Projectiles leaving 0 exit wounds, destroying organs

[Offhand McFlan]

Some of you may be aware of the political upheaval happening in Peru right now, and the ensuing violence and deaths which are occurring daily. They are basically starting to plunge into civil war. I have recently heard from a reliable source that some doctors in Peru have noted that many corpses have no exit wounds yet the organs are destroyed. What type of ammunition is likely being used here?

 

[21H40]

My guess is frangible rounds. I've never used one, but internet experts have assured me over the past decade that those rounds are able to make a massive hole in soft tissue, so gut shots become very effective people stoppers.

 

[Jim Watson]

Ordinary pistol caliber hollow points are soft and deformable enough to not often exit while making a nastier wound than full jacket.
That is why the FBI tests have both minimum and maximum penetration specifications.

A close range shot with a 7.62x39 or 5.56, both in Peruvian military issue, might well fragment and not exit. But you should consult a military weapon expert for details on that.

 

[Offhand McFlan]

Frangible is also what came to my mind, but not the ordinary "household defense" stuff which you find at Cabela's, etc.. What I read was translated from Spanish....so "organs destroyed" might be more localized than the translation suggested. If you've ever read the consumer.reviews on frangible rounds, most consumers are not wholly impressed.

However, this account makes them sound fairly impressive .

 

[Offhand McFlan]

Ordinary pistol caliber hollow points are soft and deformable enough to not often exit while making a nastier wound than full jacket.
That is why the FBI tests have both minimum and maximum penetration specifications.

A close range shot with a 7.62x39 or 5.56, both in Peruvian military issue, might well fragment and not exit. But you should consult a military weapon expert for details on that.

Indeed, not like these Peruvian surgeons have never seen gunshot wounds until now....especially in Lima.

 

[reddog81]

Seems like it could be any number of shotgun, rifle or handgun rounds. The basic M193 round with the right twist rate used will start to tumble and break into pieces after traveling a few inches. A hit in the right place can destroy a few organs and leave no exit wound.

Heck, drop a concrete block on someone from high enough and it'll destroy the organs with no entrance or exit wound.

 

[Odd Job]

Lots of variables.
The thing we need to know is what the term "destroyed" means. If it means the organ is no longer viable, that's one thing. But if it means the organ is no longer intact and cannot be recognised any longer (for the organ it once was)...well that is another matter entirely.
These were no longer viable, a spleen and a kidney:



That was a close range shotgun wound (with birdshot). But the organs are recognisable for what they are.

 

[tark]

Seems like it could be any number of shotgun, rifle or handgun rounds. The basic M193 round with the right twist rate used will start to tumble and break into pieces after traveling a few inches. A hit in the right place can destroy a few organs and leave no exit wound.

Heck, drop a concrete block on someone from high enough and it'll destroy the organs with no entrance or exit wound.

The early AR-15s were known to cause some really gruesome wounds. They had a 1-14" twist rate. Later, the army changed that to a 1-12" rate. They would still tear you up pretty badly.

 

[jmr40]

The reports you're reading hearing about include a lot of hyperbole. I don't think there is anything extra ordinary about the damage you're hearing about.

An arrow pushes its way through and only damages the tissue it cuts. A bullet, even a FMJ bullet, does damage to surrounding organs that it never comes in contact with. Bullets that impact at higher velocity do more damage than those that impact at slower velocity. And they depending on the bullet often do not exit, or in some cases don't penetrate enough to reach vital organs.

Hollow point, or frangible bullets expand more rapidly, especially when fired from low velocity rounds. They are more commonly used in handguns to aid expansion. If used in rifles they often over expand and don't penetrate enough.

 

[Offhand McFlan]

Lots of variables.
The thing we need to know is what the term "destroyed" means. If it means the organ is no longer viable, that's one thing. But if it means the organ is no longer intact and cannot be recognised any longer (for the organ it once was)...well that is another matter entirely.
These were no longer viable, a spleen and a kidney:

View attachment 1126472

That was a close range shotgun wound (with birdshot). But the organs are recognisable for what they are.

