2 shots center mass from .45 acp story

[the_oklahombre]

RiverRat+1

[riverrat66]

Fractured pelvis in 3 places and plateau fracture of the tibia. Didn't hurt a bit at the time.

I'll bet it hurt the next day! But really you're talking apples to oranges. I worked with a guy who fell off a scaffold 30' onto a concrete floor and broke his pelvis, arm and lots of other stuff and didn't feel a thing. I put him in my car and drove him to the hospital but stopped for a six pack of beer on the way! I think someone goes into shock when suffering an injury like that. Try this, take a 24oz. hammer and place your hand on a steel beam then hit your hand with that hammer as hard as you can. I'll bet it will hurt like hell! But yet I saw a guy shot by a sniper and the bullet took off the tips off all four fingers down to the knuckles and it hardly even hurt. Sometimes I think the guys who were screaming the loudest were actually afraid of dying and not really in that much pain.

I remember once this guy had been shot seriously and was screaming pretty loudly and this cherry 1st Lieutenant says to "shut that guy up, he's giving away our position" and I said, "Lieutenant, Charlie already knows exactly where we are!" Boy did I make his [color=#FF0000]█[/color][color=#FF0000]█[/color][color=#FF0000]█[/color][color=#FF0000]█[/color][color=#FF0000]█[/color] list.

[Niantician]

I've never been shot but I've had shrapnel tear apart my cheek and jaw. The only thing I felt was the warmth of blood running down my body. On the other hand I once cut my finger while chopping onions and passed out. Addreneline is better than morphine!!

[riverrat66]

I've never been shot but I've had shrapnel tear apart my cheek and jaw. The only thing I felt was the warmth of blood running down my body.

Same-same

"Adrenaline is better than morphine!!" Amen to that!

[bclark1]

yea i've had some pretty good injuries (broken bones, wood beam to the head, needed most of a finger reattached once) that i've been okay with, a lot of blood but no panic, just get myself to the ER. to indycolt's point as well, car wrecks are a "good" place to see this. i happened to be first-on at a pretty bad one a few months back, 80+mph roll, and one guy got thrown. he refused to acknowledge that he was spaghetti from the waist down and was flaming pissed at me for trying to keep him from moving, he wanted to walk it off. i don't know if a gunshot's the same, but i'd say weirder things have happened than someone quite suddenly reconsidering when they realize deadly force is being employed against them. different people will respond to trauma in different ways.

[Moloch]

Anyone ever fractured a bone? Tell me that didn't hurt.

Crashed with my bike into a tree, left elbow bone shattered into more than 12small pieces and 2 fingers on my left arm were broken 4 times . Didn't hurt, I was able to drive more than 2 miles to the car while driving with both arms. I thought I have big bad bruises but at the hospital it started to hurt and sting. A LOT.

[Varmint Eviscerator]

Riverrat, could you elaborate??? Secondly My first hunt was with an 06 and I got to pick my own ammo- I picked hornady high energy loads-180grn goin 2950+fps
Well I thought I was going to do some long range shooting- buck that weighed 168lbs came to about 180yrds of my blind and I nailed him. His back legs collapsed and his front right leg stepped over to the left side to counter the "impact" or so it seemed, there is definitly "impact" pr "knock down" power, I had a cci velocitor ("wimpy" 22lr that moves a 40grn gold dot hp at 1435fps) With this load I shot a grey squirrel that weighed an honest to god 7lbs! When the shot hit it knocked him off his perch with pronounced authority!
BTW while a pistol round is nothing to scoff at it lacks the impact energy or inertia to really "baseball bat him"
Chase

[Odd Job]

@ moloch

Shoot the throat! If you hit the throat veins he will be dead in seconds.

I'm afraid that's not true. Firstly the venous return is not as critical as the arterial supply. Secondly the arterial supply is duplicated on the left and right side of the neck (the carotid and vertebral arteries are in pairs and there is intracerebral crossover). Even if you nail one of those arteries, you have no guarantee that you will stop the guy at all. I have seen many guys come to hospital with damaged neck vessels and most of them have been in good enough condition to go for an angiogram before going to theatre for repair. By the way, damaging a vertebral artery high up in the neck is almost certainly going to involve damaging the spine, but whether the spinal cord is involved depends on deflection and the angle of incidence of the bullet relative to the person's neck.
One thing that should be made a 'mental sticky' in everyobody's mind is that it takes time to bleed to death. Even if you sever the aorta don't think he will drop just like that: he has time to draw and shoot if he is willing and otherwise able.

[riverrat66]

could you elaborate???

