Handgun Caliber Selection Insight

[Skribs]

Uh...are you talking about the temporary wound channel? Because I'm pretty sure the PWC in any pistol caliber wound tract is going to be the diameter of the bullet, because that's the tissue that's actually crushed. It's not until you get enough velocity (2000 FPS) to break the elastic limit of the tissue that you're going to see the damage open up beyond that.

Longer only applies if the bullet didn't penetrate deep enough.

 

[357SIG]

If you happen to pick up a pressure wave induced stunning effect hitting some vein that stops the fight instantly instead of them continuing to fight for another 30 seconds while their blood pressure drops, than it was very useful.

But if it opens up in someones pectoral muscle and deflects, fragments, or sticks in a rib and that makes it fail to reach the heart it's a bad bad deal.

That's where studies on the matter would be really nice for making a good choice.

Incapacitating wave? It does not exist, at least with handguns and light rifles. The only "studies" on the subjects are theoretical, and have no backing in the community. There is nothing to indicate this occurring on the street, or anywhere outside of this "study."

If it deflects a 9mm, the bullet hit just right, maybe due to the angle of impact, or the angle of the bone itself. All types of bullets deflect in the body. .40s and .45s can just as easily deflect in all different directions after hitting bone and/or soft tissue. It happens enough. A rib is not going to stop a bullet, but it can deflect one, if it strikes at just enough of an angle.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say not every gunshot victim was actually hit in the heart. I'd imagine arteries make up a fair portion of the short time frame icapacitation pie. That's where I'd imagine bullet width both increases the chance of getting something that will incapacitate in a short while, and that biggers holes would give the opponent fewer seconds to act.

Good conclusion! Using the heart was just an example. The same applies to every vital organ in the body. Some arteries are vital organs as well. Increasing the bullet diameter by 0.048" on any given side is not going to make the difference in wiping out arteries and veins left and right, as the bullet passes through. What it is going to do is damage arterioles, capillaries, soft tissue, and venules...all of which will not aid in incapacitation, and most of which will seal off due to clotting. Any artery/vein that will lead to nearly-instant incapacitation will be located around the head or heart. The further the vessel is from the heart, the less important it becomes. Examples of major vessels are the aorta, inferior vena cava, subclavian, femoral. Arteries are the heart's outflow lines, while veins flow in, much like a mechanical pump.

 

[Prosser]

Solved this problem. Go to .500" at 1350 fps, with a LFN that weighs 420 grains.
That has destroyed the vital on deer, and exited.

Second shot? Not required if the first one is good.
No conjecture. I just pulled 440's at 950 out of the gun, and replaced them with the heavier load.

Why? actual observation of such ballistics has been that they work, and hit like a 375 H&H or bigger rifle.

 

[357SIG]

I like Prosser's thought on FMJ rounds. It follows the basic idea that you can't incapacitate if you don't make a good hit. A common fallacy in the gun world is that a through-through wound isn't as good as one that stops fully. That is completely incorrect. First, as we've discussed energy transfer with low-to-medium velocity pistol rounds does nothing to aid in incapacitation. That is a stone cold fact, proven by years of research and real-life examples. Second, the round will not stop short in the body, leaving the vital organ in its path untouched. Third, an overpentrated round will leave the body with considerably less energy than it had upon entry, making it much harder to penetrate another person. Not only that, but this "fear" completely disregards the potential of a missed shot. Most people miss shots under stress, and those rounds can easily kill a bystander.

I really don't have any info or statistics on the effects of overpenetration beyond the body. I'm not aware of any cases where a pistol round commonly used for SD has overpenetrated and seriously wounded another. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but I'm unaware of it. I've honestly not taken the time to research that aspect.

You should be well aware of your backstop, whether FMJ or JHP, so I never really worry about overpenetrating anyway.

I would agree that heavy magnum pistol rounds will do more than a normal SD round, just as I agree a mouse caliber will do less than one. Physics cannot be ignored, but you have to understand that not every joule of energy is going to have a damaging effect in this case. Body tissue can tolerate a lot of energy absorption without shutting down. What is the threshold? I don't know. I do know that your service caliber rounds do not meet this threshold.