Well, as I said... What I read was translated from Spanish. So what we think of as destroyed could simply be "damaged" and the detail lost in translation. But I just talked to a second source...and apparently the organ destruction was "massive" compared to what is usually seen in those parts. Not your typical gang strike with a 9mm with normal hollow points. This makes me think it was indeed rifle rounds with a penchant for fragmenting and/or tumbling.

 

[Offhand McFlan]

FYI, one of my sources has connections to medical centers in Peru. The other LIVES in Peru. These are experienced doctors we are talking about here, who work in a country where gun violence in some places is common. I have been warned by these people about where I should travel when visiting. They know. And apparently this was out of the ordinary.

 

[Offhand McFlan]

The truth will probably come out eventually. It sounds like the separatists of the South are being furnished with weapons from somewhere. Peru is pretty tight on gun control, so if small militias
suddenly start turning up with stuff like this you know they have friends in higher places. AR's and AK's aren't anywhere NEAR as prevalent there as they are here.

 

[BreechFace]

Ever shot a varmint with a light jacketed ballistic tip ammo going at high velocities? Well what you are describing is what happens to varmints.

A 5.56/223 launching a 55gr Vmax at 3,200-3,300fps is going to be a mess internally. An SST provides more penetration but still thin skinned enough in the jacket to cause massive internal damage as well. Hunting experience has shown this in great detail, the term "soup" when describing chest cavities of animals comes to mind.

 

[Offhand McFlan]

Sure, 22-250 does that. I've seen it. And being that it's the type of round a rancher in a desert setting might keep on hand, it could be a good guess. The separatists are mostly rural people who live on mountain ranches in the Andes. I've been to Peru about 12 times myself, but I'm still not confident that I really know their gun laws. I have never seen anything there other than a 9mm, .38, 12ga pump (private security), or AK (palace guard). A few national police units guard banks with MP4 type things.

Understand, I have only learned of this in the past 6hrs. I think there will be more information eventually which spells it out for anyone who has studied ballistics.

 

[Offhand McFlan]

More news: People are saying the military did it, to dissuade the separatists. Sounds like it's probably AR's, then. True Peruvian military is seldom seen in pubic. As I said, the only AR's I ever saw were on the occasional national police guarding banks.

 

[BreechFace]

More news: People are saying the military did it, to dissuade the separatists. Sounds like it's probably AR's, then. True Peruvian military is seldom seen in pubic. As I said, the only AR's I ever saw were on the occasional national police guarding banks.

Probably the case.

 

[21H40]

I only saw a few examples of 5.56 on human targets in Afghanistan, and those were either steel core or the new (in 2011) penetrator tips. However, I would NOT be surprised if 5.56 without the AP elements would make wounds like you've described.

 

[codytrucker]

Frangible projectiles are not the same as hollow point or tipped varmint projectiles . Frangible is a full metal jacket filled with powdered or sintered lead. It is meant to " explode" , or go all to pieces on contact , usually for safety purposes when it hits a target , so it doesn't ricochet . I would imagine these would cause horrible wounds on humans , without having very deep penetration. And military / police types would have access to lots of it .

 

[CapnMac]

My first thought was rifle versus handgun. There's a couple of orders of magnitude difference between the two.
9x19 gets to around 1100 fps
7.62x51 gets to around 2600 fps
5.56x45 is around 3400.

That's not merely ±2x or ±3x faster, but also that much more energy packed into the round. That's a significant amount to "unload" into a target.

ER docs used to pistol rounds will be amazed when facing rifle round wounds. Just is what it is.

It's good to remember that rifle rounds are meant to cause injuries 300-500m, ten times more typical pistol ranges.

 

[JeffG]

5.56, 55gr FMJ and a 1-12" twist produced those types of wounds. The projectile destabilized, bent off at the cannelure and emptied the lead contents inside the body. (Dr. Di Maio Gunshot wounds)
https://ia800209.us.archive.org/12/..._Firearms_Ballistics__Forensic_Techniques.pdf

I am also thinking that a .17 caliber varmint cartridge might have the same effect.

