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.
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
. 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