.25 acp head shot

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I agree Pinetree. Those 25 Berettas are so handy. I dont think i am ever without mine. When im in the shower its hanging behind the door, when i walk around the house its in my pocket. When i go out its either in my pocket or in an ankle holster doing back up duty or even as primary when just running out to the store.

I simply cannot imagine life without it. Its not a 357 by any stretch of the imagination but its better than a knife or a cricket bat.
 
I had a friend who died from a single .32 auto shot to the eye. It was his own fault, he had a pair of matched semiautos, I think they were little Colts, and handed his wife one of them and started "playing guns" with her. He went "Bang", and she went "Bang!" back to him, and her gun went off, and down he went. The only reason that she wasn't charged with manslaughter (They were cuffing her up at one point) was that his brother and his wife saw the whole thing go down and told the police he had just handed her the gun, and told her it was empty. He was a dope sometimes, but a nice guy.

A police dog was sent into the hotel next door to where I worked at to try to distract a whackjob who was holding his parents and sister hostage. He had stopped taking his meds, and the voices were telling him that his family was planning on killing him, so he brought dad's S&W 28 with him, for protection. After about an hour of negotiations, they had a bunch of SWAT guys on the stairs one floor down, and they sent the dog in to give them time to rush him and hopefully get his parents and sister out alive. The dog went in, and he shot it at about 3 feet away, right between the eyes. The bullet went under the skin, and traveled in the groove between the eyes most dogs have, and popped out the rear top of his head. It did little more than **** him off, and he did an amazing amount of damage to the lunatic's hands and especially his groin before the other cops could get him off, as he was VERY angry. The dog had powder burns on his corneas from the muzzle blast, and two holes in his skin, but seemed fine. The doctors thought the suspect had been shotgunned, due to the damage to his hands and groin, and couldn't figure out why the x-rays showed no pellets. When the police told him a dog had done it, the doctor just shook his head and couldn't believe a dog could do that much to someone who was 6'4" and about 250 pounds, and was fighting back. When it was all over with, he was never convicted of anything, and a few days later, I saw him getting into a cab with his parents and sister, going to the bus station to go home to Los Angeles. He was moving very, very slowly. :D
 
Many years ago a friend of my brothers we called Thor (huge guy, blond hair,
you get the idea) was shot point blank in the head by a guy in a bar. The bullet did in fact fail to penetrate the skull. Thor was out of the hospital that night. The shooter was in the hospital a long time. When he got out he faced attemted murder charges. So it does happen. If your read Jim Cirillo's book he talks about this happening several times with their then carried .38 Specials.
He switched to the old Super Vel hollowpoints. Said did better on body shots but not headshot.
Lent my friend my copy of his book. One guy he talked about took I think it was 11 .38 rounds to the face. None of them made it through the skull. Round object hitting another round object often causes bullet deflection. And just to add perspective some .25's do penetrate the skull and kill. Any handgun is not great at stopping things. Yes some are better than others. None are great.
 
Gez you guys will argue at a drop of a hat, or about any caliber far as that matters. Chew this one up ! Air gun, one shot, in head, "Dead" :( I don't want to be shot with anything !!!
 
Any caliber has the potential to work and fail when circumstances are right or wrong which ever way you may choose to look at it.
Here in Florida I am waiting to here the out come LE discharged over 100 rounds into a vehicle to stop a suspect and may be facing trial and jail for using excessive force. I understand this a bit a drift from the OP question and looking at the pictures of the vehicle it proves how ineffective a hand gun can be as a man stopper
 
But then you have one nut job at virginia tech take out 30+ people with the lowley 9mm and .22. Geez if they would just allow ccw on campus. Back on topic bullets like the .25 or other calibers, to many dynamics can effect the outcome. No head shots, just multiple needed hits at com and get away safe.
 
grumpybutt- You are smart for not wanting to get shot by anything.

I've been shot by BB guns twice, the first time was when I was 12, my friend was goofing around with his Crossman 760, and it hit me right below the nose, and it bled for hours. It hurt a lot more than I expected it to. Originally, we thought it hit and bounced off, as we heard a BB hit the floor, but an xray a year later clearly showed it hadn't gone anywhere. That was over 42 years ago, and it's still there, more hassle to remove than it's worth. My dentist about passed out when he saw it the first time! It looks like a pic of a black hole in outer space.

The second time was a couple years later, I had a CO2 powered BB pistol that looked like a P08 Luger. It shot 100 shots on low power, about 25 on medium, and about 10 on high. It tended to freeze up on high power and when it did, I would put the gun under my leg to thaw it out, and after a minute, it would shoot ok again. I did that, but it wouldn't feed a BB, so I shook the gun, and somehow I put my left hand over the end of the barrel and it went off. It passed through my hand and barely had enough energy left to hit the wall and bounce off. To say it hurt worse than the face shot is putting it mildly. It didn't bleed nearly as long, but it took a long long time to heal up, and it hurt using my hand the whole time it was healing up.

