I'm sure you did and it's pathetic that anybody still trusts Marshall and Sanow's "data".
But the FBI's "penetration" worship, as a result of blaming a single 9mm bullet for a supposed lack of penetration in 1986, and convening an entire ballistics seminar just to echo chamber that same result to build credibility, isn't pathetic?
These types of debates began long before the Miami Shootout, but we live in a world where pistol ballistics are still analyzed as a direct result of that event. It wasn't the first time a tragedy caused us to look at bullet design, but it certainly crystalized it for us, and its effects are still rippling. While some disagree with Marshall and Sanow's methods or results, the underlying theme they strove for, examining real world results after a police shooting, is worth pursuing. We dismiss real world results in exchange for lab testing at our own peril. If Marshall and Sanow can be dismissed for bias and pursing an agenda, then so must the FBI and it WBS of 1987. Horrible tactics and poor marksmanship were the parents of the Miami horror, not a 115 gr Silvertip that failed to penetrate enough.
Psychological reactions cannot be predicted by the physiological damage sustained. You're asking for the impossible.
True, but statistics are revealing. While predicting psychological reactions will never be mathematically predictable equations, the more info we collect on what actually happened on the street might make trying to predict such things irrelevant.
Energy is not a wounding mechanism.
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE WOUND BALLISTICS LITERATURE, AND WHY by Dr. Fackler subsection 4. Presumption of "Kinetic Energy Deposit" to Be a Mechanism of Wounding
I'm not a physicist, but I understand kinetic energy. A projectile travelling at a slow velocity will impact an object with calculable energy, delivering calculable joules (or foot-pound if you prefer) of energy into that object. The same projectile with the same mass travelling at a much greater velocity will posses a much higher level of kinetic energy, therefore delivering more joules of energy into a target. While the energy itself is not the wounding mechanism, the kinetic energy possessed by a projectile is the reason the projectile will enter the subject and cause wounding. It is the relationship of kinetic energy and the projectile in which it resides that results in wounding. Effective bullet design does seem like witchcraft , but one fact is certain - without energy, a projectile is simply sitting around doing nothing. Potential energy is worthless, kinetic energy stops potential killers.
I read this. A potential problem here is his quote:
"Handgun penetration was rarely considered prior to 1986, except perhaps by those who the larger handguns for big game hunting. When the FBI lost two agents , in the "Miami Shootout," due to inadequate bullet penetration, they convened a workshop (Sept. 1987) and determined that they (along with many others) had been misled by the National Institute of Justice now infamous Relative Incapacitation Index (which rated bullet performance by temporary cavitation -- ignoring penetration depth)."
The author has clearly revealed a partisanship in his analysis. No one can truthfully say that penetration was THE reason the FBI lost two agents...the reasons again involve training and marksmanship and a large, very political Federal agency is unlikely to ever come clean and say "We screwed up in training our guys", it's a lot easier to blame hardware. Also, few took the RII seriously, even back then, so for the author to say it took Miami for the FBI to devalue the RII is probably not true, either. Lastly, the author only says there was a "close correlation" but that's hardly conclusive, it certainly does NOT say that ballistic gelatin provides a true equivalent in testing to shooting human tissue. And I understand that for lab consistency, bone hits were disregarded. But in street shooting analysis, they certainly aren't. If you have a round that can split or shatter bone in stopping a killer, that's a plus, it's not something I would disregard for the sake of a lab test.
This article also is contradicted by history on two levels:
1. The large number of successful shootings by state police with .357 Magnum light weight, high velocity rounds which flies in the face of the underlying theory of this paper. Those type rounds only go about 12"-14" in depth, but this paper calls for 12" to 20"! That's a 60% increase in margin of error! While the paper cautions against over penetration, a 60% increase in penetration margin seems very, very excessive to me. And history proved this right as the next point says...
2. This was printed in 1991; 9 to 10 years later nearly every LEO agency in the US dumped this exact same 147 gr type round because although it did prove fatal, the 'street lab' showed it wasn't a quick or fast stopper and over penetrated badly. That round was even issued by my agency in 1991 ,but it was dumped circa 1998 for those same reasons. Ironically, it was ash canned in favor of the .357 Sig, which has been a resounding success and operates under a theory that flies in the face of this same paper. History has spoken on both. Agencies that had the 147 gr 9mm dumped them in mass. Agencies that had .357 Mag wheel guns that have adopted the .357 Sig are generally very pleased with the results.
I'm not anti-9mm, but IMHO it's at its best when loaded hot and light, 115 gr +p+ or maybe the 124 gr +p.
I am curious about "today's ballistic environment" and how it is different than yesterday's ballistic environment...
Can't answer that. Bad guys are bad guys. But technology has progressed to the point where you can get .357 Magnum performance without the blast and flash, the heavy revolver and the limited 6 round capacity. Modern ammo design makes rounds like the 10mm, lightweight .45's and .357 Sigs great options (and yes, even the 9mm, if loaded properly).
While any bullet can kill (Heck, kids have been killed playing at pellet gun wars) and the 147 gr certainly isn't non-lethal, I still maintain the street history of high velocity, lighter bullets with great expansion is preferable to heavy, relatively slow moving, slow expanding, super penetrating rounds.
But to each his own, they sell both. As one poster above said, choose your caliber/loading, hit accurately and hit multiple times on the bad guy until the threat stops. That's Job #1.