 

[230RN]

This, from Jack Ruby's .38 snubby into Lee Harvey Oswald:

QUOTE
"There was a gunshot wound entrance over the left lower lateral (lower left rids) chest wall and the bullet could be felt in the subcutaneous tissue (beneath the skin) on the opposite side of the body, over the right lower lateral chest cage.

"It was probable, from his condition, that the bullet had injured the major blood vessels, aorta (main artery from the heart) and vena cava below the diaphragm. Consequently, he was taken immediately to the operating room and through a mid-line abdominal incision, the abdomen was exposed.

"Several liters (a liter is 1.057 quarts) of blood were immediately encountered. Exploration revealed that the bullet had gone from the left to right, injuring the spleen, pancreas, aorta, vena cava, right kidney and right lobe of the liver. The bullet then came to rest in the right chest wall.
CLOSE QUOTE

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1963/1...lly-injured-by-time-he-arrived/8181204553842/

I was amazed when I read about all that damage. Close range, but hey, you're only talking, what, 800-900 f/s? Bullets are often found just under the skin since they've lost most of their energy and just push the skin back out without breaking through and it snaps back into position.

 

[Goosey]

Media hyperbole... the exact same kind of thing as seen in this famous article, "The AR-15 is Different: What I Saw Treating the Victims From Parkland Should Change the Debate on Guns".

"As I opened the CT scan last week to read the next case, I was baffled. The history simply read “gunshot wound.” I have been a radiologist in one of the busiest trauma centers in the United States for 13 years, and have diagnosed thousands of handgun injuries to the brain, lung, liver, spleen, bowel, and other vital organs. I thought that I knew all that I needed to know about gunshot wounds, but the specific pattern of injury on my computer screen was one that I had seen only once before.

I was looking at a CT scan of one of the mass-shooting victims from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, who had been brought to the trauma center during my call shift. The organ looked like an overripe melon smashed by a sledgehammer, and was bleeding extensively. How could a gunshot wound have caused this much damage?"

 

[westernrover]

Frangibles won't frag in humans. They frag when hitting hard objects like steel and concrete. They'll even hold together going through solid wood.
Varmint bullets won't do what they do to varmints in humans. We can see the explosive results on a prarie dog and think that a similar size explosive wound will occur in a larger animal, but it doesn't. The bullet produces a cavity of stretched tissue. Because the stretching exceeds the elastic limit of the entire prarie-dog size organism, the whole organism is torn apart. The structures inside a larger animal are all larger and can absord the stretching within their limits of elasticity.
I can't comment on reports from Peru that I don't know about. But frangible and varmint bullets from small arms and their effects on humans are well understood and they simply do not produce explosive or dramatic wounding. Of course they are deadly, but not any more so than other types of bullets and they are generally less effective than some other types. No hunter in his right mind would shoot deer with frangibles or varmint bullets because they're ineffective and the poor results would probably result in a lost deer -- a dead deer, but lost because of the poor and ineffective wounding that doesn't effect a timely stop and death.

 

[230RN]

^
I think you mean,

"Varmint bullets won't do what they do to varmints in humans. We can see the explosive results on a prarie dog and think that a similar size scaled-up size explosive wound will occur in a larger animal, but it doesn't. The bullet produces a cavity of stretched tissue. Because the stretching exceeds the elastic limit of the entire prarie-dog size organism, the whole organism is torn apart. The structures inside a larger animal are all larger and can absord the stretching within their limits of elasticity."

Correct me if I'm wrong, please.

I was also gong to comment on the possible hyperbole in the Peruvian press. I was going to guess those would-be "journalists" love to exaggerate for the sake of what used to be called Yellow Journalism just as our own are. Just a guess, though.

Terry, 230RN

REF:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/yellow-journalism

 

[redneck2]

I shot a buck with a Berger 168 grain marked “Target Hunter” bullet at maybe 20 yards or less. 7mm Remington mag so the bullet was still probably +/- 3,000 FPS. The lungs looked like they had been run through a blender. About 1/3 of the top of the heart was just gone. Only found a few very small pieces of the bullet. No exit.

It did exactly what you are describing