Interesting observation regarding caliber differences...

[Retired15T]

All of you who say the numbers are correct, I believe you.

However, in through and through shots, larger calibers take out more tissue on the back end of the shot. That's a no brainer really. Someone even said a .50BMG round would leave the same percentage and I cannot see that at all. I've seen what a 5.56 does to the body, I've seen what a 7.62 does to a body, what a 9mm does as well as what a .45 does. And I've also seen what a .50BMG does. The 50BMG hit this dude in the upper chest, about two inches inside of the right nipple and two inches up. His whole arm/shoulder was only held on by thin strings of ligaments, muscle and skin. After he was shot, medics got to him within five minutes, but the dude died immediately from the wound. His body still had plenty of blood left in it, but the shock, also know as the temporary wound channel, of the 50BMG round hitting him stopped his heart and over-pressurized and detonated his lungs. His descending aorta had been sheared from the heart due to the rounds hydrostatic impact. This is a somewhat common occurrence when someone is hit from the side or in the upper chest area because of the violence of the hydrostatic shock to the chest cavity. If that shock translates into a lateral impact to the heart, aortic severance can happen if the round can cause a shock wave big enough. And the 50BMG can. Even though that round is 1/2" in diameter when it goes into the body, it can create a temporary wound channel of 7.5" in diameter. However, that's about a rifled round, this discussion is about handguns.

Since your figures do not take into account the additional damages done by the bullet, damages like kinetic energy wounds, cavitation and temporary wound channels, it's not really representative of what a .22 vs .45 round is capable of doing to the human body. While the tissues from the temporary wound channel may not be destroyed or "tore up" from the bullet's path though the body, those tissues are certainly damaged. I've seen what a .45 bullet traveling at 1100fps does to a liver when it passes an inch away from it. The patient died due to a ruptured liver and massive blood loss. The over all visible tissue damage may appear to be very small, the actual damages done to the body are quite bigger than what the wound channel would indicate. In wounds where a .45 round was in excess of 1,000 fps, the cavitation phenomenon has shown broken bones that where not in the path of the bullet itself.

IMHO, shot placement is the most important aspect of a home defense situation. Or any other situation where you're trying to protect life by taking life. Many people buy .45 handguns who aren't able to do follow up shots due to their inability to control the weapons recoil. I train with my 9mm and my .45ACP so that I can get three shots off very quickly and accurately placed on target. I also know where I need to aim to do the most damage should I only get the first shot off. Your first shot HAS to be the best placed shot because due to incoming fire or your handgun failing, you may not get follow up shots.

If your intent was to stress the importance of target acquisition and properly and accurately putting rounds on target, I think your process is more confusing to many people than anything. Although, I certainly do appreciate the time and effort you've put into this because it has generated a LOT of good conversation and very interesting posts.

 

[N.H. Yankee]

Can someone compute an Idaho spud blasted from my PVC gun, 10oz spud at 120fps, target area just below the belt. If it doesn't drop em it will sure slow them down.

 

[Don P]

Wow, talk about opening the can of worms. In a nut shell good shot placement with a host of calibers should get the job done. Just my opinion now and we all know what that's worth, a mere 2 cents.

 

[brabham78]

Don P quote: In a nut shell good shot placement with a host of calibers should get the job done

That's all that needed to be said right from the start of this thread, and that quote's elegant simplicity makes me embarrassed to make a 4th post, for fear of just contributing to more conflict, but...... I'll try to make it my last. Life is to short for arguing, especially when you pretty much agree with the guy you're arguing with. Here's to hoping the 4th time is the charm.

JohnKSa quote: You keep bringing up your career in testing, data and statistics but then rather than pointing out a technical problem you just finish up by stating an opinion. Rather than just making this about opinions, what's the technical problem that you keep implying exists?

When I reference my back ground in experimental testing, it is not intended to suggest that I'm in possession of statistical skills that you don't also have, but rather to just say that from my own experience, I recognize that there are times when even technically factual statistics can cloud an argument that would otherwise be easily understood. I've done it myself, and I think I'm able to recognize when others are doing it too. From my own perspective, what we have here John is a philosophical difference of opinion in the way you're using your statistics, not a technical argument over their accuracy, so you are incorrect in saying that I keep implying a technical problem exists. If I've said anything in a previous post that made you think otherwise, then I either misspoke or was misunderstood, so consider this sentence to be my correction.

