Bill, I disagree. To follow your advice is to say that unless you can target the CNS, you should not shoot.
There are three ways to stop an attacker:
1. CNS - most effective, but also the hardest to achieve. The skull is designed to protect the brain from impacts, and can be hard to penetrate. Plus, the head is usually in motion in a dynamic event. The spinal cord is only about the size of your thumb - also a tough target. If you can hit either of these targets in a high stress, dynamic event, while you and your target are moving, you are one in a million.
2. Blood loss - almost any hit can start the process - that is, if I hit him in the lower leg, even though I may never even see his CNS, when he bleeds out, I win. More hits, bigger holes, the faster he bleeds out.
3. Psychological stop - far more common than people think. Every attacker who runs when you merely produce a gun falls in this category, Also, those who give up at the sound of a shot, or when hit with a non-fatal wound.
And thus, for a "type 2" shot, the larger the wound channel, the faster the blood loss, thus an expanding bullet to increase the odds in our favor.
You may choose otherwise, but I will shoot my attacker in the center of available mass as many times as possible. If I hit his leg 5-6 times, he will bleed out that much faster. I can change his objective from killing me to his own survival.
