The FBI got all weirded out about "penetration" after Miami. Clearly they had tunnel vision for a while. They got their info from military types who had never actually shot anyone with a handgun hollowpoint. Handgun stopping power is multifactorial, and dwelling on any single factor to the exclution of others, is a fools errand!
Plus, for a while there was this obsession with pistol caliber carbines/subguns. Everybody figured they were going to get better velocities from those long barrels, so the heavy and slow issue didn't seem like such a big deal to some folks.
I paid my way through college working for the medical examiner of a large populous county in the southwest. After granduation, I taught human anatomy for a few years. Saw a bullet wound or two! There is a lot more to the equation than just penetration. Nobody I saw survived because of lack of adequate penetration!
I would hope working in the medical examiner's office you wouldn't see anyone who survived anything. (I'd put a winky smiley face here if I knew how)
I came into the Bureau five years after the Miami shooting. The lesson was still fresh in everyone's minds. I've met some of the guys who were in the shooting, and John Hall, who headed the unit that instituted the ammunition testing protocols, was my legal instructor at Quantico.
Anyway, the events of that day have been picked at ad nauseum. There are several threads regarding it here. I'll take a swing at two of the most common fallacies, though I'm sure it won't make any difference.
- The Agents brought pistols to a rifle fight.
There was a whole squad of guys working the rolling stakeout that day. Some had M-16s and MP-5s, as well as shotguns. It turned out that those guys weren't in on the takedown, which was decided upon quickly to prevent a shootout in a more populated area. Gordon McNeill, who was the squad supervisor and could have easily been in his office with his feet up (where most Bureau supervisors would be), elected not to use his 870. Instead he shot Matix in the face and took him out of the fight, using his personally-owned, Bureau-approved, Model 19 snub. Ed Mireles famously used his shotgun, but it really didn't have much impact on the outcome of the fight.
I'll grant this - in those days the Bureau was much more pistol-centric. We tended to get things done with our sidearms. I'm still that way, though now most of the younger guys I work with can barely bring themselves to knock on a door without an M4 on a tactical sling.
- The Bureau blamed everything on a single 9mm round.
Again, the internet chatter is untrue. There was massive soul-searching in the Bureau in the wake of 4/11/86. Lots of things changed - tactics, training, policies, and more. The ammunition tests were just one part of it. But we are a closed society, and most of the soul searching was done where we do almost everything - behind closed doors.
Believe me - nobody in the Bureau was "weirded out" over anything. The ammo guys did a methodical examination of every shooting in the Bureau's history and came up with standards for a bullet to meet based on those actual shootings. One thing they found was that we shoot a lot of people in cars. That and other factors led to an emphasis on penetration. I happen to agree with it, which is good since I have to carry what they give me. Since we don't issue ammo to other agencies, I don't see why everyone else got bunched-panties syndrome. Use what you want.
But I will say this - had Jerry Dove put a 147 grain hollowpoint in exactly the same spot as he did that Silvertip when Platt was rolling out of the Monte Carlo, I have no doubt it would have plowed a hole straight through his black heart. His blood pressure would have dropped to zero, his Mini-14 would have clattered to the ground, and his face would have bounced off the pavement. The boys would have killed or hooked up Matix, it would have been a one-day story in the paper, and nobody here would have any reason to debate it.