If your intend in starting this thread was to argue the importance of shot placement over caliber, then a good many of us were onboard right from the start, but all anyone here needs to do is look a the chaos your thread has turned into, mostly because of your seeming inability to recognize that we're agreeing with you in principle -then it's easy to see that something is wrong here. What is wrong, is NOT the accuracy of your precious little numbers, but rather it is the inappropriate and ineffective way in which you are using them. John, you are torpedoing your own argument by distracting everyone (even your shot accuracy allies) from focusing on the actual point you are trying to make.

Enough with the 0.1% already, because it's proving nothing, while inadvertently sending your shot-placement argument off the rails. I get your point! And I agree with you when you say that bullets do very little damage to the to the total body, and that hitting the right spot with our lil' bullet is what matters most. Now lets just pick our guns and do the best we can with them for pete-sakes.

 

[ScottRiqui]

by JohnKSA - I would be happy to have you verify/correct my results and post that information on this thread.

Okay, here goes. Using the same FBI report I linked to earlier, and that you said you used for your post, here are the average wound volumes for the six calibers examined in your initial post.

I don't know if you used the results from the "bare" gelatin tests or the "clothed" gelatin tests, so I ran the numbers for both. The percentage after each given wound volume is how much larger or smaller that volume is compared to the baseline caliber (.357 Magnum).

Bare Gelatin Results (average wound volume, in cubic inches)

.357 MAG 3.24 (baseline) (+0.00%)
9 mm 3.60 (+11.1%)
.357 SIG 4.54 (+40.1%)
.40 S&W 4.88 (+50.6%)
10 mm 5.38 (+66.0%)
.45 ACP 5.55 (+71.3%)

Clothed Gelatin Results (average wound volume, in cubic inches)

.357 MAG 3.85 (baseline) (+0.00%)
9 mm 3.39 (-11.9%)
.357 SIG 4.36 (+13.2%)
.40 S&W 4.72 (+22.6%)
10 mm 5.26 (+36.6%)
.45 ACP 5.44 (+41.3%)

Since all of the wound volumes in the FBI report were given using three significant figures, and all I did was average the results of all loadings within a particular caliber, I'm scientifically justified in keeping three significant figures in my results.

Keeping fewer significant figures serves no purpose other than to obscure differences between the calibers (although the volumes still aren't identical, even when truncated to only one significant figure, so I'm not sure how John got the results that he did in his initial post.)

I didn't reproduce John's second step (converting each wound volume to a mass and then dividing by the total mass of an average man) for two reasons. First, I still don't think that's a meaningful or useful quantity, because it's trivially-obvious that a bullet hole is much, much smaller than a full-grown man. Second, I don't know what value John used for the average density of human flesh, and if our results differ, I wanted the differences to be only because of our mathematical methods and not because we chose different conversion factors.

Omitting John's second step doesn't matter anyway because as he pointed out, multiplying the wound volumes by a constant and then dividing by the weight of a man does not change the size of the relative differences between the calibers.




Looking at the FBI results (with full precision preserved) tells a completely different story than John's original post, in which he claimed that all of the average wound volumes were essentially the same. In the bare gelatin test, there's a 71.3% spread between the baseline wound volume and the largest wound volume. In the clothed gelatin test, the spread between the biggest and smallest wound volumes is 53.2% of the baseline (-11.9% to +41.3%).

I do agree with John that none of these average wound volumes is very big compared to the size of a man. The biggest average wound volume (at 5.55 cubic inches) is only equivalent to about one-quarter of a 12-ounce soda can.


In summary, the two conclusions we can reach from this re-examination of the FBI's data are:

1) Even a big bullet hole is very small when compared to the overall size of a man.

-and-

2) Some handgun calibers cause significantly bigger wounds, on average, than others.


Earth-shattering, I know. I hope you can go back to your regular lives after these awesome revelations.

Seriously, a more-faithful treatment of the FBI's data from the beginning probably would have shortened this thread by about 100 posts, with most of the replies being something along the lines of "meh, so what? we already knew that."

