All factors considered the most important one is where you hit them - NOT what you hit them with. Practice and dry fire whenever you can. Don't worry about caliber or bullet design or expansion. People place far too much importance on bullets. Look at all of the people who were killed in the 1800s and early 1900s with ball ammo. It works. Shot placement is No 1 regarding fast incapacitation - and that's all on you. Feed reliability is also on the top of the list regarding your gun/magazine/bullet design. 2 or 3 rounds of even small caliber rounds will cause a lot of damage if you can place them in the engine room. If you can't do that then all the other factors really don't matter. Handgun rounds ARE much less effective than rifle rounds.
A Reasonable Discussion of Stopping Power
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bassjam
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I know there's a difference between handgun rounds, but I'm also in the camp that the differences are pretty marginal and all common self-defense handgun rounds offer similar performance. You'll see threads where folks think that carrying a .380 ACP is like asking to get killed, but somehow a 9mm Luger is the gold standard and a .357 mag, even out of a snubbie, is a proven one-shot-manstopper. To me that's just laughable.
I think there are 5 big camps in how people think about handgun terminal ballistics, excluding those who don't really have any thought processes of their own.
*Here, I am using the terms "strong" and "weak" in the philosophical sense - people making "strong" claims are making the most extreme/absolutist version of some argument, while those making "weak" claims are making a more modest argument that generally doesn't go quite as far. Generally, though not always, people making "weak" arguments are more likely to be correct, simply because they are making smaller claims.
- Strong* facklerite: The only incapacitation mechanism of service-type rounds is mechanical crush path and its intersection with critical structures and/or blood loss. These people tend to be adamant that, because channel diameter is unlikely to be materially different, all that matters is adequate penetration. If X round achieves sufficient penetration to reach critical structures from all commonly-encountered angles, then X round is good enough. Round effectiveness is basically a good enough vs. not-good enough proposition, with all marginal performance coming from better or worse "shot placement."
- Weak facklerite: The only quantifiable/reliable/predictable mechanism of service-type rounds is mechanical crush path and its intersection with critical structures and/or blood loss. These people tend to say that it is better to only use factors that can be quantified in making decisions, and only the Fackler-derived parameters of penetration and channel width are truly useful for predicting performance, and should be given all or substantially all of the weight in caliber and ammo choice in terms of terminal ballistics. Both facklerite factions are where the ER docs and medical examiners tend to congregate.
- Remote wounding/shock believer: These folks believe that there is some other mechanism that manifests itself at least some of the time in terms of incapacitating some portion of people shot with service-type rounds, and that these mechanisms are made more or less likely to come into play based on some characteristics such as kinetic energy, momentum, etc., that goes beyond penetration and crush path. They typically think that temporary cavitation has some effect at least some of the time, and that the larger the temporary cavitation, the greater the likelihood of some effect on the behavior/actions/capability of the target.
- Hunting extrapolation: These folks typically have significant experience shooting living creatures under somewhat controlled conditions. They have experience about how animals have reacted to being shot - not just whether they ultimately died, but how quickly they ceased activity. They then extrapolate whatever lessons they have learned from this to "social situations."
- The "I seen some stuff" person: The small population who not only have personal experience seeing gunfights, but who have enough of it that they have some kind of basis for comparison between effectiveness of various calibers. This is a small club.
*Here, I am using the terms "strong" and "weak" in the philosophical sense - people making "strong" claims are making the most extreme/absolutist version of some argument, while those making "weak" claims are making a more modest argument that generally doesn't go quite as far. Generally, though not always, people making "weak" arguments are more likely to be correct, simply because they are making smaller claims.
Fine Figure of a Man
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I have taken deer with several different handgun rounds, 44 mag, 41 mag, 357 mag, 45 ACP and 40 SW. I have seen them drop in their tracks from a spine hit with a 40 SW, placement. A low hit with a 44mag on a doe broke both front legs, marginal hit for sure but the deer "stopped". Another 44mag double lung shot well over 100 yards passed through a large doe and hit a deer behind it in the head killing it, real bad self defense scenario.