I'd be glad to but on what should I elaborate?

Odd Job wrote:
One thing that should be made a 'mental sticky' in everybody's mind is that it takes time to bleed to death. Even if you sever the aorta don't think he will drop just like that: he has time to draw and shoot if he is willing and otherwise able.

+1 That's precisely the reason for my "shut him off like a light switch" comment.

[Dre_sa]

from all that has been discussed, i have concluded one thing;

pistols should not be considered deadly force, as this implies that anyone that is shot with a pistol will die.
rather, lets call it potentially lethal force. this implies that a person shot with a pistol will have the potential of dying.

from all the evidence supplied, one could assume that you'd have to be pretty lucky to get much of an effect out of a pistol.

[Niantician]

dre sa NO! That's the "wrongest" opinion I've ever seen on this site

[shield20]

"Deadly physical force" is usually defined as "readily capable of causing death OR serious physical injury"...pistols definetly meet that criteria (especially if you carry something bigger then 9mm! )

[choochboost]

I have a .45 acp, and I've assumed it would 'put somebody down'.

Probably the biggest myth related to handguns is that a certain caliber/pistol/ammo will "stop" someone or "put them down". No matter what caliber/pistol/ammo you have, keep shooting until they are no longer a threat.

[OneInTheChamber]

Anyone ever fractured a bone? Tell me that didn't hurt.

When I had a compound fracture of my femur, I didn't even realize it until they cut my pants off; I was complaining from the pain of a small fracture in the tibia (which is below the femur, the femur being your "thigh" bone).

I think part of the thing that lets people continue to fight is that they feel they are fighting for their life; which tends to make one overlook any external circumstances. I can attest that during motocross races I have been hurt in a crash, remounted the bike, finished the race, and only then realized the severity of the injury (most of the time by the blood that has bonded my ________ (insert body area) to my clothes. I would bet the feeling is magnified a 100 times when you have lead coming your direction.

[riverrat66]

OneInTheChamber,

Quote of the Day by ian garbe

Adrenaline is better than morphine!!

It can't be said any better than that!

[Doug.38PR]

WOW!!! 3 out of 4 times they will survive a shot from a handgun!!! Y'all make me want to give up my .38 special 4 inch for a howitzer!!!

What to y'all say to this statement by Ed Lovette:

The biggest problem we all shared as the ineffective terminal performance of the common duty rounds, the lead roundnose .38 Special and the smi-wadcutter lead .357 Magnum round. The FBI designed 158-grain +P lead hollowpoint (LHP) solved the problem in both 4 inch and 2 inch .38 Special Revolvers. By the time this round had gained national acceptance I had contacts within the firearms training units of most of the big city agencies that have adopted the LHP. Their reports were always the same: "Given good shot placement on the part of the officer, the LHP is a very reliable duty load in both our 2 inch and 4 inch service revolvers. One or two shots at the upper torso generally stops the actions of the bad guy"......
Most of all the studies of actual street shootings (regardless of wholse study it is) agree that the LHP (regardless of manufacturer) from a 2 inch revolver performs very much like .45 ACP hardball. It may not be a giant killer (depending on your definition of giant); however, according to an FBI agent I knew, the first man they shot with the LHP weighed about 300 pounds. He took one hit "plumb center," attempted to take a step forward, and fell flat on his face.

[riverrat66]

If anyone thinks it ain't serious [color=#FF0000]█[/color][color=#FF0000]█[/color][color=#FF0000]█[/color][color=#FF0000]█[/color][color=#FF0000]█[/color] getting shot with a handgun look at this link . It shows what a .40 cal. SW 135gr. hydra-shok bullet fired at close range can do. It's not pretty and I'd hate like hell to be on the receiving end of this!

[CobrayCommando]

Allright, I didn't bother reading this thread, only the first post.

Lesson number one here is don't aim for center mass, thats simply idiotic. What is there but guts. Aim for the f*ing lethal triangle, thats where the .45 does its extra damage.

No handgun round will reliably "put someone down", as in drop dead instantly, even if you hit the vitals, and especially if you don't. It happens, but eventually your going to run into someone who simply doesn't feel like laying down.

Misses don't count, I don't give a **** what you think of the .45 if it doesn't hit vitals its not going to do jack unless you get lucky and hit a sissy.

I'm tired of seeing threads where you hit a guy in the lovehandles and suddenly everyone jumps on that caliber for not instantly killing him.

[RsqVet]

1. Any round can fail, period. Some fail more offten than others and some failures are operator error, i.e. round not put where it needs to go.

