Double Naught Spy
New member
The followup shot logic would seem to work in favor of smaller calibers when comparing CC pistols, but then again, how do you know you are getting more than one shot? You don't know that until the time of the fight.
Caliber effectiveness
- Thread starter Sharkbite
- Start date
The followup shot logic would seem to work in favor of smaller calibers when comparing CC pistols, but then again, how do you know you are getting more than one shot? You don't know that until the time of the fight.
Double Naught Spy
New member
That would be a good question for the folks that feel there are minimal standards for carry. I don't know. What is the chance you will need more than 5 rounds? 6 rounds? 7 rounds?
People often assume (based on posts that I have seen) that because they have more capacity that they will be able to utilize that capacity when the time comes, be it with a high cap .22 lr or double stack 9mm.
In the grand scheme, it is nothing more than mental exercises until a real situation develops. Nobody can say which is going to be the best choice for their fight until after the fight is over. Then it is too late.
People often assume (based on posts that I have seen) that because they have more capacity that they will be able to utilize that capacity when the time comes, be it with a high cap .22 lr or double stack 9mm.
In the grand scheme, it is nothing more than mental exercises until a real situation develops. Nobody can say which is going to be the best choice for their fight until after the fight is over. Then it is too late.
nanuk, hibc, this was many years ago, not last year when you could put your hands on a hydro boomer golden dragon tooth ultra whammy round.
It is probable that all those years ago, the round was simply factory lead. The .44 was still at the time a rather uncommon critter and a novelty. hunting rounds that were available were almost certainly Remington scalloped HP rounds and maybe even double the price of lead.
So, my guess at the time was that it would have been factory lead.
Now, there is another part to that question. Would it have made any difference? A teenager who shot himself in the chest would have had little heavy meat there to allow the bullet to expand. I was always thinking that the round probably went through without anything but a little deformation.
It is my belief based on many things that the .44 magnum and .45 acp would have done almost identical damage to the heart.
The hard lead SWC round would have made a slightly more damaging wound, but it was in fact, only .429 rather than .454 and the wound would have been smaller. A .45 acp ball ammo round was almost all that existed in the real world back then. It would have whizzed right through the kid.
Velocity really doesn't matter when you are driving a heavy lump of lead at approximately 900-1,100 fps, the guy who worked for federal made that point quite well, as well as many of our members. Until the expansion and explosive force causes destruction of secondary tissues, all you have is a hole.
He got really lucky that he managed to avoid the coronary arteries, that the wound in the heart closed itself off, that his heart continued to beat and was able to push blood through until he managed to be stabilized and moved to a proper surgical center. If he had stuck a .308 or even a 12 gauge against his heart and pulled the trigger, it would not have been remotely similar
The one thing to consider most carefully is that the heart iteslf is a big plastic reservoir of blood, and 90 times a minute, that big bottle of blood is given a squeeze that will cause leakage. It can be taken for granted that without medical treatment the guy would have bled out rapidly. Those holes wouldn't have healed themselves.
The most important point that I must make to be fair about the whole post.
There was one follow up on the news story. He survived several days and was still critical. God knows what his condition was a year later or whether he even survive a month.
We have had our share of weird shootings here. An old man killed his wife and shot himself because they both had terminal health problems. he put the muzzle on his forehead and sent a round right between the left and right hemispheres. Oh, yes, he was up and walking when the paramedics arrived and he had called them himself. His recovery was uneventful and according to later reports charges had not been decided on. So, an old guy who may have used his war relic .38 with round nose ammo survived a contact wound to the head. He might have survived any pistol round.
It is probable that all those years ago, the round was simply factory lead. The .44 was still at the time a rather uncommon critter and a novelty. hunting rounds that were available were almost certainly Remington scalloped HP rounds and maybe even double the price of lead.
So, my guess at the time was that it would have been factory lead.
Now, there is another part to that question. Would it have made any difference? A teenager who shot himself in the chest would have had little heavy meat there to allow the bullet to expand. I was always thinking that the round probably went through without anything but a little deformation.