You have to keep the goal in sight. The goal is not to create the most damage possible for the sake of damaging something, but to produce the damage necessary to incapacitate someone very quickly. To meet this goal, you need an adequate round and training. The most powerful service round is not offering enough benefit to meet this goal any faster than the adequate one. When you consider the detriments of the larger rounds, you are probably handicapping yourself.

 

[357SIG]

Another good point is that tissue damage is not the only consideration in choosing a carry gun. If it was, we would all be carrying 9mms. How about hard barrier penetration? Does one round work better through glass, wood, and sheet metal? From the very limited examples I've seen, yes. Does a .45 deflect as much as a 9mm through a windshield? One test I've seen shows the .45 and .40 rounds to be more effective through auto glass. Other tests show it isn't so. I don't know the answer here, but do know it is very realistic for a civilian CCW'er to have to shoot through auto glass. People spend a lot of time in their vehicles, and crime happens on the road.

 

[Skribs]

What it is going to do is damage arterioles, capillaries, soft tissue, and venules...all of which will not aid in incapacitation, and most of which will seal off due to clotting

I'm pretty sure they're not going to clot within a minute or two, and I don't really care whether or not they clot after that.

As to the difference between FMJ and JHP, I think that you won't get much more after you've penetrated through the vitals. I also think that if you have two bullets that penetrate through vitals, I'd rather put a 0.6" hole in them than a 0.35" hole.

I don't have windshields in my house, and 9mm goes through drywall just fine. If I am in a car, the auto glass serves largely to protect me to get out of the situation. I don't want to ruin visibility during my escape by purposefully breaking my windshield.

 

[Loosedhorse]

By the way, my friend hunts buffalo, and anything else huge that needs killing. He hit a beefalo, a particularly nasty one, with a 500 grain round nose bullet, at point blank range, at 2150 fps, out of a double rifle he built, .450 Nitro Express.
The good news is, yes, when you get hit with something like that, the shock is enough to remove the animal from it's feet. The bad news is it was a soft point, deflected, and missed anything vital.

Well, I know someone who hunts (Cape) buffalo (), and uses 500gr HPs; no problem with deflection. There are also many instances of failure of "solids" (fully jacketed lead) due to encountering heavy bone (with resultant deformation or bending of the bullet) with defection of bullet away fro vitals. Deflection is not unique to soft-points.

Incapacitating wave? It does not exist, at least with handguns and light rifles

It's not until you get enough velocity (2000 FPS) to break the elastic limit of the tissue that you're going to see the damage open up beyond that.

These strike me as odd statements: implcation that there is proof that remote incapacitation from pressure wave doesn't exist; or that tissue damage beyond the crush channel "suddenly occurs" once you pass a magic threshold.

Scientifically, it is much more likely that we both have no "proof" that pressure-wave stops occasionally happen, and no proof that they never happen. It also makes more sense that tissue damage from temporary cavitation increases continuously with increase energy, not discontnuously.

Two bullets pass 1 mm away from a large artery (or vein if you prefer), one is a .38 LRN at 800 fps, one a 10mm HP at 1500. You apparrently believe each has the same chance (zero) of ripping the major vessel. I'm not so sure.

You should be well aware of your backstop, whether FMJ or JHP, so I never really worry about overpenetrating anyway.

Does that mean, if you are using 9mm FMJ and your attacker has an innocent behind, you should hold fire and let him kill you?

New York Times, 1998:

According to statistics released by the department, 15 innocent bystanders were struck by police officers using full-metal-jacket bullets during 1995 and 1996, the police said. Eight were hit directly, five were hit by bullets that had passed through other people and two were hit by bullets that had passed through objects.

In that same period, officers in the Transit Bureau, who already used the hollow points, struck six bystanders. Four of them were hit directly, one was hit by a bullet that ricocheted and another was hit by a bullet that passed through an object.

In that same period, 44 police officers were struck by police gunfire using the old ammunition: 21 were hit directly, 2 were struck by bullets that ricocheted and 17 were struck by bullets that passed though other people. Of the four officers struck by hollow-point bullets, three were hit directly and one was hit by a bullet that passed through another person.

