Stopping Power Bwaaaaahhhaaahaaaaa!

[brickeyee]

If you want to miss fast enough to win, why bother aiming at anyone? Just shoot in the air enough times and you can scare them into stopping.
You want the attack to end quickly, and on your terms. Not when a threat 'decides' he has had enough.

You carry a weapon to allow you to project force without engagng in hand to hand combat. The weapon works a lot better if you hit the target, and continue hitting it until it can no longer threaten.

[Jungle Work]

It's about shot placement and what the bullet does when it gets threre.
I like big, but I've used smaller and it worked just fine.

What I wonder is how many here expousing these theories have ever shot or killed another person with a handgun?

Me, I like Claymores, they work swell.

Jungle Work

[OBIWAN]

MCCALL911

Try thinking about it this way...what difference would it make if you used an icepick that was .10" larger in Dia?

Not too much...don't test the theory please!

It would be more important (IMO) to either

1. Stab him somewhere vital

2. Stab him lots of times

Sound familiar...just substitute shoot for stab.

(The difference between bowie knofe and an icepick is several inches)

caegal

The point is that despite a shot to the chest, and a couple others, she did not just lay down and die...as some would suppose.

Neither did the gentleman in my second story despite 3 good hits with better performing ammo.

Both were shot with the largest (dia)commonly carried caliber....and kept on ticking.

[caegal]

>The point is that despite a shot to the chest, and a couple others, she did not just lay down and die...as some would suppose.


Ahhhh, I didnt know that there were people here that believed the ol' Hollywood myth of flying in the air five feet and being dead before they hit the ground.

Of course the flip side of it is that the majority of people who do get shot will also be in a lot of pain, and not likely to be talking normally, carrying on their everyday activities, nor making jokes. Adrenaline can sustain you through all sorts of injuries for a while, but when the adrenaline shock, and endorphins wears off there will be a lot pain.

[FrankDrebin]

So, shot placement does matter, if not - Frank please educate me as to your theories.

I never said shot placement didn't matter, I said that it wasn't the only thing that mattered, as some are saying to the exclusion of things like shot capacity and caliber. I can almost assure you that if someone has a 2-shot pistol and tries to hold you up, then gets behind some cover or concealment when you pull your gun and start shooting, they're not going to stick their head up to shoot back at you while you're sending rounds into their cover or concealment. I would not try this type of fire with a 5-shot .38. Also, concealment for one gun is cover for another. I prefer to be able to consider a car door and seat as "concealment" rather than "cover" when the guy I'm trying to shoot is behind it.

Personally, I've rarely heard of an innocent person being killed by a round that went through the bad guy because someone chose to carry FMJ .44 or .45 or .40, or whatever kind of rounds. Everyone keeps talking about what bullet to use to prevent "over penetration". As far as I'm concerned, there really is no such thing, within reason, as long as you're not firing steel-cored bullets.

[caegal]

>Everyone keeps talking about what bullet to use to prevent "over penetration". As far as I'm concerned, there really is no such thing, within reason, as long as you're not firing steel-cored bullets.

It always cracks me up when someone is concerned about that. There will be some shots that miss, that might hit someone. In comparison, a bullet at reduced velocity after traveling through somone will be pretty harmless.

Also with the big emphesis on "one shot stops", a bullet that travels through the body and still has enough energy to snap the spinal cord could be desirable.

There are many factors involved in effectively shooting someone, velocity, placement, size, and state of bad guy. There is no one factor that really rises above the others in importance. Perhaps the most important is to quickly adapt to the unique situation that you are in, which is acheived through training and experiance.

[Brian D.]

Seems to me that this tale from Farnam's site has popped up elsewhere on the 'Net from time to time--or should I say "Snopes-d up"?

Or, it could be my Deja-heimer's Syndrome kicking up again...

[Bullrock]

PHP Code:

You cannot miss fast enough to win a gunfight 


Shouldn't it be 'You cannot miss fast enough to lose a gunfight'? Whatever, it's a good line brickeyee. Is it yours?

PHP Code:

Uh, sorry dude, but you most certainly can miss fast enough to win a gun fight. It happens all the time. Gun fights are not necessarily won by hitting an opponent, but by making the opponent convinced he can't win such that he stops being a threat, retreats, and/or surrenders. Even shots that miss can do this by making the opponent realize the threat to him. 


Don't you think you're splitting hairs here? Gunfights are usually won by being able to draw fast enough to the extent you can hit your opponent in a kill area by staying calm and using your head. If you're a good gunfighter, Double Naught Spy, and you miss me with your first shot, you ain't gonna get another one!

