The whole one shot stop thing is a bunch of crap, junk science, widely debunked by anyone in the wound ballistics community. (eg, made up of people that study
dead people shot by handguns and rifles, and how they died, etc... as well as those who dealt with people injured by firearms on a regular basis. )
One could run a good study on handgun stopping power, but anything I've seen to date that involves handgun cartridges is hardly scientific... and there are a lot of huge gaps in data, too. The variables involved aren't tracked very well at all. (For example, even things like fat perps vs skinny perps aren't accounted for, whether or not the perp had drugs in their system, etc.. ) The data out there also doesn't account for things like psychological vs physical damage causing the stop. All targets are not equal in these regards, which makes analysis very complex. The problem is data collection- you'd have to have LEOs and MEs fill out a survey for every dead perp to start accurately modeling things. Nobody has done this yet to my knowledge.
This is why ballistic testing of handgun cartridges is often reduced to simple things- like shooting a block of calibrated balgel with intermediate barriers in front of it. It's hard to dispute things like the distance traveled into the block, the expansion and retained weight of the bullet, etc. The thing people don't like about this is most handgun calibers end up in the same realm from 9mm through .45. .357 Sig and 10mm make "interesting" things happen to the test fixtures once in awhile, but 9, .40, and .45 are close enough for it to be somewhat of a wash. (Look at Terraformer's balgel pic above... ) There is a huge advantage with .357 Sig for intermediate barrier penetration, but that's another topic altogether, and isn't necessarily linked to wound ballistics. (EG, good bonded core .357 Sig punches through auto glass with minimal deviation in trajectory; other handgun calibers have "issues" with auto glass, especially windshields. )
-Mike
dead people shot by handguns and rifles, and how they died, etc... as well as those who dealt with people injured by firearms on a regular basis. )
One could run a good study on handgun stopping power, but anything I've seen to date that involves handgun cartridges is hardly scientific... and there are a lot of huge gaps in data, too. The variables involved aren't tracked very well at all. (For example, even things like fat perps vs skinny perps aren't accounted for, whether or not the perp had drugs in their system, etc.. ) The data out there also doesn't account for things like psychological vs physical damage causing the stop. All targets are not equal in these regards, which makes analysis very complex. The problem is data collection- you'd have to have LEOs and MEs fill out a survey for every dead perp to start accurately modeling things. Nobody has done this yet to my knowledge.
This is why ballistic testing of handgun cartridges is often reduced to simple things- like shooting a block of calibrated balgel with intermediate barriers in front of it. It's hard to dispute things like the distance traveled into the block, the expansion and retained weight of the bullet, etc. The thing people don't like about this is most handgun calibers end up in the same realm from 9mm through .45. .357 Sig and 10mm make "interesting" things happen to the test fixtures once in awhile, but 9, .40, and .45 are close enough for it to be somewhat of a wash. (Look at Terraformer's balgel pic above... ) There is a huge advantage with .357 Sig for intermediate barrier penetration, but that's another topic altogether, and isn't necessarily linked to wound ballistics. (EG, good bonded core .357 Sig punches through auto glass with minimal deviation in trajectory; other handgun calibers have "issues" with auto glass, especially windshields. )
-Mike
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