It is my belief based on many things that the .44 magnum and .45 acp would have done almost identical damage to the heart.
The hard lead SWC round would have made a slightly more damaging wound, but it was in fact, only .429 rather than .454 and the wound would have been smaller. A .45 acp ball ammo round was almost all that existed in the real world back then. It would have whizzed right through the kid.
Velocity really doesn't matter when you are driving a heavy lump of lead at approximately 900-1,100 fps, the guy who worked for federal made that point quite well, as well as many of our members. Until the expansion and explosive force causes destruction of secondary tissues, all you have is a hole.
He got really lucky that he managed to avoid the coronary arteries, that the wound in the heart closed itself off, that his heart continued to beat and was able to push blood through until he managed to be stabilized and moved to a proper surgical center. If he had stuck a .308 or even a 12 gauge against his heart and pulled the trigger, it would not have been remotely similar
The one thing to consider most carefully is that the heart iteslf is a big plastic reservoir of blood, and 90 times a minute, that big bottle of blood is given a squeeze that will cause leakage. It can be taken for granted that without medical treatment the guy would have bled out rapidly. Those holes wouldn't have healed themselves.
The most important point that I must make to be fair about the whole post.
There was one follow up on the news story. He survived several days and was still critical. God knows what his condition was a year later or whether he even survive a month.
We have had our share of weird shootings here. An old man killed his wife and shot himself because they both had terminal health problems. he put the muzzle on his forehead and sent a round right between the left and right hemispheres. Oh, yes, he was up and walking when the paramedics arrived and he had called them himself. His recovery was uneventful and according to later reports charges had not been decided on. So, an old guy who may have used his war relic .38 with round nose ammo survived a contact wound to the head. He might have survived any pistol round.
The most important thing to understand about all of this is that every time a trigger is pulled and it strikes a living being, it is a unique event and the effects are going to vary wildly.
Some things can be assumed and expected (mostly). Bullets are designed to function well and will do what we expect them to do in normal human tissues pretty reliably.
Then you will have a kid drop a bear round through his heart and live through it, while elsewhere in the nation a person will put a squirrel round into a bear and make it fall down.
Some things can be assumed and expected (mostly). Bullets are designed to function well and will do what we expect them to do in normal human tissues pretty reliably.
Then you will have a kid drop a bear round through his heart and live through it, while elsewhere in the nation a person will put a squirrel round into a bear and make it fall down.
IMO, the 9mm is a "minimum standard." I believe that a person should carry a 9mm in anything but a very small gun. I include the .38 as equal to the 9mm.
In pocket or other extremely small guns, a .380 with modern ammo is acceptable. You will still get a serious wound that can kill or quickly disable. quickly disabling your opponent is your goal.
If I understand correctly, what are the chances that moving up to a .40 and retiring the 9mm will save the shooter from injury or death? Slim. Very slim.
Take all of those jello blocks and look at them after the tests. What do they all have in common? they have holes in them. Most of those holes will be less than an inch wide. Most of them will be deep enough that the bullet would have had every chance to destroy important tissues.
If you shoot a man you will make a hole in him. You may also scare him and hurt him, and maybe make him go numb, limp, or shock him into momentary catatonia. The hole is what counts, and IMO, there isn't enough difference between a 9 mm hole and a 10 mm hole to hasten the disabling effect of a gunshot significantly. moving up a round may cause a person to become disabled more rapidly, but by what? one second, more or less?
No matter what sort of hit you make, bullets that perform similarly won't cause significantly different injuries when compared.
There's a lot of science behind that.
Just a few more points to consider....
You can find examples of where everything has worked, and examples where everything has failed. From the .22 short to the .50BMG.
If you "keep going back" to the kid who shot himself in the heart, didn't die, and consider it a caliber failure, you are fixating on the wrong thing.
How about the guy who shot himself in the head with a .44 Magnum BLANK, and died??
How about the 9mm in the Miami shootout, that passed every test, met or exceeded every requirement, worked in numerous other shootings, but "failed" (according to the FBI after action critique) in that ONE real world situation??