You realize the last 4 can pretty much co-exist and the only one that's really at odds are the ones that believe the gospel of Fackler that believe 2000 fps is a magic point that must be reached before any other wound mechanism other than permanent crush cavity exists.
Fine Figure of a Man
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That particular deer actually went farther than any double lung shot I have ever seen, probably close to 1000 yards. There was snow on the ground and a massive blood trail.
I did not realize that two deer were hit until I picked up the head shot one and saw the blood trail. Maybe it took some time for one or both lungs to fully collapse? I ranged it at 140 yards, the 240 grain XTP may not have expanded.
Vern Humphrey
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This is not a question of logic, but of experience and evidence. Regardless of what our logic tells us, what do actual shootings tell us?
MachIVshooter
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It's not that rigid. You don't go from direct mechanical wounding @ 1,950 FPS to massive permanent crush cavity @ 2,050 FPS. But to deny that a bullet traveling at 2,900 FPS wounds very differently from one doing 1,000 FPS is foolish.
I'm a combination of Dave's #2 & #4 groups, having spent as similar amounts of time shooting at living creatures and researching wound ballistics. I also have a little bit of personal experience with human beings taking low velocity rounds. I don't follow the Michael Courtney school of thought at all, no matter how many corpses or goats his group shoots with pistols and then examines under a microscope for remote petechiae.
One of the better examples to draw on is small animals like prairie dogs, how they behave when shot. If you use .22 LR, hit one at, say, 75 yards, bullet velocity is somewhere around 1,000 FPS. Shot placement is important, and barring head shots, the little buggers will frequently get down their holes before dying of their wound. I have used a 9mm carbine as well, and the results are more favorable than .22 rimfire, but still not very dramatic. Fewer of them escape, but there's not really any carnage, just a hole in one side and out the other. Using some hot loaded 90 gr. JHPs in the carbine did much more damage, not many of them moving after being hit and often a fair amount of blood around them. Now enter the .22 Hornet, you start to see some real damage, big chunks of the rat blown out and generally instantaneous death. But those all pail in comparison to the .220 swift, which will completely turn the animal inside-out.
How does that translate to larger creatures like human beings? Well, we certainly won't explode like they do when hit with a high velocity rifle round, but the wounding mechanism that opens them up is the same in a larger body.
*Low velocity non-expanding bullets will make a neat little hole through most tissue, though sometimes tearing beyond the bullet's path in liver or lungs. The less frontal area, the smaller the hole. As non-expanding bullets go, wadcutter type profiles create bigger wounds than round nose.
*Low velocity expanding bullets create a larger wound, and the sharp edges of bent back "petals" will cut & tear tissue that is simply pushed aside by the non-expanding round nose bullet. Sometimes there are also secondary projectiles as pieces break off, which may or may not make the wound worse from an incapacitation standpoint, as shed bullet mass usually means less penetration.
*High velocity non-expanding bullets will create wound tracks much larger than the bullet itself until the velocity drops. The bullets also tend to yaw & tumble, still creating a wound larger than bullet diameter even when velocity has fallen too low for the hydraulic shock crush cavity wounding mechanism.
*High velocity expanding bullets do the most damage, which is why we use them to kill animals far larger than ourselves. If you've ever successfully hunted big game, you've seen first hand the kind of damage an expanding rifle bullet can do inside a body. Even in very elastic muscle tissue, you see massive tears. Internal organs are often obliterated. Bones shattered, fragments sent through other tissue. Nasty, nasty wounds.
Not relevant for this topic are medium velocity rifle rounds and non-expanding bullets used for dangerous game, which have woundding mechanisms in between handgun and high velocity rifle, while their penetration is far, far more than either, tailored to their specific use in bringing down large, dense, thick-skinned, stubborn animals.
