More Caliber Discussion
This post here on caliber choices sparked some good comments. It also lead to discussion elsewhere and links to some neat data. So, here you go:
John Fogh, who I hear knows a thing or two about guns, has a couple of relevant posts worthy of reading:
Correct anatomy placement is a factor
Joe Huffman’s The Great Bullet Debate:
Do you know how to double the effectiveness of any bullet? Put another round through your target.
PDB has a photo that sums up one side of the discussion.
Also, Best Choices For Self Defense Ammo.
And: Review of criticisms of ballistic pressure wave experiments, the Strasbourg goat tests, and the Marshall and Sanow data
September 17th, 2009 at 9:33 am
Well, you could link to the arxiv article that debunks all the above… or not.
September 17th, 2009 at 9:33 am
Which one is that?
September 17th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Thanks, you found it. I’m now iPhone only, so my fun is done. Would love to keep in the fray, anyway: the “drill bit” model is easily debunked. Exsanguination takes 30 seconds… but rapid incapacitation is observed and experimentally measured at around 5 seconds. The bleeding kills you, but what stopped the fight?
I’ve heard “psychological effects” as the explanation, but that dismisses rapid incapacitation in game animals for similar pistol wound profiles.
Penetration effects alone do not explain the evidence. I continue to contend that temporary, not permanent, wounding effects govern incapacitation. I know from experience that only takes 5 seconds of arrythmia to lose consciousness… that’s my guess.
September 17th, 2009 at 11:25 am
Whatever. If you put more effort into picking your self defense caliber than you put into choosing your socks in the morning, you’ve wasted your time.
Don’t worry about what you’re putting in. Worry about putting ’em in right.
September 17th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Another note, a fellow Instructor, I know was all set on 40, and had purchased 2 M&P’s in 40, He also purchased 2 M&P’s in 9mm for his wife. He found while running a timer, he could hit the target with 4 rds of 9mm in the time it took him to hit it 3 times in 40. He decided that more hits in less time was better than the caliber.
September 17th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
I’ve got to agree with Robb. I carry a Para 14.45, and that’s what I shot out at the GBR-IV Steel Challenge.
September 17th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Buy the gun you like. Really.
Hunters will have some real-world experience in “stopping power”. Talk to more hunters. I hit a deer last fall with a 50 caliber lead ball doing about 1850 fps at the target (bigger and faster than any defense handgun). It severed a rib going in and another rib going out. It penetrated both lungs and opened a heart chamber. The deer ran about 100 yards, all uphill, jumping bushes in the process, then stumbled and fell. You’ll hear many stories of this nature. The deer was completely unaware of my presence, so the only adrenaline it got was after the hit. The only guaranteed instant stop is the CNS hit, or one that substantially disables the skeletal mechanics. Those hits are harder to make.
Read about the famous Florida Bank Robbery shootout. Some of those involved absorbed an amazing number of hits and kept fighting.
September 17th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
I have a similar story. A feral hog shot 9 times with a .357 Sig at reach out and touch distances, all quality torso hits. Bled out for 40 seconds or so, fighting to kill the entire time. Completely covered in blood, standing in a pool, when he finally sat down.
Carcass showed good penetration. Bleeding out takes a while. A dangerously long while.
We get good opportunities to work ballistics on porcine perp simulation, out here in the wilds.
September 17th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
My son hit a deer through the rib cage at an angle, liquefying the lungs. The light-jacketed bullet essentially detonated inside the animal, the shock column obliterating the off-side scapula on the way out, creating a very large exit hole that destroyed the picnic roast on that side. Three good legs, one mostly disconnected, and it ran about 80 yards through woods.
Then there’s the story, coming from Massad Ayoob IIRC, about the human perp that was shot through, armpit to armpit with a 12 gauge slug, and was OK.
September 18th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Deer run at 50 fps, so that’s approximately 5 seconds before incapacitation, about what you would expect for a deer in cardiac arrest.