How about we stop using the logic train that goes "Snow White ate a poison apple, therefore all apples are poisonous, therefore no one should eat an apple, ever!"
If there is a failure to stop, its NEVER the caliber that fails. it's the SHOT. And the shooter.
Firepower matters, in an infantry assault...Round capacity matters, if you miss. And we all miss, sometimes. Sometimes its not our fault, sometimes, it is.
If you shoot the way TV teaches you, you'll need a lot of ammo! Action heroes shoot tons of ammo, provide their own cover fire, and almost never run out. They MAY be seen to reload their guns, but they never seem to run out of ammo...and, they tend to fire in "bursts", usually double or triples, when using semis.. and they never have hearing trouble shooting without protection, either...but that's TV...
And while it is TV/Movies, and we "know" its not real, it also IS a level of training. Below conscious level, but still a degree of training. BAD training, but still training. It's what people are likely to do, if they haven't been taught differently. And when they aren't able to take the time to think about it in advance of doing it.
You, or I, or the next guy might not need every round in the gun. Someone else, might. And another someone will use them all, need or not...
there are cases of guys doing tap, rack, bang failure drills thinking their gun jammed, when in fact they had shot to slide lock empty without realizing it.
Every shooting is different in many different ways, and the only real thing in common to all is that someone got shot.
You can find examples of where everything has worked, and examples where everything has failed. From the .22 short to the .50BMG.
If you "keep going back" to the kid who shot himself in the heart, didn't die, and consider it a caliber failure, you are fixating on the wrong thing.
How about the guy who shot himself in the head with a .44 Magnum BLANK, and died??
How about the 9mm in the Miami shootout, that passed every test, met or exceeded every requirement, worked in numerous other shootings, but "failed" (according to the FBI after action critique) in that ONE real world situation??
How about we stop using the logic train that goes "Snow White ate a poison apple, therefore all apples are poisonous, therefore no one should eat an apple, ever!"
If there is a failure to stop, its NEVER the caliber that fails. it's the SHOT. And the shooter.
Firepower matters, in an infantry assault...Round capacity matters, if you miss. And we all miss, sometimes. Sometimes its not our fault, sometimes, it is.
If you shoot the way TV teaches you, you'll need a lot of ammo! Action heroes shoot tons of ammo, provide their own cover fire, and almost never run out. They MAY be seen to reload their guns, but they never seem to run out of ammo...and, they tend to fire in "bursts", usually double or triples, when using semis.. and they never have hearing trouble shooting without protection, either...but that's TV...
And while it is TV/Movies, and we "know" its not real, it also IS a level of training. Below conscious level, but still a degree of training. BAD training, but still training. It's what people are likely to do, if they haven't been taught differently. And when they aren't able to take the time to think about it in advance of doing it.
You, or I, or the next guy might not need every round in the gun. Someone else, might. And another someone will use them all, need or not...
there are cases of guys doing tap, rack, bang failure drills thinking their gun jammed, when in fact they had shot to slide lock empty without realizing it.
Every shooting is different in many different ways, and the only real thing in common to all is that someone got shot.
I use the example of the kid because it is so counterintuitive to many people. A person surviving a shot to the heart by the gun that will "blow your head clean off" isn't normal, right? I'm not considering it to be a caliber failure, really, I am using it to demonstrate that guns of certain calibers will often fail to live up to expectations.
The story of phineas gauge who took a steel rod through the brain and survived a hellish treatment is amazing. Again, everyone knows that a guy can't have a filthy, rusty, .32mm caliber iron rod blasted through the left side of his brain and survive, right? That thing failed to live up to my expectations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage
That sums everything up. You can't have expectations of anything beyond vague hopes when you pull the trigger.
The story of phineas gauge who took a steel rod through the brain and survived a hellish treatment is amazing. Again, everyone knows that a guy can't have a filthy, rusty, .32mm caliber iron rod blasted through the left side of his brain and survive, right? That thing failed to live up to my expectations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage
That sums everything up. You can't have expectations of anything beyond vague hopes when you pull the trigger.
https://www.odmp.org/officer/420-trooper-mark-hunter-coates
It's a 2 minute read but I'll give you the highlights...
