Interesting info for sure!
One thing to consider is another place where one can shoot to stop, that is the pelvis. Its being taught in many circles now that if your com shots don't stop, aim for the pelvic region. It seems its very hard to keep moving around with a smashed pelvic bone.
We are talking handguns, not rifles. Even then, pelvis shots don't exactly have a great documented history. Most people who teach pelvis shots do not have the anatomy background to be able to explain where to aim to make a pelvis shot that actually causes a failure of the pelvis. Just because you shoot at the lower abdomen does not mean you will hit the pelvis. Just because you hit the pelvis does not mean it will fail. The largest portion of the pelvis is the ilium and and iliac blade is largely NON-load-bearing. As shown on a recent episode on the forensic analysis of the battle at Little Bighorn, the iliac blade can be hit by a large caliber rifle round, not fail, and the round simply pass through, leaving a hole, but the blade still fully functional. You can hit and even break off chunks of the iliac blade without causing a structural failure that will prevent locomotion. Short of hitting the pubis, ischium, acetabulum (and hence femoral head), femoral neck, greater trochanter of the femur and breaking one of those areas, you aren't likely to have the structural failure needed to preclude locomotion. Even then, the hits on the femur aren't actually pelvis shots, but will serve that same purpose, but the bones must fail. As such, your target area is much smaller than what most folks realize and they no more know exactly where to aim on a clothed person to hit that small target area accurately enough to hit the bones underneath than they know to hit specific organs of a clothed person.
Even if successful, pelvic shots don't stop a person from firing on you. Their arms work just fine.
I've had the good fortune of about 40 hours of training with Chuck Taylor.
He advocates an aimed pair center of mass, (Thoracic Cavity) with follow up to cranio ocular if there is a failure to stop the opponent.
This is a good example of the problems of anatomical descriptions and self defense. People often teach and learn to shoot center mass, only they aren't shooting center mass, but center chest. Center mass shots, if they hit where aimed, will come in at the bottom of the sternum, hitting the liver and/or upper digestive tract, but not the cariopulmonary heart/lung region. COM shots are about 3-5" low for highly desired heart/lung shots.
The problem with COM shots is in the teaching and application. COM is the ideal aiming location to help assure a hit on target, giving the most room for error while still managing a hit, but is not the ideal location for hitting the target. So there is a slight conflict. Do you teach to aim at the point that allows the greatest chance for hitting the target but with less chance of actually stopping the target, or do you teach to aim at locations that will undoubtedly produce better stops, by have much less room for error?
, has what I consider to be *almost* the best target. It's anatomically correct with the head/neck, includes max-points for a true "ocular box" or whatever they call it, and the -0 zone is basically the lung/cardiac chamber, like all above the diaphragm. Its size is calculated as "average" for U.S. adults.
) so lack of penetration becomes less of a problem but on the other hand it is an area which is more mobile. Getting a well centered hit could be tricky.
Triangle.. whatever man!! 