Been there, done that, and I don't do fast draw anymore.

I use 9mm in all my pistols. What's the big deal? If you win you get to put a large hole in my head. If I win I get to put a smaller hole in your head. The point is, whoever loses is just as dead.

[MCCALL911]

Try thinking about it this way...what difference would it make if you used an icepick that was .10" larger in Dia?

Not too much...don't test the theory please!

It would be more important (IMO) to either

1. Stab him somewhere vital

2. Stab him lots of times

Sound familiar...just substitute shoot for stab.

(The difference between bowie knofe and an icepick is several inches)

Good analogies!
No, I don't intend to test the icepick theory. Never can keep up with it anyway.

[guardsman012301]

For my 357 I use Federal 158 grain Hydrashocks
For my 38 Special I use Winchester 130 grain SXT
For my 9mm I use Winchester 147 grain SXT or Federal 124 grain Hydrashocks

[buzz_knox]

What STOPS people is either a hit to the Central Nervous System or nice deep wide holes that leak blood.

That is a correct statement, if you modify it to say that what stops people includes those items. As written and if intended to be an all inclusive list, it is demonstrably false. People stop for a variety of reasons: psychological trauma from being shot, pain, fear, not wanting to hurt anymore, realization of what's going on, etc. There are cases of individuals stopping (and sometimes dying) from wounds that did not impact that CNS or blood volume.

[hotntot12]

..a case can't be made.I live in an area where there are numerous drive by shootings and most kids are killed with .22 or.25 ammo.Most ,or alot ,are killed with one bullet.No point--just fact.

[FrankDrebin]

..a case can't be made.I live in an area where there are numerous drive by shootings and most kids are killed with .22 or.25 ammo.Most ,or alot ,are killed with one bullet.No point--just fact.

What area would that be??? That may have been true around Detroit 30 years ago simply because there were so many .22's or .25's out there, but it's not true now. It's just as easy, or even easier to get a 9mm for the past 20 years anyway than a .22. Most shootings I've seen, and I've seen dozens and dozens, were 9mm, .38's and most drive-by's are some type of assault round. Go to any major ghetto city newspaper website and search "drive-by shooting" and see what kind of gun was used.

[keens]

Hopefully the majority of folks will never use a firearm to protect ourselves...if we do, I think it is best to have what you feel comfortable with from a reliability, accuracy, and "I-will-have-it-with-me" standpoint. I personally like the .45 best for a handgun round...but I have 9mm's also. I think that good training from a reputable school like Thunderranch (never been, but have had LE training with one of the good instructors) would be quite helpful in our endeavor to defend ourselves and families...

[OBIWAN]

Hi Buzz

Yes I should have said what can be counted on to stop people is CNC hits or wide deep holes that leak blood.

The rest is not something you can discern in advance or should plan on.

People that carry small caliber pistols, 5 round snubbies, etc need to understand that one bullet likely ain't gonna do it...it may take 5-6 or more well placed shots, movement to cover...running away

Notice I am not saying that those people are WRONG....just that they need to understand the situation.

Just like those people willing to carry larger calibers with good capacity and easily reloaded(autopistol) need to understand that caliber/capacity is not the whole story either.

It is a lot more fun to argue caliber/load/platform selection because there is no "right" answer

[shy_man]

Greetings to all:

Below article is good to look at I think as we talk about the subject re: stopping power. If we talk stopping power we always compare the most popular caliber i.e. 9mm and .45 caliber in the fast and slow school of thoughts.

Stopping power, also called terminal ballistics, is how bullets kill or incapacitate people and animals. The context may be self-defense, military, or hunting. This article assumes the target is human, but it applies also to animals.

Most theories about stopping power rely on impressive-sounding yet meaningless terminology--such as "energy transfer" and "hydrostatic shock"--to hide the fact that they have minimal basis in reality. Such strange, elaborate theories have only formed around firearms. People do not often claim that a particular knife or club has an "80% chance of a one-hit stop," or "transfers 400 foot-pounds of energy to the target." Popular entertainment portrays guns; if you're shot, you fall over dead. People infer that guns must be mystical weapons, capable of doing things no other weapon can, and so may require an equally mystical system for explaining the effects.

Performance
The 9 mm Luger cartridge combines a flat trajectory with moderate recoil, and fair stopping power. Its main advantages lie in its small size and low use of resources for manufacturing. Its main disadvantages are its tendency to overpenetrate and poor permanent cavitation (hole size), when nonexpanding bullets are used.