I've seen the dash cam video in training and it's probably the saddest thing I've ever seen. Trooper Coates' killer lived after 5 COM hits with .357 mag, yet Trooper Coates was killed by an errant .22 round that bounced off his shoulder blade into his heart. This pretty much supports the following...
With all of this in mind, I go back to the old debate made before Kahr, Ruger, S&W, and Sig came out with some of these easily concealable micro 9s. A seecamp in .32acp used to be a preferred CCW piece by many before the LCP came out because it was about the most serious caliber that could be pocket carried. Many ridiculed the "pea shooter rounds," while many stated a gun on hand is worth an arsenal in the truck. I tend to side with the later. Pick your poison, train with it, and a 32acp isn't anything to sneeze at. But I still like .45 bullets, and arguing that bigger bullets are no better is asinine... but so is arguing that smaller bullets will bounce off someone
It's a 2 minute read but I'll give you the highlights...
I've seen the dash cam video in training and it's probably the saddest thing I've ever seen. Trooper Coates' killer lived after 5 COM hits with .357 mag, yet Trooper Coates was killed by an errant .22 round that bounced off his shoulder blade into his heart. This pretty much supports the following...
With all of this in mind, I go back to the old debate made before Kahr, Ruger, S&W, and Sig came out with some of these easily concealable micro 9s. A seecamp in .32acp used to be a preferred CCW piece by many before the LCP came out because it was about the most serious caliber that could be pocket carried. Many ridiculed the "pea shooter rounds," while many stated a gun on hand is worth an arsenal in the truck. I tend to side with the later. Pick your poison, train with it, and a 32acp isn't anything to sneeze at. But I still like .45 bullets, and arguing that bigger bullets are no better is asinine... but so is arguing that smaller bullets will bounce off someone
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I have seen a few suicides and more than my share of shootings. Bullet construction is critical.
Say for the sake of argument that the bullet in question was a 240 grain LSWC. We know what it is going to do just about every time regardless of velocity. I carried a 44 magnum for a number of years and so did some other cops I knew. Loaded with a 180 grain JHP constructed with a light jacket like Remington uses traveling @ 1400-1500 fps it acts like a grenade when it hits, 30 to 40 grains of the bullet turning into fragments. That makes a devastating wound.
The same phenomenon happens with the 357 Magnum. The Border Patrol for a number of years issued Remington 110 grain 357 magnum ammo. The light jacket caused them to violently fragment, I saw a couple shootings with those, it creats a devastating wound. My US Marshal buddy related that he liked the 110 grain Federal 357 magnum as it penetrated deep in big game as well as BG's. Stacy Lim of the LAPD was shot with a 110 grain 357 magnum, lucky for her it was a Federal or Winchester bullet (I forget which one) and not a Remington bullet.
You see the same thing with the 9mm +P+, especially with old school loads such as the 9BPLE.
A friend of mine shot a car jacker thru the heart with a 45 ACP 230 grain +P Gold Dot. It blew a 3/4" hold thru the BG's heart. Similar bullets at similar velocities create similar wounds. Start changing those variables and you start changing the outcomes.
That is why, to me bullet construction is critical when discussing terminal ballistics. So when someone says this or that caliber failed with no more information than that and I usually dismiss it as there is not enough information to draw any conclusions.
Double Naught Spy
New member
There is no such data set, much less one that discerns psychological stops from bullets that actually hit versus psychological stops from bullets that missed, or a bullet that hits or misses one bad guy but psycholoigically stops all of the bad guys (2 or more), LOL.
And if the hole is in the right spot, it generally works the way we expect. If not, it doesn't.
If you've done enough hunting, you learn that a heart shot animal may drop DRT, OR it may not. And there's no accurate predictor which it will be.
Heart shot human? Usually dies, usually before medical care arrives, or during initial treatment, or on the way to the OR...but, if they don't, if the stars have lined up so that they don't die before the Docs can patch the holes, they can survive. Uncommon, ALMOST unheard of, but not impossible.