 

[Sarge]

John,

My earlier comment about preferring the .45 is based on collective recall of shooting deer in the field, seeing them shot in the field, putting down dozens and seeing others do this, or obtaining trustworthy first-hand accounts from folks I know and trust to report accurately. Just taking a SWAG at the numbers here but probably 30 with .38/9mm/,357 duty loads, about half that many with 45 ACP 230 JHP's, another good pile with various .44 Mags & moderate/heavy loaded .45 Colts. Maybe 10 now with 165-180 grain .40 JHP's. No science here, just observation. I have personally never shot a deer with a 9mm, although a Browning HP with 115 grain Silvertips makes a first-class starling and blue-jay eradicator.

Some common denominators surfaced. Big holes, knocked all the way through vital areas, will kill with sunrise certainty- in 5 seconds or so. Deer leaded down with pissant guns take much longer. ALL of them took longer to go 'down for the count' than you would expect if you based your expectations on the entertainment media or M&S, considered one in the same by some folks.

Don't know if that helps any, but there it is.

 

[OldMarksman]

My earlier comment about preferring the .45 is based on collective recall of shooting deer in the field, seeing them shot in the field, putting down dozens and seeing others do this, or obtaining trustworthy first-hand accounts from folks I know and trust to report accurately.

One would undoubtedly get similar results in shooting elk, horses, steers, or zebras. The issue at hand has to do with SD shooting involving human targets, not game hunting.

For years a .38 Special was considered adequate for SD. provided that body armor and car doors did not have to be dealt with, but no one I know of has ever recommended a .38 Special for hunting medium or large game. A .480 Ruger is preferred by many for hunting, but it would be a rather poor choice for SD.

The point is, (1) it takes a certain amount of penetration and bullet size to stop a man, and more to to stop a steer, but more is unlikely to stop a man any more effectively, and (2) controllability and magazine capacity are important in SD.

With the possible exception of some small deer in the southwest, deer are lot tougher than people. The .30 Carbine round proved pretty effective in combat, but no one would choose one over a .30 WCF or .35 Remington for deer hunting, and no one would insist on a .35 Remington for self defense. Different ball game.

 

[Sarge]

Old Marksman,

Your statement that 'deer are a lot tougher than people' is another point where we disagree. I've seen examples of both absorbing enough lead to kill three normal examples of either, right where they stood, then bolt off like they were trying out for the track team. Also had a peek inside more than a few examples of both, after they absorbed some handgun ammo. I am inclined to disagree with your assessment, but as I stated earlier- I have no intention of changing your opinion. You have no hope of changing mine.

 

[JohnKSa]

One would undoubtedly get similar results in shooting elk, horses, steers, or zebras. The issue at hand has to do with SD shooting involving human targets, not game hunting.

I asked him about his experience shooting game with handguns, so I take responsibility for that drift.

Scott,

Pretty good summation although I take exception to a couple of points.

First of all, your use (and emphasis) of the word "significant" calls for some explanation. "Significant" means: Having or expressing a meaning; meaningful. When you say that something is significant you are saying that it is meaningful, that it expresses some meaning. In what way are the differences in the figures meaningful and what meaning do they convey?

Second, your comment that the figures you posted tell a "completely" different story is more than just slightly inaccurate. In fact, the total range of figures that could have rounded to the same figures as described in my initial post covered a factor of 3 spread. I explicitly pointed that out when it became clear that the concept of rounding wasn't completely understood by some.

The actual figures cover only a factor of about 1.7 spread which means that if one had made a knowledgeable assessment of the clear explanation in my original post they would have reasonably assumed that the spread in the figures could be almost twice what the actual spread is.

What would be accurate for you to say is that for people who don't understand how rounding works, the figures shown to their full precision tell a "completely" different story. For those who do understand rounding, the actual spread of the figures is less than one would reasonably expect.

To convert the wound volume figures to mass, multiply them times the density of water which is about 0.577 oz/cubic inch. Then, since human tissue is, on average 1.071 times more dense than water you need to scale it by that factor.

To calculate the percentage of those weights in relation to a 180lb man, divide them by 2880, the number of oz in 180 lbs.

I combined all the figures, unclothed and clothed so my results are slightly different, but the weight for your smallest and largest figures (3.24 cu in & 5.55 cu in) are 2.00 ounces (.357Mag) and 3.43 ounces (.45ACP) of tissue destroyed.

