Regards the Ayoob article, when NYC went to the 9mm, one of the statistics that also rose was the total number of shots fired by officers w/ autos, as to those fired back in the revolver days.
well,..duh...
Stands to reason, doesn't it??
In the revolver days, the most a pair of cops could hose off when they had to light someone up was 12, before needing to reload. Today that number is
30+!!
And, most of those shots do NOT hit the intended target!!! Yet, every bullet goes
somewhere...
This has always been a problem, but today, when officers can fire nearly 3X the number of rounds, before reloading, the odds of one or more of those rounds having unintended consequences is hugely increased.
I was most impressed with the shoot out that happened not all that long ago, where the bad guy shot a couple rounds at the cops, hit nobody, and the cops shot a lot of rounds back,
missed the bad guy, and hit half a dozen or so bystanders, KILLING a couple of them!!!
TO me, this clearly illustrates that while the danger to bystanders from overpenetration is a real risk, it pales in comparison to the risk from cops shooting and MISSING the intended target.
And, with 2-3 times the bullets to miss with, (semis compared to revolvers) then yes, even if the rate of misses stays the same, the numbers are going to go up.