Because it is inexpensive, easy to manufacture and effective enough for most uses, it has become the most used pistol cartridge in the world.
For police use, it is mainly used with higher speed overpressure (+P) expanding bullets to increase both permanent and temporary cavitation, and to reduce overpenetration.
Energy, generally and qualitatively speaking, is the property (or the quantity of the property) of changing the state of a system or doing work.

It should be noted that the impact to the target can be no greater than the impact of the recoil, due to the law of conservation of momentum. However, the smaller size of the bullet, compared to the gun-and-shooter system, allows significantly higher energy to be imparted to the bullet than to the shooter. This is what gives guns their lethal effect. See physics of firearms for a more detailed discussion.

What people do when shot
What a person does when shot depends on a very large number of factors. A person can be incapacitated by either the psychological or the physiological effects.

Psychological effects
Emotional shock, terror, and surprise can cause a person to faint dead away when shot. This is the likely reason for most "one-shot stops," and not any intrinsic quality of any one bullet.
The realization that one has been shot, or at least shot at, is also often enough to cause a person to give up or flee.
Pain is another psychological factor. Having holes put in your body hurts quite a bit, after all, and can quite possibly be enough to dissuade a person from doing anything but screaming.
If a person is sufficiently enraged, determined, drugged-up, or just plain mean, however, they can simply shrug off any psychological effects of being shot, so they should not be counted on to stop an attacker.

Physiological effects
The only way to physiologically stop a person is to damage or distrupt their central nervous system (CNS) to the point that they fall unconscious or die.
Bullets can achieve this directly or indirectly. If a bullet causes sufficient damage to the brain (particularly the cerebellum or brain stem) or cervical spinal cord, the CNS damage is direct and nearly instant. These targets are very small, well-protected, and mobile, however, making them difficult to hit even under optimal circumstances; it is not unheard of for a bullet to skim along the skull, just under the skin, or even be stopped outright in the case of very weak calibers. Similarly, a bullet which passes through the neck or upper chest might not have the velocity to break the spine and damage the spinal cord itself.

Indirectly, bullets can damage the CNS by way of bleeding. This is accomplished by putting a large enough hole through a vital enough blood vessel or blood-bearing organ. If blood-flow is completely cut off from the brain, a human still has enough oxygenated blood in their brain for 10 seconds of willful action. Considering that a person's higher brain functions will usually shut down in a life-or-death situation, this figure might actually be a bit low.
Major blood vessels include the superior aorta, inferior aorta, vena cava, brachial arteries, femoral arteries, carotid arteries, and jugular veins.
Major blood-bearing organs include the heart, kidneys, and liver.
Unless a bullet strikes and damages a CNS structure, there is absolutely no physiological reason for a person to be instantly incapacitated, and unless the bullet crushes a large enough hole in a major blood vessel or a major blood-bearing organ, there is no physiological reason for them to be incapacitated at all.

[brickeyee]

'You cannot miss fast enough to win a gunfight' is courtesy Bill Halverson of Gunsite.
It is usually used to emphasize that speed alone is not going to hit the target. When I took a class there, a coule of younger shooters where very fast on the draw and first shot. Their targets bore a strong resemblance to being hit with buckshot from about 50 yards, no matter what there actual range was (3 yards out to 15 yards).
By the time you are actually shooting at someone ( a really bad day) you need to score as many hits as quickly as you can to stop the threat. Thinking the bad guy might suddenly have a change of heart when you start firing is not something a reasonable person should count on.
If you are very well trained you can fire quick pairs, pausing for just a fraction to asses the impact. If lead is coming your way, no pausing till the lead stops.
The Gunsite 'school drills' are still a good benchmark. The closest range is 3 yards, 2 shots center of mass (a 'hammer') in 1.5 seconds from the holster. At this range the second shot is not actually aimed, but fired when you detect you have returned the gun to the target from recoil by physical memory. With practice the two holes should be within about 2 inches of each other on the target.
One of the most important things to remember is distance is your friend. As a profficient shooter use range to your advantage. You know you can hit the target. Back up and find out if the other guy can. Beats eating lead.

[seb5]

This thread has some good info in it. Good discussion. I would like to add that if in a gunfight you need every advantage you can get. All things being equal I'd still prefer a bigger hole than a smaller one. That extra diameter might be the difference between cutting the artery or missing it. I firmly believe that tactics, training, and marksmanship will take the fight but I still would prefer the bigger bullet if given the choice.

[OBIWAN]

Fair enough

Take a look at the attatched diagram

Ignore how menacing the .45 cal looks....

