.32 ACP FMJ vs. 40 S&W hollow point

Brian-
Your arrow analogy is irrelevant. The arrow is travelling much slower than a bullet anyway.
What part? The same part you hit with the arrow.
 
Cheapshooter-
Bruising is not "damage" in the sense it will stop any activity. And that's what you see-bruising. A hematoma.
Because you have seen it, and don't know what it is or how it relates to the subject at hand-doesn't make it a fact.
That cavity closes right back up in tissue. It's what the bullet actually cuts through that matters. That temporary cavity is not nearly as big as it is in the gel and it has little or no effect on stopping a determined attacker.
 
Torn, and destroyed tissue is what I see. Yes, there is also black "blood shot" areas which you call bruising. But there has also been tissue damage beyond bruising. Skinned out a 12 gauge slug shot deer and the entire front leg came off with the hide. The normal muscle where the joint is held together looked like a pile of hamburger.
 
I'm willing to wager that many, many more people have been killed by a .32acp than by a .40s&w over the last 100 or so years.
Click to expand...

Well if you count the Nazis, yea. But then the .32 has been here for, oh, 100 or so years. I guess you could say the .25 acp has killed more to. Even rocks have killed more!

Deaf
 
Give the forty fifty more years of peacetime use and it will still never catch up with century old rounds.

A lot of action happened between now and then,with the 32. As a preliminary weapon. The nine, however, has probably killed tens of thousands between now and wartime. Look at the use of them in world wide law enforcement, as well as the thousands used in criminal affairs. Still, look at the special,a serious contender in those times as well.

Again the numbers don't mean much. I've heard from reliable sources that the .22 killed a disproportionate number of people before gang violence. A medical examiner in Atlanta told me that more people died of that round during his tenure. A lot of those deaths were very slow and unpleasant.

Lincoln took two shots to the brain with a gun about like the cap, but again, using a single shooting is meaningless.
 
Brian- Lincoln was shot once with a .41 caliber Henry Deringer pistol.
Henry had not yet developed the 2 shot semi-automatic cap and ball gun.:rolleyes:
 
You are right. I was thinking about something else.

But, it was not a .41, the national archives and library of congress both report it as being a 44.

No need to throw out the ridiculous comment about the semiautomatic. Plenty of people carried a brace of pistols.
 
No handgun round damages tissue that it does not hit directly.
Click to expand...

This is not true. It's also of little relevance to this discussion. But, it's been found, some years back, that from many service handgun rounds there is an area of tissue as deep as 3-5" adjacent to the permanent wound cavity where tissue is damaged from the stretch and pressure of the temporary wound cavity. The amount of damage varies and is inconsistent depending on a number of factors. But it is damage none the less and sometimes significant.

If you had said that the only damage you can count on to have an effect on stopping an aggressor or game is the direct damage done by the bullet a person would be correct.

tipoc
 
It's been mentioned that the nasty looking gooey bloody mess isn't damage. That nasty gooey bloody mess is internal bleeding. That's kinda like damage.
 
Everyone seems to forget that there are several hits other than CNS that will instantmy put down an attacker. Hips, and femurs are instant stoppers if they are hit with a bullet that will smash them. .25 and .32 won't smash them.
 
Cosmodragoon said:
In the name of science, I recommend that you get together an assortment of water-filled jugs, bottles, and cans; expired food items and overripe produce; and various junk for simulated barriers. Take the appropriate safety measures and be sure to clean up when you're done. ;)
Click to expand...

This reminds me of me wondering who provides the windshield when the manufacturers show/claim their bullets will penetrate such and such amount after going through the windshield.
 
briandg said:
Even the lousy .25 acp blew open a lot of skulls in Katyn forest.

For that matter, in Katyn, for example, many prisoners were first bayonetted, then shot in the back of the head, and then dropped into the pit to bleed out.
Click to expand...


