shoots).
I'm not sure a hollow point makes much difference in 1 and 2. At best is provides for a wider wound track that slightly increases the chances of 1 and 2.
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I wouldn't worry too much about failed expansion - provided it does not create a risk of over penetration. However over pentagon itself is over stated as over penetration occurs 100% of the time with any bullet if the shooter misses the target, and LEOs miss about 80% of the time.
Penetration does matter, but for an armed citizen shoot that is almost always face to face, the 12" penetration standard is probably over kill. I wouldn't turn my nose up at 10".
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