By my count, that's 23 persons hit by bullets passing though other persons. Just the documented cases; just the ones involving police. In two years. One city.

It should be noted that most of the over-penetration shootings involved 9mm FMJ; with FMJ, 22 of the 59 listed injuries where from over-penetration; only 1 of the 10 JHP-caused injuries involved a bullet passing through another person.

 

[Skribs]

Loosed, when the human body gets hit by a bullet, the bullet will generate a shockwave that ripples through the body. However, in slower bullet speeds, that shockwave is not going to stretch the tissue beyond the elastic point. Take a rubber band for example - if you stretch it, it will snap back to it's original size. This is why this effect is called the Temporary Wound Cavity, because it is temporary and the tissue snaps back. It may bruise, but the tissue isn't destroyed.

On the other case, once you get beyond the elastic limit (i.e. stretch the rubber band until it snaps) the tissue is torn and destroyed.

I don't think they have the same chance, although even veins are protected (if they weren't, a simple punch would cause you to loose a lot of blood, because that also creates a shockwave through your body). However, studies have shown that under 2000 FPS, the shockwave generally does not stretch tissue enough to reach the elastic point. Over 2000 FPS, it's not necessarily reliable, but it happens more often.

 

[Loosedhorse]

stretch the tissue beyond the elastic point.

Again, I don't believe this is an absolute. Tissue is not a single type of rubber band, with one breaking point: veins have different elasticity than arteries; large veins different than small. A vessel that is "free floating" and linear is harder to tear than one that is "tethered" or branched. Some tissues (like liver) are very fracturable, very susceptible to sheer damage from sudden displacement; other tissue (like muscle) is quite tough. And how much stretch a tissue is exposed to depends on how close to the bullet path it sits.

But it may well be that, just like a larger bullet will damage a near-by structure that a smaller bullet would miss, a larger temporary cavity would damage more near-by structures than a smaller one.

 

[Skribs]

Right, and I'm not saying it's absolute. But the industry notes that the trend for significance is >2K FPS.

 

[Prosser]

357SIG. FMJ implies ball ammunition, and I'm sure that is what they used in New York, concerning LH's shootings.

I don't advocate ball ammunition. My friendly buffalo hunter pointed out that the round nose solids failed to penetrate straight, and that's at 500 grains, and 2150 fps. The hunting industry is moving to monometal solids like this:
http://www.gsgroup.co.za/03fn.html

As you can see from the 458 bulllets the faster they go, the more they mushroom. The guys I know that hunt with cast bullets advocate the same design, or close, but using hard cast bullets, gas checked or cast hard.
Moving at 1350 fps, these bullets mushroom a bit as well


So the keys are bullet design, and velocity. With the service calibers you can use a lighter Truncated Cone, moving faster to defeat over penetration.

Just looking at the reloading table you can move a 9MM 95 grain bullet at 1350 fps. If it's a truncated cone, made of hard cast it's going to deform a bit, dumping more energy into the target. It's also going to create a bigger wound channel, due to the higher velocity. It's also approaching that speed
where tissue damage starts becoming an issue.

So, you get a bigger wound channel due to the velocity, and the slight deformation of the bullet, or, if you are using monometal solids, no deformation at that speed, and a larger wound channel due to the meplat size. By lowering the weight, you decrease the chance of over-penetration.


Remember that skin is worth about 4-6" of penetration in gello. So when the bullet hits the offside skin it's going to be slowed considerably prior to exit.

So, the loads would look something like this:
9MM 95 Grain TC at 1350 fps
40 S&W 135 TC at 1434 fps
.45 ACP 155 grain TC at 1135 fps
10MM 155 grain at 1362 fps

There is another design that works, but it's expensive, but, you could probably design it to work in a pistol.

http://www.gsgroup.co.za/02hv.html

The above bullets, or Barnes X bullets,
http://www.theoutdoorquest.com/Articles/barnes_x.htm

Have a really intresting side line. If they work, they expand as shown.
If they are driven too fast, the petals come off on impact, creating 4 side projectiles that do a considerable amount of damage, and then you have a long wadcutter that penetrates straight and deep.