2. When discussing a "stop" as mentioned in Doug's recent quote or most other sources what is not being discussed is a "kill" i.e. the subject dies, what is being discussed is the cessation of hostilites by the agressor which is the goal of any armed defense, death may or may not result but is not a requirement. Talking about "stop" statisitcs and stories second, third or 4th hand through the internet can be very confusing as there are many "stops" atributed to a given caliber that might have been effected with a 380 or a 22 for that matter as once the BG saw a flash and realized things were serious he gave up. Defensive rounds are not designed for this situation, they are designed for the perverbial 300 pound man of muscle on PCP / Meth who is hell bent on homicie and to be stoped must be killed or so injured he can no longer fight, typically the best ways to do this are 1. direct incapacitation of major parts of the CNS (near instantaneous cessation of acticity), 2. Massive blood loss / disruption of the heart(can continue on for many seconds even with a transection of the aorta)

Any common duty round is designed to address these needs so since any round can fail, you are best advised to read the labratory tests as to a given round / caliber performnace and then select what you feel best based on that and then worry most of all not about carrying some magic round but about doing your part and putting them where they need to go

[HangFire83]

Anyone ever fractured a bone? Tell me that didn't hurt

Broke my nose playing basket ball. Hurt like hell. Caught an elbow while sliding over to take a charge. Guy with the ball came in with his elbows leading the way and PRESTO...instant broken nose. First time I ever "saw stars".

[#18indycolts]

what it boils down to is everyone reacts to pain differently...thats why I've seen 300lb biker type guys throw up while getting a tattoo and I've actually fallen asleep before...but if I stub my toe I'm cussing up a storm!

[Glenn E. Meyer]

RsqVet - great post.

"The sum of anecdotes is not data."

I've heard a few talks by experts in the field and they say what you say. With quality rounds in 38SPL/357, 9mm, 40 SW and 45 ACP - they think most of the variance is the shooter hitting the target.

One important thing is the definition of a 'stop' - no one agrees on that and thus so many reports are baloney.

We have people falling over from a peripheral wound or no wound to Stacey Lim or Cirillo's report of a guy full of buckshot who kept on ticking and fighting till shot in the butt.

[TX_RGR]

I've really enjoyed reading the opinions and war/non-war stories. I would interject just a couple of things. One, COM is actually the "motor" of the body (i.e. heart, lungs, etc.) and is the largest area on the target (you could even say the ultimate aiming point is right at the heart, though you might be considered overly optimistic if you expected to actually pierce the heart), so you get increased hit probability (a good thing) and the largest potential for hitting something important (i.e. heart, lungs, etc.). For those reasons, I would hestitate to call aiming at COM "stupid" or any other demeaning adjective.

As for the "knock-down power" of any round--I won't try and argue with anyone using a 12 ga. slug on a groundhog. It's akin to the "knock down power" of a boulder landing on you. But, I have observed a squirrel get literally knocked out of a tree after a hit from a .177 pellet. I have also observed a squirrel get knocked out of a tree after a miss. It literally flew off the branch, landed on the ground, and flopped around. I think it must have arrested from fear or surprise. It ran away. My subtle point being that I think it's difficult to attribute the reaction of the target directly to the projectile used.

I like the idea of 2 to COM, if nothing else, to get the target's mind off of something else, like shooting me. After that, a follow-up or two at the head is a good idea. To parrot the comments of others, I read somewhere that a handgun is an excuse to get into a fight with a bigger gun (rifle, shotgun). I always liked that one.

[Mikeyboy]

River rat...nasty photo, another reason for me to think the S&W sigma is a POJ.

Can we all agree that a massive wound to the heart or the brain will most likely kill a man?? The lightswitch comment to me seems to fair, you simply are going for the center of the head. I do believe in chaos theory in defensive shooting, weird thing can happen. Sometimes the bullet bounces in your favor, and sometimes it does not. Increased caliber might give you a slight advantage but in the long run if multiple mini-events makes your .45 bullet miss the heart by a fraction of an inch, your BG can still be standing. Shooting multiple times until your BG drops is probably better then shooting a guy once and assuming that he should be dead.

I know I'm going to get "this is why 9mm is a whimpy round" replies but check out how the bullet bounced in a soldiers favor. If the insurgent just kept shooting this guy would have been dead.

http://www.snopes.com/photos/military/teeth.asp

Remember to brush your teeth

[Moloch]

I think a .40 or a .45 would get the teeth-job done because both have more weight than a 9mm.
I guess the .40 and the .45 are good bone-breakers because they are heavy and the 9mm is a barrier or flesh zipper.