Yes energy is necessary and needed but so is penetration. Not everyone is 150 lbs and stands with their chest in full view facing you. This was actually the problem with why everyone ran to the 40 after the Miami shootout. A 9mm didn't penetrate one of the shooters deep enough. It stopped an inch from his heart after going through his hand first. Had something not been in the way there would have been less resistance and moat likely (obviously there is no way to know 100%) that it would have hit his heart and stopped him much faster.
LOL, here we go....
Nah man, I have to strongly disagree. Not fight picking or trying to be confrontational, but I'm old to enough to remember very clearly when this happened and its reverberation throughout law enforcement training circles. And what is clear from really studying that shootout in Miami is that the "lack of penetration" by that 115 gr 9mm was definitely NOT the problem. The FBI said it was, wasted millions on a bogus "Wound Ballistics Seminar" in 1987 to try to prove it was, but the fact is the reason for the Miami massacre was horrendous tactics and atrocious marksmanship. The Agent is question, Jerry Dove, fired multiple rounds of 115 grain Winchester Silvertip running about 1200 fps out of a 15 round S&W 459 from probably 20-30 feet, but only hit the suspect Michael Platt once. The round was a good round in its day and did a good job that day. But one bullet fired does not necessarily a gunfight make.
Blaming the Miami shootout on that single Silvertip is essentially blaming hardware (equipment) instead of software (training). The FBI has been famous for its lack of willingness in the modern era (1970's and on) to teach Agents to be true gunfighters and in the 70's and 80's their tactical skills were very thin or nearly non-existent. The two suspects, Platt and Matix, were bank robbers that had made committed multiple robberies, were armed very well and both had military experience, had already shot multiple folks and probably murdered both their own wifes, one perhaps killed multiple spouses. These were not milquetoast wussies that would go gently into that good night.
Now, the FBI may not have known all that, but anyone whose had much experience as an LEO knows if you're going to take down a pair of serial bank robbers you had better darn well plan for the worst (heavily armed and very dangerous) accordingly and get as much help as possible. Instead, the FBI chose to ignore the available Miami-Metro Dade SWAT teams that were nearby and instead chose to ram these two suspects off the road into a tree in a residential neighborhood while armed with only two shotguns, three pistols and a host of six shot revolvers and pretty much no one wearing body armor...to take down bank robbers. That is a fairly good definition of horrible tactics and planning.
Now, I'm not judging or Monday morning QB'ing those Agents personally, especially the ones that tragically died, all I'm saying is the training and marksmanship the FBI administration had given them served them extremely poorly - any experienced city police detectives or state investigators would've called for SRT or SWAT once their car was spotted and waited for the big guns to arrive. No way they should have ever tried to make a stop like that, in that place, armed like they were. And when it did go down, the targets were often stationary, still in their car, and the distance was across about two car hoods. In fact, when Dove shot Platt, he was trying to climb out of a passenger car window, pretty much stationary for several seconds, but out of 15 shots in Dove's S&W 459 magazine, only one shot connected with Platt.
This is why the FBI's protocol (still in place today) of 'penetration is everything' rings hollow. It's an argument designed to obscure the fact that their own administration provided horrible training to their field agents and got them hurt and/or killed. So instead of truthfully saying "Our tactics and training suck rocks" they did and continue to do what they always have and blame something else, in this case a single bullet.
Any good FI trainer will tell you that if you're an LEO and you're in a gunfight, you shoot until the deadly threat stops...you keep shooting accurately...no policeman ever counts on one bullet stopping an event, you simply can't do that. You plan on worse case scenarios and train likewise.
The bullet that hit Platt did what it was designed to do, and did it well. If five or six more rounds just like it had been accurately delivered, Platt would have certainly died in that passenger window and all eight agents could have focused on Matix. In fact, both suspects were initially prime targets since their car was pinned in on three sides by an FBI unit on the left, a tree in front and a parked car on the right. Sitting in their seats, they should've been fish in a barrel. Again, not judging, I'm not Bill Hickok and have never been in a gunfight, but if you're going to take on two deadly bank robbers, you'd better be thinking along the lines of tactical outcomes and marksmanship.
Sorry for the longwinded history lesson, but amongst firearms instructors who've been around awhile, the Miami Shootout is
the example of why you don't take firearms and ammo advice from the FBI. They've been in 'cover their butt' mode for 30 years and still won't admit it was their own training, not that 9mm Silvertip, that failed horribly that day.
This is why when the 147 gr Subsonic came out in the early 90's (the perfect FBI recommended penetrating round adopted as a direct result from the Miami event) so many of us said "No way, give us street results first" because it was a slow, heavy bullet with a small hollow point mouth that drilled through meat and lacked sufficient velocity to expand. Sure enough, most every dept. that took the FBI's advice and adopted it ended up dropping it within 5 to 10 years because the reality on the street was "Sure it penetrates...all the way through, and it delivers little energy in the target". Its tendency towards over-penetration and its lack of velocity caused it to expand poorly and unreliably and, unless a brain or spine hit was achieved, few subjects went down very fast after being hit with it.
Now the FBI is back to preaching a doctrine that they've 'solved' gunfighting by finding this Great White Buffalo that magically combines heavier bullets with low recoil, small hollow point mouths, velocity around 900 fps, ease of rapid fire shooting and ballistics superior to 40's, 45's and .357 Sigs...sorry, but I've seen this movie before in the late 80's and throughout the 90's and I still don't buy in to it. The reason my agency
went to the .357 Sig was because the FBI protocol-designed and approved 9mm's and 45's were over-penetrating, failing to expand and were not putting folks down *now*.
Given the fact that the .357 Sig is simply a hot rod 9mm to begin with, what we're really debating is how does one make the 9mm truly effective? Big, slow and narrow coned is the FBI method. Wide mouthed, lighter and travelling at Warp 9 is what many state police agencies, the Secret Service and the Air Marshalls prefer. Well, the street results since 1994 have shown that the .357 Sig version of the 9mm is very effective. But the FBI's "new" stuff? I'm skeptical because it has no great database of street results yet; it's still theoretical in many respects.
Yes you can shoot a softer loaded 9mm quicker with less muzzle rise. But if I'm shooting to stop my own murderer, the idea of having the equivalent of two .357 Magnum revolvers loaded with old school 125 gr. SJHP rounds making a snot ton of energy that can be poured in that killer, all in one Sig pistol, well that makes me feel a bit more secure.
Sorry to drag this topic off into a massive drift, but I think there are quantifiable and justifiable points arguing in favor of the .357 Sig 'moment of truth' advantages over less powerful 9mm rounds.
But again, as already stated, carry what you're willing to carry and what you shoot well accurately, quickly and repeatedly. Your skin, your choice.