A certain Dubai prince has used first the Barnes X, and now his own bullets, similar design, at 2700 fps, in .375 Caliber. He loves it, since they hit like a .458 win mag, but are super flat, so he can take anything with them, at any range. And, they recoil, but not like the bigger calibers.

Wonder if you could incorporate that design for a pistol bullet, at say, 1350 fps?

Skribs:
It seems to be a sliding scale: The bigger the bullet in diameter and weight, the lower the speed required for that kind of damage.

 

[Skribs]

If the bullet is deforming and mushrooming, then it is expanding. It's just mushrooming instead of...what's the term, "blossoming"?

Edit:

It seems to be a sliding scale: The bigger the bullet in diameter and weight, the lower the speed required for that kind of damage.

I would agree, but I still think velocity is the most important factor as it relates to the TWC. Typically because slower, heavier bullets tend to slow down slower than something light moving at high velocity. It's why the 5-7 makes bigger holes than what it should.

Also, I don't think using comparisons to other animals would work. For example, I've caused fatal damage to a wolf spider using what can only be assumed as hydrostatic shock from a rubber band gun, because the spider was still intact on the outside. All animals are slightly different, and their tissue may have a lower elastic limit.

 

[Prosser]

I agree, but, weird stuff starts happening when bullets get .475 and over, and, weigh 275 grains, or more, and are traveling 1100 fps, or more.
That damage is NOT explained by the usual 'rule's.

 

[Wapato]

Regarding the "pressure wave" thing. There seems to be some confusion, probably relating to old misconceptions that the temporary cavity consisted of destroyed flesh and so on. This has nothing to do with the temporary cavity.

The pressue wave concept that seems to have some credibility is that overpressure due to the deceleration of the bullet can, via veins and arteries, be trasmitted to the brain.

It is not going to eject someones brain out of their skull. Rather what one would expect to see are stunning or concussive effects, maybe only temporary in and of themselves, and highly variable because we aren't blocks of gelatin and the pressure wave probably has to go up an artery or vein in order to arrive with sufficient pressure.

Incapacitating wave? It does not exist, at least with handguns and light rifles. The only "studies" on the subjects are theoretical, and have no backing in the community. There is nothing to indicate this occurring on the street, or anywhere outside of this "study."

What one would expect to see are people blacking out or falling over when there aren't other physiological reasons for them to do so. We see that all that time. The majority of the time actually.

However it is often attributed to things like "people seeing movies and falling down because they think they ought to".

Certainly I think psychology is involved some fraction of the time, but I wonder if oftentime it's because of this.

Maybe I should start a seperate thread on that. Perhaps being very careful to first specify what I'm NOT talking about.

I'm pretty sure they're not going to clot within a minute or two, and I don't really care whether or not they clot after that.

The issue, and I'm increasingly thinking this is correct, is that if you're only hitting capilaries the pressure and volume of bleeding is so low that you aren't going to be disabling anybody anytime soon. Looking it up, it appears capilaries are actually narrower than red blood cells. So the red blood cells get squished through one at a time, delivering their contents to surrounding cells.

So in a way they're already plugged. Arterioles and venules would bleed more, but again it sounds like if that's all you've hit, your opponent might not go down for a long time. Having a lung collapse also might not be adequate to force rapid incapacitation either.

However:

Any artery/vein that will lead to nearly-instant incapacitation will be located around the head or heart. The further the vessel is from the heart, the less important it becomes. Examples of major vessels are the aorta, inferior vena cava, subclavian, femoral. Arteries are the heart's outflow lines, while veins flow in, much like a mechanical pump.

First of all a number of critical veins and arteries are small, such as those supplying the head with blood.

I'm not sure how much of an expert you are on these things. But what about the pulmonary arteries? I thought the "triangle" you sometimes see on targets was mean to breacket their network.

Well, I know someone who hunts (Cape) buffalo (), and uses 500gr HPs; no problem with deflection. There are also many instances of failure of "solids" (fully jacketed lead) due to encountering heavy bone (with resultant subsequent deformation or bending of the bullet) with defection of bullet away fro vitals. Deflection is not unique to soft-points.

I'd actually expect the rounded nose of a FMJ round to make it particularily prone to deflection. Althought before they open up most hollow point bullets also have a somewhat pointed profile, and their rearward center of gravity might make them more prone to deflection.