My friend got shot with a .32 S&W when he was a kid, his brother found grandpa's old gun, and he started playing with it. His brother pulled the trigger several times and it went off, and the bullet went into his arm just below the elbow, and he screeched so loudly the next door neighbors heard it and came over and knocked on the door. They never heard the shot itself. His mom was washing dishes and didn't hear anything. He said it felt like an electric shock, then it burned like fire. He was blubbering away, and bleeding pretty badly when his mom came running downstairs. His brother still had the gun in his hand. The cops came, took the gun away, and off he went to the ER. Grandpa had died, and someone had packed up his stuff and nobody knew the gun and a box of ammo was in there, so the parents didn't get into any trouble.

He came to school the next day and showed off the hole he had in his arm. The teacher freaked out when he told her his little brother had shot him Sunday afternoon. He has a nice dime sized scar there 35 years later.
 
As has been said many times, the plural of "anecdote" is not "data". Plenty of anecdotes here...but when you play in the real world, you will quickly discover the difference.

Anecdotes about executions with a .25 proves nothing. Cattle are sometimes killed with a .22. In the real world, you will be engaged in a contest for your life. The BG will NOT cooperate and let you place a .25 in the base of his skull, temple, or eyeball.

Basing your expectation upon such a premise is not only ludicrous, but dangerous.

The myth about the bullet "bouncing around inside the skull" is equally ridiculous. Your skull is not a billiard table, and the bullet is not a cue ball. Most importantlly, the medium through which a tiny, underweight, underpowered bullet travels is not air..."Air-Heads" excepted.
 
My dad has an ancient Titan .25 acp. Not accurate or particularly deadly, it's a mere curiosity in the gun cab. :o

I sure as hell wouldn't want to depend on it to stop some meth'd out freak. I think I'd almost rather have a baseball bat...
 
I conceal-carried a Beretta 950 .25 auto for years. I heard the stories about 25 autos not being powerful enough to penetrate a skull; but never believed them. Maybe it wouldn't penetrate Cro-Magnon man's skull, but I feel sure it would penetrate the skull of modern man - most of them, anyway. I think you'd just have to hit it straight on. However, when using the standard 50 grain RN 25 auto bullet, any kind of an angle hit on a hard rounded object (like a skull is) would often result in a bullet deflection.

Winchesters pellet-nosed 45 grain bullet seemed to gain a little better purchase on hard, round objects than the standard RN 50 grain .25 auto bullet did.

Whether it penetrated or not, I always figured that multiple head shots from the .25 at close range would give the best chance of stopping an assailant. I never had to test that theory, thank goodness.

I still have my little Beretta, but put it out to pasture when Kel Tec P3ATs became availiable.
 
I will weigh in with a real world experience. Back in the mid 90s I was working for a Sheriff's Office and was dispatched on a welfare check to the residence of an elderly gentleman who lived alone. He had not been seen or heard from since the previous day and the family was worried. The man lived alone (widowed) and had terminal cancer.

He was found seated in a high back chair in his living room. Sometime the previous evening he had committed suicide using a Colt Pocket 25 loaded with FMJ bullets. There was one shot to the left side of the head that had exited the right side and then went completely through the high back portion of the chair and lodged in the wall.

Yep ~ they will effectively penetrate a skull and stop a threat. Would I want to depend on one, only if nothing else was available.
 
During the "PURGE" Josef Stalin was resposible for in the 1930's, he executed millions of people he thought a threat to his power. One of his execution team shot 250 people a day, each individually. To keep noise at a minimum one executioner used a 25ACP. He shot over 8,000 fellow citizens in the head with this caliber. Proof positive it does work.
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Some variation of this cliche (Mafia hit men, Mossad agents, slaughtering livestock) turns up every time the discussion turns to inadequate self defense calibers.

How, pray tell, do you plan to get the guy attacking you with a knife to stand still so you can shoot him in the temple with your 25 Auto?
 
carguychris said:
Maybe he actually believed the apocryphal stories about how Mafia hit men, KGB agents, and/or Mossad assassins prefer small calibers. :rolleyes:
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Apocryphal? Hardly, the .25 ACP & .22 LR are very good offensive cartridges. If you need more verifiable evidence, look at the details of the Reagan assassination attempt, the RFK assassination, the fairly recent Virgina Tech shootings, etc. Personally, I've dispatched too many animals with a single head shot from a .22 LR handgun to need convincing of its lethality.

