I know there are people who are upset with Marshall & Sanow - it's usually the people who got involved with that acrimonious debate with them.
When I first was trying to decide on what round to go with in my 9, I saw one of their first articles - it may even have been their very first article. And I really wanted to believe what they were saying. I actually purchased my ammo based on the round that they said had the best one shot stop percentages.
I remember though - I was going through college at the time and I was taking a statistics class, and one of their rounds that they assigned a one shot stop percentage to had only 12 cases behind it. And I remember what my stats class prof said - that a data set of less than 30 is not statistically reliable. I remember thinking back then that 12 shooting were too few statistically to predict anything.
That's like when baseball season opens and you look at your favorite slugger and you go "Whoa ! He's batting 890 !!!" Of course he's only had 12 at bats and at the end of the season his average will probably be around 300.
I do think there is meaningful information somewhere in all of these different shootings with different calibers and bullet designs, I'm just not sure how to get meaning from the data, and I don't think M&S got meaningful data out of it either.
What they have published has made its way into the vernacular of the shooting community. In any gun store or forum, you'll hear people speak with an air of authority about this round or that round having "stopping power" or 95% success rate - or "street results". They're just taking the percentages that M&S tacked on next to an ammunition brand.
I want Marshal & Sanow to be correct - or anyone for that matter, to be able to give me those numbers... I personally would have a good feeling knowing that the round in my pistol had a 96% chance of stopping the bad guy with one pull of the trigger.
And when I was looking at their data and what little they put out about their data gathering methods, I even tried to think of ways to solve some of the problems... I thought of indexing the body and categorizing hits into different categories - like heart, kidneys, liver, lungs, intestines... because probably if someone gets shot in the heart they are going to stop - be it .22LR, .380 auto, .357 mag, or a 10mm. So I thought, "What does it prove about a round if they bad guy gets shot right in the heart? Well - that it was able to penetrate to the heart, but maybe not much more than that.
The more I tried to think of things like that - the more complicated it got. There are so many variables - not least of which is, the psychological factor. What happens when a guy is facing 4 police officers, takes a 38 special to the gut but also has his windshield blown out by a 12ga miss and hears a dozen rounds hitting all around him and decides to call it quits... according to M&S that is a one shot stop for the .38 lead bullet. In reality the guy made a decision to give up.
I'm not upset with Marshall & Sanow, but I think at some point they should have just said "People with knowledge of scientific method and statistics have brought to light some problems with our data and we're trying to address that." And maybe they go back to the drawing board with trying to gauge bullet effectiveness. But they didn't do that. They circled the wagons and declared war on their detractors.
And I think that, even though the figures that they attached to one-shot-stops still circulate in the vernacular of the shooting community, they are losing the battle of credibility with law enforcement agencies, because they've pitted themselves against people like DOCTOR Fackler and others... I say Doctor with emphasis. They went up against very smart people with credentials and the background to persuasively highlight the problems with M&S work.
Marshall and Sanow have their believers but major law enforcement agencies, more and more are taking into account work by PhDs when making decisions on handgun caliber and brand.
I know that ammo selection for a PD is very "political" and controversial. They can't issue a round called "Bloody Talon" no matter how effective it might be predicted to be, or how much it would benefit both officers and the public. The exact same round called "Officer's Standard” can be purchased without problems.
But cities and LE agencies also have to balance their political correctness against officer welfare. There are such things as unions and police fraternities that bring pressure to bear on governments to give officers effective tools and equipment to do their jobs. If a municipality has under-equipped officers due to PC and they have an officer die because of it - they have another PM nightmare on their hands of a different kind.
So my point is, departments are looking for good information on what to equip officers with, there is a political component to it, and more and more they are using the work of degreed and titled ballistics experts - people like Dr Fackler, and they are less and less taking into account the work of Marshall and Sanow.
A whole different discussion is that many of the rounds that M&S declare as great stoppers are rounds that Facklers studies say would be good rounds as well...