I don't know, but I'd suspect that Prossers wadcutters might be the design most resistant to deflection for a given weight and velocity.

I don't know what to think about what would happen to a hollow point bullet that has opened up its petals going through a pectoral or arm muscle and then strikes a rib. Although I'd be concerned about fragmentation if nothing else. Although while normally losing mass hurts penetration, stripping some petals might not do that due to how much drag they impart.

If it deflects a 9mm, the bullet hit just right, maybe due to the angle of impact, or the angle of the bone itself. All types of bullets deflect in the body. .40s and .45s can just as easily deflect in all different directions after hitting bone and/or soft tissue. It happens enough. A rib is not going to stop a bullet, but it can deflect one, if it strikes at just enough of an angle.

This is something I really would like to see a study on if I could at all find one.

 

[medic-rod]

Damn shame you can't get them anymore..... Glad I still have 100 or so...............

.45 ACP Aguila 117gr "High Power" Fragmenting Hollow Point

The Aguila .45 ACP 117gr High Power cartridge uses what appears to be a cast aluminum bullet, which has three external serrations, spaced at regular intervals, on the sides of the ogive to facilitate bullet fragmentation. The bullet has a straight-walled cavity 0.225" in diameter and approximately 1/2-inch deep.

We separately chronographed five rounds using an S&W 4506 handgun. The 4506 has a 5-inch barrel. Average velocity of the five rounds was 1498 fps.

We initially attempted to test the Aguila High Power cartridge using a gelatin block measuring 6x6x16 inches in size. Two test bullets were fired. The sharp angle of divergence between the fragments resulted in almost all of the fragments exiting the sides or top of the block. Both shots resulted in the capture of only one fragment.

In order to capture all the fragments, testing was performed using a gelatin block measuring 10x10x18 inches. We successfully tested four bullets in bare gelatin. Due to the bullet's deep cavity we felt it unnecessary to test it in denim covered gelatin because we believe the denim cloth will not affect terminal performance.

On impact with the gelatin block, each bullet penetrated about 1 inch and then fragmented into four pieces, consisting of three ogive/shank fragments and one base fragment. The three ogive/shank fragments separated from each other at marked angles, and came to rest at a distance of between 6-8 inches apart for all test shots.

 

[Loosedhorse]

This has nothing to do with the temporary cavity

I think it does: the temporary cavity results in a sudden exoansion of the wound track, and a sudden compression of nearby tissues. That compression results in a higher pressure of that tissue. And if the compression collapses (squeezes closed) large arteries or veins, that intravascular over-pressure could be trasmitted to the CNS.

Otherwise, I agree with your analysis.

I don't know what to think about what would happen to a hollow point bullet that has opened up its petals going through a pectoral or arm muscle and then strikes a rib.

Interesting point.

The FBI Miami shoot-out of 1986 produced the current LE ammo guidelines. Central to the post-shooting analysis is that the late SA Dove (RIP) made a "perfect shot" that stopped "one inch short of the heart" after going through the arm, rib cage, and lung. Hence the FBI's emphasis on penetration.

However, the idea that it would have hit the heart is unverifiable. The lung tissue collapsed, and the artery that SA Dove's bullet severed was never identified. We do not know if the bullet was tracking (straight) to the heart, or (curved upward) away from it. The medical illustrators on the case seemed to think the upward track was correct.

 

[Prosser]

The only problem with the Aguila rounds is no shank to penetrate straight
through the vitals. Still, that's an awful lot of energy effectively dumped into a small area. Hollow points are like hitting a parachute on a dragster. Hence the cone shaped wound patterns in gel,
when the petals slow the bullet, and it looses energy, as it expands.

When you think about it, it's really backwards. You want the bullet to go straight and retain energy when it hits the vitals, not expand super quickly, and loose it's energy and speed prior to hitting the vitals.

 

[Skribs]

When you think about it, it's really backwards. You want the bullet to go straight and retain energy when it hits the vitals, not expand super quickly, and loose it's energy and speed prior to hitting the vitals.

I want it to be as wide as possible when it hits the vitals, as long as it will continue to penetrate through them.