I knew a guy who was shot in the heart at age 17. HE died...at 73, from a stroke, the bullet still lodged in his heart. The bullet didn't kill him, and the docs were worried that trying to remove it, might, so they just left it alone.
Uncommon, but not impossible.
If you’re an accomplished shooter that can shot the shield 45 well, it’s a viable option so long as it suffers no reliability issues. I have no experience with the gun, but my experience with similar sized platforms tells me 9mm is easier to “get right” in a ccw piece. I’m not trying to convince anyone. I think all calibers are pretty much divinely inspired gifts to mankind, or at least the shooting world.
I have one thing that a whole lot of people don't have, I have faith that whatever I do will work out as well as I can hope. I hope that if I am ever in a shooting I won't screw up, that my shots will go where they should go, and that the bullets that I fire will live up to their potential.
Regarding whether I screw up, that is all up to either chaos, or the will of god, and I know that neither of them are in my control. I believe that I will be able to handle a situation that isn't completely bug nuts crazy and too chaotic for my limited abilities. I do believe that the 9mm rounds and other rounds I keep for combat use will perform well. So, I guess that I expect (hope) that any event will result in me getting in the first hits and my shots being enough to disable an opponent before he disables me.
I'm not trying to go too deeply into the weird metaphysical stuff, but I kind of just have faith that there will be an official watching for fouls and that this official will throw the flag and give me a free throw, or something like that.
I used to be all wrapped up in what bullet would be best for whatever I shot at. I used to sweat about whether or not I could get that last tenth of an MOA in accuracy or whether the sierra, lacking any form of controlled mushrooming would be able to kill a deer.
I spent decades wondering if I should be carrying the ultimate round for whatever, and how I could find out what that round is, or what firearm would best serve me. Recently I realized that I am REALLY ORDINARY. Carrying factory Remington into the field won't mean lost game. Carrying silvertips in the car isn't going to get me killed. Choosing my dad's .357 instead of a new sig isn't going to put me at a dangerous disadvantage against a punk with a knife.
Faith and confidence in a defense or hunting system is a good thing. Now seriously, if a person gets that faith by obsessively reading about jello testing, that's fine. Confidence and faith can come from any source, the important thing is having that confidence in whatever your choice is.
Personally, I believe in a higher power, and I also believe in fate. I'm going to do what seems like the best plan and hope that it ends well.
And this still comes around to accepting that life is all controlled by chance, or chaos. a few millimeters or a second of hesitation can and will decide everything. You just give it your best shot and you either go home with a pheasant or survive a mugging.
If my point is lost in all of this blather, it would be this. You can't control what happens when the bullet leaves the barrel, and you frequently have very little control over anything that precedes taking that shot. The responsibility of what happens lies almost entirely in whether or not a person makes an effective hit.
An interesting story came up a few hundred years ago. A guy was sitting in a barber's chair and was shot in the back of the head. No, not with a bullet, a guy used a blank powered anchoring gun on a wall. Whatever the reason was, the nail blasted through the wall and pegged Harvey Haircut in the spine and he was left quadriplegic.
Did you guys ever read 'The Imp of the Perverse'? There is a god in this universe whose only job is to make weird stuff happen. I hope that I never piss him off. All I want out of life is to avoid being the target of an angry god of chaos, since ordinarily I think that my handgun, ammo, and skills can possibly disable an attacker who means to hurt or kill me.
There is also the thought that you shouldn't tempt fate. That you shouldn't haul the wrist rocket around and expect it to save your life if you anger a moose. Be prepared. Don't bother losing sleep trying to remove another 1/1000th of the possible doubt.
Regarding whether I screw up, that is all up to either chaos, or the will of god, and I know that neither of them are in my control. I believe that I will be able to handle a situation that isn't completely bug nuts crazy and too chaotic for my limited abilities. I do believe that the 9mm rounds and other rounds I keep for combat use will perform well. So, I guess that I expect (hope) that any event will result in me getting in the first hits and my shots being enough to disable an opponent before he disables me.
