Put a yardstick under your arm and back up to a wall

[686-380]

Your assumption is incorrect

In response to the OP,


Mas Ayoob explains it very well, in a reply to a question I asked him: "Good luck, Buck.

Whether the formula for ballistic gelatin was 20% or 10%, there was always the issue that ballistic gel is a homogeneous substance and the human body is a heterogeneous substance in which the human-like swine muscle tissue Dr. Martin Fackler's gelatin protocol was developed to duplicate did not give the same resistance as skin, bone, cartitlege, solid abdominal viscera, etc.

The early 147 grain subsonic Winchester OSM worked great in gelatin, but had "good news and bad news" performance in actual shootings around the country, which led to the development of both the .40 S&W cartridge and today's much more effective high-tech 147 grain 9mm bullets.

The reason the "stopping power debate" seems to be eternal is that it's simply a multi-dimensional issue with so many variables that I for one don't think it can ever be truly quantified in a "test setting." What was the toxicology screen on the man who took the bullets? How much of an adrenaline high was he on? (I have yet to meet a forensic pathologist or toxicologist who can show me a way to measure internally-generated epinephrine, post-mortem.) And, like alcohol, epinephrine affects different people in different ways, which cannot be conclusively analyzed from autopsy. Much of "stopping power speed" is determined by what is going on in the mind and the body of the attacker, neither of which can be conclusively quantified after the shooting is over. There is no study that quantifies exactly which organs were hit by which bullets at what point in the gunfight, let alone differentiating whether the "heart shot" clipped the edge of the pericardium or entered at the right atrium as opposed to the left ventricle (yes, there seems to be a difference).

For decades now, I've recommended selecting loads that work well both in gelatin AND in street performance quantified after numerous actual, investigated shootings. THEN, work on what REALLY seems to win gunfights: tactics, ability to swiftly (and if necessary, continuously) hit the parts of the body you need to shut down while firing under adverse circumstances, and an understanding of deadly force law that will allow you to deliver those hits without hesitation and not fire until you are sure of that.

best,
Mas "

 

[ISCS Yoda]

Seriously? We're spending time on a technical discussion of over-penetration and bleeding? It's really very simple.

Bad guy appears, threatening deadly harm.

You shoot bad guy. Accurately, and more than once.

End of story, unless it's two or more bad guys, and, hopefully, you get all of them.

Everything after that is happenstance, dumb luck, physics, and biology.

There are very few rounds that most of us use for self defense that don't have the possibility of over-penetration. That's why for non-LEOs or military I never advocate using magnum ammunition. On the other hand, if you're that worried about over-penetration, use shot shells or rat shot. I'm not measuring my body, your body, or anybody's body. I use ammunition that is designed to stop an attacker who threatens me with deadly force. If there are consequences of my defending myself so be it. I made the decision to use a gun to defend myself a long, long time ago.

I don't use ballistic gelatin and I do not use the wrong ammunition. I use what works to stop a deadly attack. Everything else is just commentary.

 

[QED]

The early 147 grain subsonic Winchester OSM worked great in gelatin, but had "good news and bad news" performance in actual shootings around the country, which led to the development of both the .40 S&W cartridge and today's much more effective high-tech 147 grain 9mm bullets.

If a JHP expands, retains its weight reasonably well, and penetrates as expected in FBI protocol tests (apparently not a real problem with many designs in recent decades), gel results should correlate fairly well with "street results" -- when relevant factors are taken into account.

Wasn't development of .40 S&W the result of the failure of 9mm 115 gr. Winchester Silvertip to adequately penetrate, rather than a failure of a 147 gr. 9mm Winchester JHP?

 

[Boge]

I put the data obtained by the IL State Police over years against every ballistic test ever done. It is so ironic that Big Bullet theorists simply tap dance around that & ignore it like the 800 lbs. gorilla in the room. Street results trump any and all testing and theories.

"The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is."


Winston Churchill

 

[QED]

What do "Big Bullet theorists" believe that's at odds with documented "street results"?

 

[ImprovedModel56Fan]

You're making a grave error in that their GOAL was to research one shot stops and this mandated "cherry picking" as so few shootings are one shot or one "solid hit" affairs. . . . They had to glean what available incident reports were available to come up with a reasonable amount of those. Their intent was not to show multiple hit results as those are difficult to quantify unless the person shot wasn't stopped whereas we then can deduce that whatever was used didn't work that particular time.

Nope. Their goal may have been to research one-shot stops, but that did not mandate cherry-picking the data. It may have mandated admitting that they didn't have what to base a conclusion on. The actual data that they had access to did not yield the percentage of one-shot stops they claim. In fact, you seem to admit that most of their data represented multiple shots. This justifies my remark ". . . their methodology and conclusions are junk. 95% one-shot stops? Are you ****ing ****ting me?"

Unfortunately, there were/are too many people who are unable to even consider, let alone believe, that large heavy bullets aren't the Hammer of Thor they had always believed. No amount of concrete scientific data will ever change their belief system. They are far too emotionally "invested" to admit they may have been wrong.

This has nothing to do with my post, and almost seems a straw man. For instant stops, handguns mostly suck, although I think that a few Russian organizations used to have a pretty good idea of how to use a machine pistol. It is mostly the M&S crowd that believe in magic bullets, although they are not the only ones.

Anyway, if M&S weren't such good guys, their inept approach would be called cheating or faking. I just think it's dumb. The fact that it isn't easy or even possible to do an experiment correctly doesn't excuse doing it wrong.

 

[Steve912]

What do "Big Bullet theorists" believe that's at odds with documented "street results"?

Guess they haven't seen M&S's findings for the effectiveness of the 230 gr HydraShok in .45 ACP?

 

[QED]

Guess they haven't seen M&S's findings for the effectiveness of the 230 gr HydraShok in .45 ACP?

The Hydra-Shok is a 1980's JHP design that often did not expand and as such can hardly be deemed a "big bullet," as far as effective frontal area is concerned.

 

[ImprovedModel56Fan]

The Hydra-Shok is a 1980's JHP design that often did not expand and as such can hardly be deemed a "big bullet," as far as effective frontal area is concerned.

The frontal area is ~ .225" x .225" x 3.14 if it doesn't expand at all. I think that most people would call that a big bullet.

 

[QED]

The frontal area is ~ .225" x .225" x 3.14 if it doesn't expand at all. I think that most people would call that a big bullet.

Compared to robustly expanding .45 ACP JHPs used for self-defense for the past couple of decades (that typically expand to 0.7-0.8" recovered diameter) -- no, unless you feel that say 0.44 sq. inch frontal area is not substantially larger (actually about 2.75 times as large) than about 0.16 sq. inch frontal area. In fact, most expanded 9mm JHPs have substantially larger frontal area than 0.16 sq. inch -- and hardly anyone would deem an ordinary 9mm bullet a "big bullet."