 

[Prosser]

Wound cavity is caused by two things:
Velocity and bullet width. In other words, if the bullet has expanded, but lost velocity,
you loose the wound cavity because the bullet has slowed down, and gain a little on bullet expansion.

For instance my 9mm TC at 1350 fps would give you wound channel of 1.013".
If the bullet is slowed to 500 fps the wound channel drops to 0.375", or a bit more then the diameter of the bullet.

Since most 9MM HP's in shootings, average around a .5" expanded, you sacrifice a half inch of wound channel when you use a hollow point, after the parachute effect.

If you look at ballistic gel in slow motion, it's really apparent how quickly the bullet looses velocity and energy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92j3g168dIY
While a .380, this video shows how the non-expanding bullet retains energy and speed through the target.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXTNynOFpLk

 

[Skribs]

1. Those are 20% gel blocks, not 10%, so its an even worse comparison to an actual human. Unless you're shooting Bruce Lee, because with as strong and small as he was, he had to be physically denser than your average man.
2. The video doesn't show the gel stop wiggling, so we can't really get a good view of what the end result looks like.
3. The big liver-shaped bulge at the left side of the gel block is the temporary wound channel. If you actually look at the entrance through the whole thing, you'll notice most of it snaps back into place and there actually is a bigger line on the right (until it wobbles back).
It's easier to see in the .45 video, and if you watch the .357 magnum video you'll notice the TWC actually stretches the gel far above the top of the block, and a few pieces flop off, but for the most part it all falls back into place.

Go watch the .380 video and then watch the .380 golden saber, and you'll notice a much thicker track at the end of the golden saber.

 

[JohnBT]

"23 persons hit by bullets" "one city"

New York City currently has 36,000 police officers. I'm not sure if that number includes the 4,000 New York Transit Police. And I'm not certain if the 4,500 auxillary officers are armed.

My question is, 23 during how many shootings?

 

[Prosser]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQ6Jslg4e_0
This video shows the kind of longer, but consistent wound track of a FMJ, vs.
a HP:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0fr2By2qus

If I had a .380, I'd be using a non-expanding bullet with as flat a point as I can get to feed.

 

[Skribs]

Both of those videos still have the problems that A) they're using 20% Ballistics Gel and B) what you're seeing is the gel continuing to jiggle back and forth as it settles back into place. So you can't really see what the two look like.

Pause the 102gr JHP at ~0:18 and the 95gr FMJ at ~0:17-0:18, and you'll notice the line that shows the PWC is wider on the JHP.

In the case of the .380, yes penetration is lower, and you may want to go with an FMJ to get a bit more umph out of it. However, in a more powerful round (9mm, .40, or .45, for example) you can get the penetration with a JHP to continue through.

However, I'm not going to use these tests to see how the penetration is, because they're using 20% ballistics gel. The reason they're using that is because it looks better under slow motion, and not for any real scientific purpose, AFAIK.

 

[Prosser]

One more time:
Those are posted to illustrate how a hollow point bullet slows a lot as it opens up, and looses wound channel that would otherwise be created by velocity.

With the .380, HP's stop around 9-12", with NO WOUND Channel at the time you want it the most.

In other words, to oversimplify, you can calculate the wound channel for the first 6" using a formula that has the bullet at or near entry speed. The next 6-8", after the HP opens up, needs to be calculated at a much lower speed.
The end result is you loose wound channel, since the wound channel from velocity would be more through the entire target, then it is in the second half of penetration, where the parachute of the HP has slowed the bullet a LOT>
Ideally you could do a calculation per meter, for wound channel, and the result would be at one point, where the HP is opened, or opening, and most of the velocity is retained, that is going to be where you have maximum wound channel.

 

[Loosedhorse]

My question is, 23 during how many shootings?

How many shootings would, in your view, make 23 pass-through injuries "acceptable"?

The article doesn't specify; I don't know if the NYPD report did. Interesting, however, that (while NYPD is not known, perhaps, as crack shots) during the period that 22 were injured by pass-through FMJ, only 7 more (29) were injured directly and unintentionally by stray shots.

And yet we are often told that over-penetration is not the "real" risk (or often, that it's no risk at all), wild shots are.