.380,9mm,9mak,.32 not effective?bull......

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Gewehrmutter

New member
You know, it really makes NO sense when people on forums 'say' that "Well, 9mm is barely effective as a defense round." "A .32 JHP will not even penetrate a heavy jacket." "A .380 or 9mak is not even viable as a defense round." Well, if 9x19 is so ineffective, why did the Nazis kill thousands of jews with the 9mm ball round? If 9mak is such an underpowered round, why did the KGB use it (to great effect) to kill many spies, etc.? Another thing: How come I usually hear on the local news here about some gangsta getting in a gang fight and was shot and killed with a .380 or .32?????????? These rounds must be perfectly effective. Might I mention that in most of these gang fights some really cheep gun is usually used (e.g. hi-point, llama, etc....) Here is a question to these type (that think these rounds are ineffective as killers) people: Would you be willing to catch any one of these rounds downrange? I sure wouldn't! I doubt you will either!

Oh, those who think the .45 ACP round (ball or JHP) is barley enough to kill a person (center mass), you must have a problem!
 
Oh man....

....Gangsters with cheap guns like Llamas or Hi-Points....
What?? You are not serious. Most "gangsters" get their guns off of a dope fiend that burgularized a house in the suburbs, taking whatever nice handguns were in the closet, under the bed, between the mattress,etc...
They did NOT go down to the local gun shop and ask for a cheap semi-auto. NOT with all the warrants out for them, or all their "PRIORS"..........
As far as the .32ACP, the Mak, etc goes, they all kill.
And dead is dead..as I read once; "At what point during the animals' death (talking hunting), did the bullet FAIL??
 
Gewehmutter, I think you have missed a hugely significant point about the ineffectiveness of the rounds you mention. Nobody has ever claimed they would not kill. Of course they can kill. Hell, people have been killed with BB guns and not the terribly high powered ones either. Of course guns can kill and that is why their use is always considered as lethal force.

What those people are referring to are simple probabilistic statistics. Would you rather go against a bad guy with a vintage 1968 Daisy Red Rider single pump BB gun loaded with BBs, or against a guy with a Les Baer loaded with +P 230 gr hollowpoints? The obvious choice is that you would rather take on the guy with the BB gun because it has less of a chance to kill you. You may still get killed by the BB gun, but you had a better chance than you would against the .45.

No handgun ammo, or rifle ammo is "perfectly effective" - a term you used. The fact that people survive indicates that they are not perfectly effective. People get shot on a fairly frequent basis, COM, and survive just fine. Landing a shot COM only means that you have worked the probabilities in your favor to be more likely to hit an organ or blood vessel, but COM shots are not perfectly effective. Heck, even brain shots are not perfectly effective. There are some people who get shot in the head and the bullet takes a route that ends up not damaging anything significant. Bullets have been known to bisect the brain down the synaptic junction between the two hemispheres or enter the skull at one point and take a round house trip around the outside of the brain, but inside the skull and not do lethal damage.

Man, if you are happy with itty bitty bullets, load up your pockets with some .25 cal Baby Brownings or Colt Vest Pocket semi-auto guns and you go to town. Knock yourself out.
 
"Itty bitty bullets"....

.........what in the world does that mean? I didn't read anything about a Red Ryder in the first post. I am very proud for you that you have such a big gun. All pistol cartridges, including the .22LR from a three inch barrel or longer, will penetrate a man's chest completely.......from side to side. Not front to back...
My cousin was shot to death in his own home, unarmed, by a sheriff's deputy carrying a 9mm......there are NO non-lethal bullets...
A .45 is mighty impressive but quite unnecessary as noted by the thread-starter.
 
My 9X18 has been knocking the sh*t out of a lot of ground hogs at my Uncles farm lately. It will do the job. Face it all handgun bullets suck. But, it very hard to conceal a shotgun or rifle. I don't even worry about the what ifs. I practice, practice, practice.;)
 
Most of the people I have seen who have been shot are criminals, or at least doing something they probably shouldnt have been doing.

And most of them were shot by criminals.

Most of them were shot using 25, 32, and 380 's, fairly often 9mm.

Yes, I do believe criminals are more likely to use smaller, cheaper guns.

I have never seen someone shot by a criminal toting a 45, let alone a nice 45.
 
"...why did the Nazis kill thousands of Jews with 9mm?"

That's like comparing apples to orangutangs, and has absolutely NO bearing on a cartridge's potential for self-defense use or efficiency.

It's not often that you get to shoot your attacker in the back of the head while he's naked, kneeling in front of you so he falls into the pit you've dug for him and the rest of his village.

Quite frankly, I don't think that there is any commonly available handgun round that is "not effective."

It's the qualitative and quantitative difference of effectiveness that is the key -- no matter whether you measure it by penetration into gelatin, size of the wound channel (whether permanent or temporary), the "one-shot stop" capability, its power in foot pounds, momentum, etc.
 
Nobody has said a .22lr or a .32acp can't kill, but history has shown that smaller bullets kill less often with a single shot to center mass.

In a self defense situation you may have to rely on the stopping power of just the first shot.

I for one would rather put a single bullet in the BG when he's 10 feet away then one when he's at 10, 7, 4, 2, and point blank (with his knife half burried in your chest) :)

The main reason, however, is how you feel. If you don't feel like that little .25acp mousegun is going to protect you then what's the point of carrying it.

Most people who carry do so not because that gun will someday save their life but because someday that gun might save their life and they like the peace of mind.
 
All bullets will kill. I just read the other day about some kid that died being shot with a BB.

When people discuss cartridges, the issue is usually stopping power, not killing power.