It's interesting that although the FBI obviously feels that wound volume figures have some relevance to effectiveness, they currently use neither the caliber with the highest average wound volume figures, nor the one with the second highest average. Clearly they are not making their weapon selection solely based exclusively on their wound volume figures but must also be considering other factors in their selection. A wise approach.

 

[ScottRiqui]

John,

I didn't see the need to add an explanation as to why a 70+ percent variance between the wound volumes was "significant". Tissue damage is a huge factor in incapacitation, so any time you can get 70% more of it, I'd call that "significant".

When you presented the reader with six identical numbers, it's asking a bit much to assume that they'll know that there's a significant variation hidden in there. Without an explanation, numbers presented as being identical are usually assumed to be identical. And for most readers, I don't think that simply saying you rounded them to one significant figure is a sufficient explanation. Most non-math/non-tech types aren't going to have an intuitive feel for the amount of variance that can be hidden that way.

You still haven't explained why you felt the need to take data with three significant figures and chop the results down to one significant figure. Perhaps to intentionally obscure the relative differences between the volumes?

You said that you used both the bare and clothed gelatin tests for your data. That doesn't explain your results, either. Here are the numbers for the "bare + clothed" combined results:


.357 MAG 3.53 (baseline) (+0.00%)
9 mm 3.46 (-2.00%)
.357 SIG 4.45 (+26.1%)
.40 S&W 4.78 (+35.4%)
10 mm 5.17 (+46.5%)
.45 ACP 5.44 (+54.1%)

Note that there's still more than a 55% variance between the smallest and largest volumes, and even if you were to round all of them to one significant figure, they STILL wouldn't come out the same.

Earlier, I said that although your math was correct, I didn't like the way you presented your results. After doing the calculations myself, I don't even think your math was correct.

EDIT - I just realized that scalar multiplication alone CAN also hide differences in the data.

Take the following numbers: 550, 650, 750, 850, 950, 1050, 1150, 1250, 1350, and 1450. If you round them to one significant figure, they all become the same, 1000.

Now take each number and double it, giving you 1100, 1300, 1500, 1700, 1900, 2100, 2300, 2500, 2700, and 2900. Now, if you round them to one significant figure, they no longer come out the same. They'll round to 1000, 1000, 2000, 2000, 2000, 2000, 2000, 3000, 3000 and 3000.

So as I originally thought, I'll bet that taking the relatively small wound volumes and dividing them by the comparably-huge volume of a man collapsed all of the numbers down to such a small range that the differences in the original wound volumes were lost entirely. The fact that you lopped off two significant figures only added to the problem.

 

[JohnKSa]

Without an explanation, numbers presented as being identical are usually assumed to be identical.

Which is exactly why I took pains to fully explain the method I used to arrive at the numbers before presenting them.

And for most readers, I don't think that simply saying you rounded them to one significant figure is a sufficient explanation.

If everyone caters to the lowest common denominator, we would be constrained to arguing about which brand is best and using telling arguments like "is not" and "is too". Unfortunately, when one attempts to provide a different insight there will be some who don't get it. That's life. In depth explanations of common concepts like rounding are available on the internet for those who need additional help. Attempting to constrain TFL members to fully explaining any common mathematical processes they might employ in a calculation is unreasonable.

You still haven't explained why you felt the need to take data with three significant figures and chop the results down to one significant figure.

Scott, that's simply not true. I've explained the original point of the calculation (which includes the reason I rounded the final figures) 4 times in this thread. At least two of those explanations were in direct response to your posts and you even quoted one of them in one of your posts.

You may not LIKE my explanation but that is absolutely not the same thing as my not providing an explanation.

That doesn't explain your results, either.

If you want to explain my results you'll have to finish the calculations as I carefully described them in my initial post. Post #105 on this thread by you makes it clear that you decided not to complete the calculations.

Note that there's still more than a 55% variance between the smallest and largest volumes, and even if you were to round all of them to one significant figure, they STILL wouldn't be identical as you claimed in your original post.

First of all, you still haven't finished out the calculations as I described them or you would have achieved the same results.

Second, look back at post # 90 to see what I stated was the spread in my numbers before rounding. Note that a factor of 1.55 is the same as a 55% spread.

If you want to understand why it makes a difference if you round intermediate values instead of the final values you can look up superposition on the internet and learn about the exceptions to the principle of superposition.