FL-NC
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The best way to "stop" a threat is by killing it. The best way to kill that threat is by blowing 1 or more holes into something vital. This requires shot placement- a 32 to the upper chest will get better results than a 45 to the leg or guts. So now that we have established that shot placement is king, physics dictate that the amount of damage done to this vital area is directly proportional to the amount of power delivered. The "why's" of the science of that power aren't that important. In fact, the scientific data has already been obtained by numerous entities and their experiments under much more controlled conditions than most people would be able or willing to duplicate. Common "service" rounds like 40, 45, 9mm, 357 SIG, 10mm, and the like in autos, and 357, 38 special, 41 mag, and so on in revolvers continue to prove much more efficient than rounds like 32, 380, 9 x 18, rimfire cartridges, and so on. These are just facts. Now that this is out of the way, it's just a matter of taking the data, and choosing a caliber and handgun design that the user can effectively utilize for the application, then selecting a well designed round in that caliber that will function reliably in that user's handgun for the task. This becomes a simple matter of training. Also keep in mind that modern handguns hold more than 1 round for a reason. Plan and train accordingly.
Carry the pistol you would prefer to have in you hand if you had to defend yourself.
There is no way I'd prefer a 380 over larger / more powerful calibers so I don't carry 380.
Good 9mm HP is okay, but I prefer 40 Glock 22 / 45 Glock 21 or 1911 / 10mm Glock 20 or 1911
Article with info for comparison:
https://www.shootingillustrated.com...tic-effectiveness-which-handgun-caliber-wins/
One bullet crushed 4 cubes/ inches of media whereas a "better" bullet crushed 6 inches
4 x 3 = 12
6 x 2 = 12
Takes three rounds of the "lesser" bullet to crush as much as two rounds of the "better" bullet.
Oh I fully recognize that 3000 fps is very different from 1000, much as 1500 fps is a very different wound track than 750 fps is and to deny that is equally foolish.
Thing is I've shot P-dogs with 22s, 22 hornet, 223, 243 and 9mm too even shot 3 at once with a 7x57 and understand very well what velocity does thing is I've also shot them with 44 mag and 45/70 and can tell you ya don't need 2000+ fps to blow chunks up.
MachIVshooter
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That depends. With expanding bullets, the higher velocity will expand the bullet sooner, open it wider and drive it deeper, so yes, more damage. With non expanding bullets, though, there really isn't any difference. Barring secondary projectiles created by shattered bone and not considering penetration depth, the wounds produced by a .38 S&W 145 gr. LRN @ 700 FPS, a 9mm 124 gr. FMJRN @ 1,100 FPS and a .357 magnum 130 gr. FMJRN @ 1,400 FPS will be forensically indistinguishable from one another in most tissue, as would those created by non-expanding .40 or .45 caliber pistol bullets.
Zaydok Allen
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I guess I’ve hit a point where stopping power is irrelevant. Bigger and more holes in a vital structure or organ will have the best chance of stopping a threat.
So as always, measure your gun, cartridge, and ammo choices carefully, and hit the target in an important spot.
None of the technicalities and unending need to label, define, and quantify everything will make any difference when you actually need a gun.
So as always, measure your gun, cartridge, and ammo choices carefully, and hit the target in an important spot.
None of the technicalities and unending need to label, define, and quantify everything will make any difference when you actually need a gun.
And someone who was punched in the solar plexus an hour ago is also going to generally be forensically indistiguishable from someone who wasn't. Not everything that has an effect on a fight is something a medical examiner is going to be able to detect afterwards.
What do you use to precisely measure the hole left in most tissue?
JeffG
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IMHO The advantages of one caliber over another, rather than being measurable, on a living target fall into the category of *likely*. Yes, the energy levels, penetration, bullet design are all able to be empirically measured. No doubt.
Let's remember, if we shoot an attacker, say in the hand, and it causes them enough pain for them to cease the attack, and they run away; it can be counted as a "stop".
Let's remember, if we shoot an attacker, say in the hand, and it causes them enough pain for them to cease the attack, and they run away; it can be counted as a "stop".
MachIVshooter
Member
Of course not. But we can only deal in quantifiable units for a discussion like this; things like pain and psychological factors are highly variable, subjective. No two bullet wounds are alike, either. So we have two sets of data we can draw on for determining effectiveness.