For instance, the .22 LR and .223 are really about the same diameter. But the energy behind the .223 makes it a one shot stopper. Where as the .22 will for sure kill, just might take a while unless you hit them in the brain pan (a common technique for assasins is a silenced .22 right in the cerebellum).

I like to carry at least a 9mm, but sometimes I have to go with a .32. With a .32 I am going to have to aim at the eyes or heart. With a +P 9mm the entire thorax is viable.

I find .40 S&W, .357 SIGs, and .357 magnums a bit difficult to manage, so I go with a 9mm.
 
Why do you want to KILL?

The examples you gave i.e. Nazis, Russians etc... are examples of murder. In many cases they did not even use guns. Shooting a bound person behind the head with a .32 ACP will often result in a one shot KILL. Is this your motivation?

When we are talking about self-defense, we are talking about the ability of a round to stop the offender from killing (or hurting) you. In this instance you need a round that will be effective as quickly as possible.

Finally, I believe that too much is made about the effectiveness of all the trendy new bullets around, (this is not to say that a 32 ACP is going to be as effective as a 40 Auto).
 
Kye-Oat, you are right. No Daisy Red Rider BB guns were mentioned in the original post. My point was to show that the logic of the argument was not satisfactory and that people can be killed by a lot of calibers and even by something like a Red Rider BB gun. The argument was set up as a binary condition where either various calibers are perfectly effective or are not perfectly effective and the conclusion reached was that they were. But this is not a binary sort of Black and White issue, but one filled with a considerable gray range in between the two extremes.

Just for the record, the BB shot was not a one shot stop at all. The kid died from the infection resulting form a BB that passed between the eyeball and orbit edges, barely penetrating the extremely thin bone located in the back of the orbit, causing an infection in the brain. So sure enough, the BB was more than effective enough to be lethal.

Is a .45 more than effective to cause death? It can be. Personally, I would rather err on the side of being overly effective or more commonly effective than just barely effective or not effective.

Of course, I have no wish to kill anyone. If I need to use lethal force, my goal is only to stop that person from doing whatever they were doing that demanded I use lethal force.

Then there are the one shot stops where the bad guy was never harmed by the shooter who simply fired a warning shot. By the standards noted above by Gewehrmutter for various calibers being perfectly effective, this would make warning shots perfectly effective as well. It may be, but there would be no way I would count on a warning shot to be perfectly effective in stopping a bad guy.
 
The latest info on one shot stops from Evan P. Marshall is: .22 - 40%, .25 - 27%, .32 - 66%, .380 - 71% and for comparison .38 out of a 2" barrel is 67% .45acp with FMJ 62%. These figures are the best reported with a certain type of load ( except the .45acp). They didn't have info on the mak round but since it is a little more powerful than the .380 and is being loaded with some good expanding bullets it would reach up there with some of the big boys.
 
The most effective round is the one you can use best to hit your target. It won't do you a bit of good if you have a .45 with two extra magazines if you can't hit what you're shooting at.

I can shoot much more accurately with my .22 than with my 9mm, but I carry the 9 because it's much smaller and more concealable. (That's why I can't wait for the Walther P22.) With the bigger calibers, a lot of people tend to flinch because of the noise and recoil.

BTW, I've always heard that the .22LR pistol is the choice of professional killers. Chicago Mafia boss Sam Giancana, for example, was killed by multiple .22 rounds to the face.
 
The calibre you use does make some difference, But the key is practice practice practice, And hope once you are in a situation that requires lethal force that all your practice takes over without thought and allows you to put your rounds where you want them.
A large percentage of hangun owners lose their train of thought in a situtation and never even touch the person they intend to hit.
Practice Practice Practice Practice.( . )
( . . ) 2 to the chest,1 to the head,if that doesn't work run like hell :D
 
Man, I am so tired of Caliber Wars and people argueing
over what works and what they think doesn't. I think after a half a million times of everyone saying shot placement, shot place ment, shot placment, that we all agree that shot placement is what we are ALL trying to achieve. Lets look at caliber, the higher you go the better are your chances of the informous one shot stop with proper shot placement. Many people can't go to the top because control suffers and shot placement starts to go down. Go to the area in caliber that you are best with and as high as it will take you. If that is a Ruger 22 auto, so be it, and stop worrying if it will work. I know that 11 rounds of 22lr in someones body or eye socks is not going to make their day. Use what your good with and practice good, what is it again, oh ya "SHOT PLACEMENT ". That's should be 500,001 times.;)
 
To everybody and all calibers!

I would venture to guess that most defense senerios, mostly inside you home, are going to give you a shooting range of less than 15 feet (unless you live in a huge house).
ANYTHING in that 15 foot range, WILL do the job.
But, common sense should tell you that the biggest factor is....
SHOT PLACEMENT. That is my main goal, when I practice.
How about us American's back in the Revolutionary war? With those one-shot muskets and rifles, SHOT PLACEMENT was mandetory to a succesful stoppage/kill.
Just my little, but hopefully insightful 2 cents.:rolleyes: :rolleyes:
 
Well, if 9x19 is so ineffective, why did the Nazis kill thousands of jews with the 9mm ball round? If 9mak is such an underpowered round, why did the KGB use it (to great effect) to kill many spies, etc.?
Click to expand...

I guess if your ever lucky enough to have a point-blank shot at the back of a bad guys head while he's on his knees then your statement would have merrit.
 
Brian Busch-

Yeah, I guess my statement would have merrit if I was "ever lucky enough" to do such. I really don't think I am "lucky" to be able to kill someone, even if I had to in a defense situation. Maybe you think otherwise....... Another thing: I might have used a bad example (about jews getting murdered with the 9x19 round,) but the Germans used the 9x19 round to good effect in actuall combat;not just killing jews by shooting them behind the head while they are naked on their knees.............
 
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