I just realized that scalar multiplication alone CAN also hide differences in the data.

You didn't use multiplication ALONE to get those results. Look at the percent spread before rounding in both cases and you will find it's identical. So multiplication alone isn't what's changing the spread. I'm done giving you math lessons, but superposition will give you the answer to your apparent conundrum.

 

[ScottRiqui]

Your "explanations" (all four of them) haven't really been explanations. I'll ask the question a different way - "Why NOT use all of the significant figures available to you, unless you were purposely trying to minimize the differences in the original wound volumes to make your point?"

Also, I didn't finish the calculations to include the body mass division because I accepted your claim that scaling by a constant wouldn't obscure the relative differences in the original data. If you look at the addendum to my previous post, that's not the case either.

I'll do the math tomorrow, but I'm beginning to see how your process almost completely obliterated the differences in wound volume presented in the FBI report. I may well get a string of six "0.1%" results, but I still think those results "throw away" a huge amount of information present in the FBI report.

 

[JohnKSa]

Your "explanations" (all four of them) haven't really been explanations.

They may not have been the explanation that you wanted but that doesn't mean you get to say they're not explanations.

"Why NOT use all of the significant figures available to you, unless you were purposely trying to minimize the differences in the original wound volumes to make your point?"

Why don't you go back and look at the explanations again to see what the POINT of my calculation was. You haven't even read them well enough to understand WHY I was making the calculations or you wouldn't still be incorrectly assuming what the point was.

 

[ScottRiqui]

You didn't use multiplication ALONE to get those results. Look at the percent spread before rounding in both cases and you will find it's identical.

You're right - I wasn't clear. I should have said that scalar multiplication alone is enough to make a set of numbers come out the same after rounding, even if the original numbers wouldn't come out the same when rounded to the same precision.

The percent spread after multiplication is identical, but your rounding took care of that later. The fact remains that in the example I gave, you have ten numbers that, when rounded, give identical results. After multiplying the original numbers by a scalar, rounding those results *to the same number of significant digits* gives ten numbers that are no longer identical.

This is why my wound volumes don't round to identical numbers, but your wound volume to body volume ratios do. The multiplication and division that you did when calculating those ratios didn't change the percent spread, but they made the results so small that they would all round to the same number (0.1%)

Why don't you go back and look at the explanations again to see what the POINT of my calculation was. You haven't even read them well enough to understand WHY I was making the calculations or you wouldn't still be incorrectly assuming what the point was.

Well, if your "point" was to intentionally minimize the differences in wound volume in order to claim that the amount of tissue damaged by any common handgun round is the same tiny fraction of total body weight, then everything you did makes perfect sense. I just can't bring myself to believe you would do that, so I'm at a loss.

 

[ScottRiqui]

My posts are getting longer and more complicated, so here's my problem with your presentation in a nutshell:

We're both using the exact same dataset, but while MY average wound volumes show a variance of over 55%, YOUR wound volumes (presented as a fraction of total body volume) show NO VARIANCE WHATSOEVER, beyond the amount of variance that you expect the reader to know *might possibly* be there as a result of your rounding down to one significant figure from an unknown number of significant figures in the original data. There's no denying that information from the FBI report was lost in your presentation, leaving the reader to speculate as to how much variance might have been lost.

And since your apparent intention in this thread was to make the claim that various handgun bullets produce essentially the same amount of tissue damage, I'm leery of your motivation for choosing the mathematical methods you did (specifically, dividing the volumes by a comparably-huge quantity and then throwing away two digits of precision), because these methods seem perfectly-chosen to support your claim.

Actually, I can state it even more concisely:

You wanted to make the "observation" that various handgun loads produce essentially the same amount of tissue damage in a human, so you massaged the data to present it in such a way that any explicit expression of the variance in the original FBI data was obliterated entirely, leaving nothing behind except the *possible* variance that the reader would have to surmise *might* be there as a result of your rounding.

 

[JohnKSa]

...your rounding escapades took care of that later.

Rounding is rounding.

I carefully explained the mathematical process I went through to get the results I posted which are correct.

You clearly don't like those results.

You have done everything possible to try to show that what I've done is misleading or somehow shady and have not been able to. In fact, nothing you do or say is going to be able to achieve that end because I clearly, thoroughly and accurately described exactly how I performed the calculations in the initial post of this thread.