Concentrate on the size

How much difference is there really?

[FrankDrebin]

How much difference is there really?

How many times have you heard the doctor on the news say "One millimeter further to the left and his spinal cord would have been severed?" I hear it often enough to want the edge that that one additional millimeter gives me. Also, I've rarely seen bullets come out of a body that uniformly expanded. I like to carry fully jacketed ammo, or assume my hollowpoints are either not going to expand like they should, or expand BEFORE they hit the bad guy for various reasons.

[seb5]

Frank mirrored my thoughts exactly.

[JohnKSa]

want the edge that that one additional millimeter gives

I'd rather have the edge given by having an extra 10 shots on tap before a reload is necessary...

[seb5]

Well John that certainly has its merits as well. And I guess in extreme cases it would be but in most cases its 5-8 rounds in a fat body gun. I don't think there is a right or wrong, just what each individual can live with.

[shy_man]

OK heres another explanation about bullet size effectiveness:

What bullets do

A bullet will destroy or damage any tissues which it penetrates, leaving a hole behind. It will also usually cause tissue to be propelled radially outward, entirely analogous to a splash in water.

These three things, penetration, hole, and stretch, are the main effects of being struck by a bullet. How wide and how deep a hole the bullet makes will be referred to as permanent cavitation, and the extent to which the hole is stretched outwards by "splash" will be called temporary cavitation, since these terms are favored by the real experts in the terminal ballistics field.
The depth to which the bullet penetrates is based on the size, shape, velocity, weight, and deformation of a bullet. Narrower diameter, more hydrodynamic (like aerodynamic, but in water) shape, higher velocity, heavier weight, less deformation, or any combination thereof will increase the penetration.

The degree to which permanent and temporary cavitation occur depend on the size, shape, and velocity of the bullet. Wider diameter, blunter shape, higher velocity, or any combination thereof will increase both the width of the hole, and the distance which this hole is stretched.

This is because bullets actually crush tissue, not cut it. A bullet with a rounded or sharp pointed tip will crush only the tissue directly in front of a small portion of its diameter; tissue closer to the edge of the bullet will simply "flow" around it, and be pushed outwards. A blunter, flatter bullet uses more of its face to crush tissue, and also propels uncrushed tissue with a higher velocity, but loses velocity more quickly in the process.

The velocity of a round also determines how efficiently it crushes tissue. A rounded bullet at a very high velocity may make a wider permanent cavity than a flatnosed bullet at low velocity. In general, a more hydrodynamically shaped bullet gives tissues more space to move to the sides, and a lower velocity bullet gives the tissue more time.

How much velocity a bullet retains during penetration is very important. A bullet which starts at a high velocity but loses its velocity quickly during penetration will crush a relatively large diameter hole at first, but the permanent cavity will quickly narrow deeper in. A projectile which retains velocity better (usually a heavier weight one of the same caliber) might make a smaller hole than the faster, lighter bullet at first, but retains velocity better as it penetrates, crushing a larger diameter hole deeper.

None of these processes are static in any way. As a bullet penetrates, it inevitably loses velocity (and, in the case of expanding bullets, deforms). This means that the diameter of the temporary and permanent cavities will gradually get narrower as the bullet penetrates deeper. In the case of expanding bullets, such as hollowpoints, the wider diameter and blunter shape temporarily crush a wider hole and generate a larger temporary cavity, but the bullet loses velocity even faster, penetrating more shallowly.

Above statements seems favor the smaller and fast bullets to be particular the 9mm.

I am just presenting opinion of experts. Even I am a 1911 .45 fanatics but it looks like the 9mm is a good or if not equal caliber to the .45 caliber.

[caegal]

How many times have you heard the doctor on the news say "One millimeter further to the left and his spinal cord would have been severed?" ..... I've rarely seen bullets come out of a body that uniformly expanded

Never, and if I did hear it I would assume that the doctor was exagerating. If a bullet was one millimeter away from severing the spinal cord, then it would already of hit the spinal cord. You need a good solid hit to SEVER the spinal cord. Besides, the television loves sensationalistic bs. Besides, a bullet does not have to sever the spinal cord, only damage it to cause incapacitation. There are also many nerves coming from the spinal column to cause severe injury.

According to the statements above, you want a bullet that will expand reliably, lose all its energy in the person, not exit the body, yet still have enough energy to bust the bones covering the spinal cord. Isnt it a trade off a that level? Deeper penetration and higher velocity vs. losing energy and not exiting the body?