-physical damage caused by the bullet, as evident forensically
-compiled anecdotes from people who have actually shot other human beings
The latter, due to the myriad variables involved in how people react when shot, needs a very large sample size to make any semblance of an accurate determination that one cartridge/bullet works measurably better than another. We have that for just a handful of rounds which are heavily used in armed conflicts and by law enforcement. Everything else, we rely on what MEs/coroners and tests in real or simulated flesh tell us.
^ Pretty much the platonic ideal of the "weak facklerite" position. Which is perfectly rational.
One quibble: the incapacitation (temporary as it is) of having the wind knocked out of you is not "psychological." The tendency to describe the stuff that ends most physical fights as being nothing more than "psychology" is not sound. So when facklerites say they can't measure things other than the stuff the medical examiner/trauma surgeons can detect (often hours after the fight), I can nod along. When they say that they can't meaningfully use unmeasured things as a decision criteria, I have to at least waggle my head in the "maybe" manner. When they say "everything other than what the ME/trauma surgeon can detect is psychological," that's where I shake my head. That doesn't flow from anything. That's as made up as all the stuff that the facklerite people are trying to avoid.
One quibble: the incapacitation (temporary as it is) of having the wind knocked out of you is not "psychological." The tendency to describe the stuff that ends most physical fights as being nothing more than "psychology" is not sound. So when facklerites say they can't measure things other than the stuff the medical examiner/trauma surgeons can detect (often hours after the fight), I can nod along. When they say that they can't meaningfully use unmeasured things as a decision criteria, I have to at least waggle my head in the "maybe" manner. When they say "everything other than what the ME/trauma surgeon can detect is psychological," that's where I shake my head. That doesn't flow from anything. That's as made up as all the stuff that the facklerite people are trying to avoid.
BTW, Excellent post. I will save it
All that is true if you are strictly counting on human targets. The stopping power discussions I was referring two in post #1 came up in reference to both humans and four-legged creatures such as bears (mentioned specifically). One person even implied that 9mm would be as good as any other caliber as a backup for bear defense.
I am just calling out this myth that all handgun calibers are equivalent.
I entirely agree with the posters above about shot placement, etc. But this post is strictly about handgun stopping power. Not recoil, not magazine capacity, not ability to conceal, comfort, etc.
Just stopping power.
So things like placement have been removed from the equation.
All of these other factors can be weighed against stopping power for particular applications. But to pretend that a 9mm is as effective against a bear as a .44 mag is IMHO just insane.
So again how do you precicly measure wounds in soft tissue so that we can quantify it?
Shawn Dodson
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This is a mischaracterization. I'm a hard core Facklerite. The temporary cavity produced by handgun bullets DOES have the potential to damage non-elastic soft tissues (e.g., liver, kidney spleen, brain, pancreas). The problem is that one cannot rely on the temporary cavity to increase permanent disruption because it depends on where these tissues are located along the wound track. If the bullet passes thru a nonelastic organ at the beginning of the wound track where the temporary cavity is at its greatest diameter then the permanent disruption will be greater than the organ tissues directly contacted and crushed by the bullet. However if the nonelastic organ is located deeper along the wound track where the temporary cavity is substantially smaller in diameter then the permanent disruption produced will also be substantally less.
The temporary cavity produced by a handgun bullet cannot be relied upon to permanently damage elastic tissues and its potential to damage nonelastic tissues is entirely dependent on where these nonelastic tissues are located along the wound track.
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Shawn Dodson
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Here's an explanation for the punch in the "solar plexus" - https://web.archive.org/web/2014080...al.com/tacticalbriefs/volume4/number1/toc.htm
Shawn Dodson
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Placement plus penetration are the keys to your elusive "stopping power".
A bullet must damage tissues critical to immediate survival to reliably produce rapid physiological incapacitation. The bullet must be placed so that its wound track will pass thru vital tissues. Likewise the bullet must penetrate deeply enough to reach and damage these tissues.
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