But that hasn't dissuaded you from continuing to make allegations.

The sad truth is that you don't understand the basic mathematical processes and principles involved and you feel that should somehow count as a black mark against me, against the calculations I properly performed and described and against the results I correctly obtained.

That's not how it works.

Your ignorance of the mathematical process and principles involved in these simple calculations is not my problem nor does it reflect negatively on me. It's time for you to stop pretending that it does. It is a problem for you, but it is one that you can remedy if you have the inclination.

Well, if your "point" was to intentionally minimize the differences in wound volume...

Scott, you don't have to guess at what the point was because I've explicitly stated what the point was and what's more I've stated it multiple times.

Ok, here it is again.

I performed the calculations to determine the percentage of an average human male attacker that would be damaged by a bullet from a typical self-defense handgun caliber.

Do you understand why it is necessary to divide by the weight of the attacker to determine a percentage?

When I looked at the results I noticed that rounding them to the nearest tenth of a percent resulted in identical numbers.

I thought that was an interesting observation because it's not particularly common to end up with a data set where all of the results can be rounded to an identical non-zero result.

I thought others might be interested in the results so I posted them. But I first carefully described my methods so that there would be no misunderstanding.

Actually, I can state it even more concisely:

You wanted to make the "observation" that various handgun loads produce essentially the same amount of tissue damage in a human,...

Concisely, perhaps, but not accurately.

I have provided an explanation of my motive for performing the calculation--the first time on page 1 in post #25 of this thread.

So you know what I wanted to do because I posted what I wanted to do.

That means that it's unnecessary for you to speculate as to my motive.

 

[ScottRiqui]

I thought that was an interesting observation because it's not particularly common to end up with a data set where all of the results can be rounded to an identical non-zero result.

Actually, it's very common whenever you divide a set of numbers by a much-larger number and then throw away most of the precision in the original data.

The end of my previous post sums up my attitude. You made a trivial observation (that bullet wounds are small compared to a man), but that observation was the result of mathematical methods that almost completely concealed the fact that there was a significant spread in the original data.

You say that I don't understand the mathematical concepts. After doing the calculations myself, I agree that nothing you did violates any mathematical principles, and I understand everything you did, but the fact that you cited an FBI report and then proceeded to manipulate the numbers ('manipulate' is not used perjoratively here) in such a way that the most interesting results of the FBI tests were lost in your presentation is questionable.

 

[JohnKSa]

...is questionable.

It's only questionable because you don't like the results.

The implication that I've tried to hide anything is inaccurate.

You simply don't have a leg to stand on. I used publicly available data for my calculations and have been completely straightforward and thorough in my explanations of what I did, why I did it and what the numbers did and didn't mean. There's nothing to lend any credence to the allegations you have made.

 

[ScottRiqui]

That means that it's unnecessary for you to speculate as to my motive.

I believe you that you got curious about the percentage of total tissue damaged by various rounds, did the calculations, and noticed that if you cut off two significant figures, the results were all the same. There's no reason for me not to believe that.

But being an engineer, didn't you feel a little bit 'dirty' reporting a string of six identical results without commenting on the fact that from your intermediate calculations, you knew that there actually was a significant spread in the original data? I know I would.

I would have also explicitly stated in my very first post that percentage of total tissue damaged isn't any kind of reliable measure of effectiveness, because I'd know that's how some people would interpret my results, and that they would also surmise that there weren't significant differences in the wound volumes.

 

[ScottRiqui]

It's not that I don't "like" your results. They're a technically- and mathematically-accurate verification of the trivial observation that bullet wounds damage very little of the total tissue in an adult human male. There's nothing in there that I can dispute because as I've already said, that's a blindingly-obvious fact.

What I don't like is the fact that you took raw data that showed a significant spread in the amount of tissue damaged by various rounds and presented in a manner that dismissed the differences entirely. I understand that when compared to the total tissue mass, the absolute differences are small, but I would never report six identical results without pointing out that there were significant differences in the original data that got lost in the calculations.

You can impugn my knowledge all day long and claim that I don't understand what you did or how you arrived at your results, but I've said all along that it's your choice of mathematical methods, not the methods themselves, that I disagree with.