Why limit yourself to a single shot though? Especially in a defensive situation, which hopefully is what most of us are concerned with. As an example I have a .22LR Beretta Model 71 that I've owned for 25+ years and would never sell. It has never malfunctioned, no not even once. It holds 9 fully loaded and I can put those 9 rounds on target in less than 2.5 seconds. In all my 46+ years, I've never seen the human being that can stand up to that. The same goes for my old 950 Jetfire & 1908 Colt .25s, their not quite as accurate, but they deliver their contents in a reliable, machine gun like manner.

In my view though, I question the effectiveness of the .25 ACP, in a purely defensive role. Most, particularly in light of the compact, pocket .380 ACPs that are currently available.

As a final thought. The .25 ACP is not, better than no weapon at all. It is better than no firearm at all. And if you know how to correctly employ a firearm, they will defeat, fists, edged, and impact weapons, most of the time.
 
One of my brothers friends nicknamed Thor because he had the blond hair, blue eyed, well muscled body thing was shot point blank by a guy with a .25 in a bar many years ago. It was just like you read about. It didn't penetrate his skull. Slid around his skull. Thor was out that night with a few stitches. It took the guy 3 weeks to get out of the hospital after Thor got done with him. Plus attempted murder charges.
But this is more common than people think. Jim Cirillo documented this very well. One account him and his partner both nailed a rather large man with 11 rounds of the old .38 158br. RNL bullets. He fell down. When they mentioned his age he was offended by it. He opened his eyes and asked for a hanky. Blew one of the rounds out of his nose. None had penetrated the skull. Round object striking another round objust equals bullet deflection. And it happened to another gentleman I know with a .45. Bad guy was on the ground but not out for the count.
Two .45 ball rounds deflected off his head! Said it hurt like hell but he finished the job on the guy quickly after that. No matter what anyone tells you handguns are poor stoppers by nature. Most people nailed in the head will probably die. But the skull is tough and angular. Makes for a tough target.
 
It's not really better than no gun at all. Yes, the .25 will kill a man if you sneak up on him and put the gun to the back or side of his head. But it's irrelevant to self defense which should be the concern here. Mafia hitmen and Stalin's killers have nothing to do with it. The Mafia killers used to favor ice picks for assassinations as well. This doesn't make it a good SD weapon. In self defense you're shooting at someone from the front. The head, if you can hit it, is much tougher from the front. Torso penetration from a .25 is not to be counted on, in spite of the few anecdotes like the one where an inadvertent discharge resulted in a guy's death. The round is just pathetic, much less desirable for SD than the .22LR. The other problem with the .25 is most of the guns it typically is chambered in. Like the Raven, Jennings, etc. There is no guarantee these guns will hit what you aim at, even when they do go bang, which isn't often. I'd feel much better armed with a Tee-Ball bat than a .25.
 
Years ago I worked with an ex-Special Forces type who always carried a .25 Colt with him in the Viet Nam bush. He said it saved his life a couple of times taking out VCs in skirmish lines in heavy jungle. He said that at 10 feet you couldn't hear it but it would either kill or stop a bad guy with a head shot at 6 feet or less. He would break the line and move out before they knew he was there He didn't care if they actually died or were out with a concussion as long as he got away.

I never saw him shoot but he could get a screw driver, knife or hatchet to stick is a 12 inch target at 20-30 feet the first time he threw it.:eek:
 
It's not really better than no gun at all.
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Given that it is well-documented that most self-defense gun encounters are resolved merely by the fact that the defender has a gun, ANY gun, your statement is not supported by the facts.

Studies indicate that somewhere around 90% of successful self-defense gun uses either don't involve the attacker being shot or don't involve the attacker being injured seriously.

In the remaining 10% of cases, even if we assume that a .25ACP isn't lethal (which is clearly not true) it certainly won't hurt to be able to poke a few small holes in the person before you have to go hand to hand.

There are better choices if you can carry something larger, but if not, it is still certainly better than no gun at all and it's nonsense to claim otherwise.
 
A buddy of mine stuck a 38 to his forehead and pulled the trigger. It just scrambled a very small part of his brain. RETAIL WORTHLESS AMMO!!!! If it had been one of his or his fathers reloads he would have completed his mission. Now he can't speak and is a drain on the system. The hammer just happened to fall on a retail squib load. Cops tested the other 5 rounds in the pistol and they where all light retail loads also.

I've known several folks that have been shot with retail ammo. And it was clear it did not meet spec. Load your own and pay attention if you want real ammo! Even my new shooter wife as noticed how much retail ammo can vary per shot. And that alone has got her interested in the simple to the point do it right not fast reloading bench. Her only squib was from retail shot from her 60 Pro. Thank god I stopped her before she hurt herself of bulged the barrel.
 
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