Off Topic: I'm familiar with the Katyn tragedy and am a little surprised someone on this forum appears to know more about it than I. I thought it was Geco brand .32 that killed most there. They measured entrance wounds being a little or so less than 9mm. I think there was frequently, if not usually, an exit wound. My hunch is a .25 wouldn't be powerful enough for that...I know they started that mission using something more powerful than a .32 or .25. They stopped using it due to the recoil. Was it the Nagant with powerful ammo?...You probably heard of Vasily Blokhin. Brrr...
 
Few pistol rounds will smash bone, and doing so requires more precision than a head shot.
Even if you do break a bone, it will cripple, but won't keep a determined attacker from shooting back.
 
Bric, the things that I am familiar with is that the brave and hearty Russian warriors did in fact resent having to use heavy guns. A lot of the dead, at least long before the complete excavation showed a lot of dead with stab and blunt trauma. Pretty much from the start they intended to blame the killings on the German army and to that end they used walther .25 acp pistols, you can be sure that they liberally scattered these "German"shell casings everywhere.

Off topic as well, but think about it. These soldiers didn't like shooting the nagant (97 grains at 1000 fps) and they used the .25. It left a lot of them alive and dying slowly, especially with the fact that many were found to have been shot at the base of the skull instead of into the brain.
 
Last edited:
briandg, I guess they didn't like to lug heavy guns around. I didn't know many were killed with sharp and blunt instruments.
 
Everyone seems to forget that there are several hits other than CNS that will instantmy put down an attacker. Hips, and femurs are instant stoppers if they are hit with a bullet that will smash them. .25 and .32 won't smash them.
Click to expand...

A friend of mine shot a guy in the hip with a 45 ACP. It went in the buttock and out his front pocket. He stumbled into the Rio Grand, swam the river, flipped him off, limped to the hospital and lived to sue.
 
Few pistol rounds will smash bone, and doing so requires more precision than a head shot.
Even if you do break a bone, it will cripple, but won't keep a determined attacker from shooting back.
Click to expand...

This statement is not correct. I'm also not sure what the point of it is. It's been well known for a good long time that a pretty wide variety of handgun rounds will and do break, fracture and/or pierce bone. This in humans, hogs, cattle, etc.

I'm also not sure why a person would say "doing so requires more precision than a head shot". It implies that hits to bone are always intentional or should be. It also, well simply makes no sense.

By the way, a part of both police training and some military training has suggested that when facing opponents wearing body armor that shots to the pelvic girdle may be useful in stopping an opponent.

I say that because for two centuries handgun hunters, and those that have taken game with handguns have reported on rounds breaking bone. At times this has been discussed as a good quality to have in a handgun for defense against dangerous game or in simply hunting hogs, deer, etc.

Elmer Keith, Skeeter Skelton, and many others spoke decades ago about those guns and loads that could break bone.

When the Thompson LaGarde tests were conducted in 1904 a part of those tests was shooting at human and animal bone and reporting the results. (They preferred the calibers that smashed and fractured the bone to those that simply penetrated through).

Few pistol rounds will smash bone
Click to expand...
. Here the writer may be using the word "smash" in a narrow sense. Using "smash" as distinct from break, fracture, penetrate, etc. Maybe.

But we know that routinely, bullets have been through various numbers of 1" pine board in many, many tests over the decades. If a bullet can penetrate through 6, 7, 10 or more 1" pine boards than it will significantly damage bone in it's way.

Tests during WWII conducted at 50 and more yards were conducted on steel combat helmets with 9mm and 45 caliber pistols. The 9mm ball did particularly well at 50 yards as I recall.

I'm wondering what this thread is actually about.

tipoc
 
Last edited:
Eh, Im not sure how the rest of the bones in your body compare in toughness to your skull.. but unless im mistaken wont a lowly 22lr go thru the human skull?

I seem to remember reading 22's was actually a hitmans favorite due to easy suppression or just outright more quiet even when not, a shot to the head was fatal and less messy then a larger caliber.

Do I have any of that wrong?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top