I'm not trying to go too deeply into the weird metaphysical stuff, but I kind of just have faith that there will be an official watching for fouls and that this official will throw the flag and give me a free throw, or something like that.
I used to be all wrapped up in what bullet would be best for whatever I shot at. I used to sweat about whether or not I could get that last tenth of an MOA in accuracy or whether the sierra, lacking any form of controlled mushrooming would be able to kill a deer.
I spent decades wondering if I should be carrying the ultimate round for whatever, and how I could find out what that round is, or what firearm would best serve me. Recently I realized that I am REALLY ORDINARY. Carrying factory Remington into the field won't mean lost game. Carrying silvertips in the car isn't going to get me killed. Choosing my dad's .357 instead of a new sig isn't going to put me at a dangerous disadvantage against a punk with a knife.
Faith and confidence in a defense or hunting system is a good thing. Now seriously, if a person gets that faith by obsessively reading about jello testing, that's fine. Confidence and faith can come from any source, the important thing is having that confidence in whatever your choice is.
Personally, I believe in a higher power, and I also believe in fate. I'm going to do what seems like the best plan and hope that it ends well.
And this still comes around to accepting that life is all controlled by chance, or chaos. a few millimeters or a second of hesitation can and will decide everything. You just give it your best shot and you either go home with a pheasant or survive a mugging.
If my point is lost in all of this blather, it would be this. You can't control what happens when the bullet leaves the barrel, and you frequently have very little control over anything that precedes taking that shot. The responsibility of what happens lies almost entirely in whether or not a person makes an effective hit.
An interesting story came up a few hundred years ago. A guy was sitting in a barber's chair and was shot in the back of the head. No, not with a bullet, a guy used a blank powered anchoring gun on a wall. Whatever the reason was, the nail blasted through the wall and pegged Harvey Haircut in the spine and he was left quadriplegic.
Did you guys ever read 'The Imp of the Perverse'? There is a god in this universe whose only job is to make weird stuff happen. I hope that I never piss him off. All I want out of life is to avoid being the target of an angry god of chaos, since ordinarily I think that my handgun, ammo, and skills can possibly disable an attacker who means to hurt or kill me.
There is also the thought that you shouldn't tempt fate. That you shouldn't haul the wrist rocket around and expect it to save your life if you anger a moose. Be prepared. Don't bother losing sleep trying to remove another 1/1000th of the possible doubt.
I have acceptance of mortality and fate. If I am going to go down because an individual, or group, of competent and determined (or lucky) individuals decided they were going to over power me I will meet the Valkyries perplexed that I died in battle in the modern world while living in a relatively peaceful area.
Does gun matter? Once in a while perhaps. The most memorable time I ever had to put my hand on my gun involved three very aggressive individuals, one of whom had made an only loosely veiled threat, hey did not stop and ask a lot of questions. We bid one another good day and they moved on. They didn't stop to ask if I could control recoil of the Kimber I carried at the time or if the 8? shots of Federal Hydra-Shok would do its job. They didn't ask about my draw times. If anything was considered it was the counter between two of them and I, the time it would take the third to get around the end of the counter he was at, and the fact that I had stepped back into an aisle to prevent being overwhelmed. They collectively surveyed the risk to reward ratio and moved on.
Don't do things or present yourself in a manner that skews that risk to reward ratio to make it "worth it." This is probably FAR more important than number of shots or what caliber you are carrying. One of the best pieces of advise I have read in regards to personal safety listed rule #1 as "Avoid love triangles" and that was in one of the gun magazines when I was growing up.
stinkeypete
New member
“You frequently have little control over anything that precedes taking that shot.”
1. Frequently??? Since it’s frequent, surely you have three specific instances you can describe.
2. You might enjoy training in avoidance and deescalation. My experience is I am 60 years old, never carried other than hunting, and never felt the lack. I have walked away from trouble many times.
1. Frequently??? Since it’s frequent, surely you have three specific instances you can describe.
2. You might enjoy training in avoidance and deescalation. My experience is I am 60 years old, never carried other than hunting, and never felt the lack. I have walked away from trouble many times.