Marshall/Sanow study
- Thread starter cosmicdingo
- Start date
And to think that Old Wild Bill Hickock gained a fearsome reputation with a pair of 1851 .36 caliber cap and ball Colts!!! How did he EVER manage to live as long as he did without reading the latest study or gun guru garble?
Those .36 lead balls fired by black powder are weak (about like a .380 ACP hardball), compared to todays .40 to .45 caliber, tally-whacker jacketed, +P+, hydro-meteor round advertised in the latest issue of "Gun jacker" monthly!
Folks, it is shot placement, the dirty little secret of the gun culture, that counts. A well placed .22 is more effective than an oft delivered shot with a .45 hollowpoint. Ask any hardcore hunter with gray around the temples if you have any doubts about shot placement and the caliber debate.
Hickock could shoot with great accuracy and confidence, due to constant practice and great skill. In todays world, I'll bet that armed with a Ruger single six in .22 LR, Wild Bill would still be more deadly and effective in a shootout than 95% of the so called Gun-Guru's out there with black plastic high tech, big bore Pistols who claim to be experts and write books on self defense.
Spend more time in practice, less time reading what so called experts write, and carry what you are comfortable shooting and can hit well with, no matter what the caliber or gun design is.
Those .36 lead balls fired by black powder are weak (about like a .380 ACP hardball), compared to todays .40 to .45 caliber, tally-whacker jacketed, +P+, hydro-meteor round advertised in the latest issue of "Gun jacker" monthly!
Folks, it is shot placement, the dirty little secret of the gun culture, that counts. A well placed .22 is more effective than an oft delivered shot with a .45 hollowpoint. Ask any hardcore hunter with gray around the temples if you have any doubts about shot placement and the caliber debate.
Hickock could shoot with great accuracy and confidence, due to constant practice and great skill. In todays world, I'll bet that armed with a Ruger single six in .22 LR, Wild Bill would still be more deadly and effective in a shootout than 95% of the so called Gun-Guru's out there with black plastic high tech, big bore Pistols who claim to be experts and write books on self defense.
Spend more time in practice, less time reading what so called experts write, and carry what you are comfortable shooting and can hit well with, no matter what the caliber or gun design is.
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I was formally educated as a statistician, and one of my sons is an experimental physicist.
We got to discussing this, and the difficulty with doing a controlled scientific study of this topic is -- it's too difficult to control!
You just can't get the bad guys to cooperate by getting shot in appropriate sample sizes, by the right ammo, in the right circumstances ....
So anybody doing a study will get accused of either cherry picking data, or including data that should have been excluded.
All you can do is the best you can with the data you are able to collect. And then people will argue about it.
Tastes great! (Less filling..)
We got to discussing this, and the difficulty with doing a controlled scientific study of this topic is -- it's too difficult to control!
You just can't get the bad guys to cooperate by getting shot in appropriate sample sizes, by the right ammo, in the right circumstances ....
So anybody doing a study will get accused of either cherry picking data, or including data that should have been excluded.
All you can do is the best you can with the data you are able to collect. And then people will argue about it.
Tastes great! (Less filling..)
You are exactly correct. It is simply not within the realm of possibility to control the samples at all, let alone to a degree that would meet scientific scrutiny. What folks are left with is what can be gleaned from police reports and coroner reports. That's it. In addition, there is no hope of repeatability in a controlled setting.
Whether or not Marshal and Sanow handled what data they had appropriately, came to any defensible conclusions, or inappropriately manipulated data is a separate issue.
Whether or not Marshal and Sanow handled what data they had appropriately, came to any defensible conclusions, or inappropriately manipulated data is a separate issue.
+1 on the above statements. Every shooting is a unique event. Different body types from skinny to massive. Different levels of muscle vs. fat. Bullet deflection on bones. And the the most uncontrollable thing of all the mental state of the person being shot. Sane or no. Drugs or not? All the F.B.I. tests tell is that a bullet will expand and penetrate to a certain level after going through several types of material. Not perfect but it's brought us the best JHP's we've ever had.
An interesting comment in the book The Truth about Handuns. Apparently some .357 Magnum loads have a better stopping rate than some 00 buck shot. So if you are carrying a shotgun and a .357 Magnum and come upon a bad guy should you throw your shotgun down and go for your .357 since according to M&S studies it's a better stopper? I think not.
An interesting comment in the book The Truth about Handuns. Apparently some .357 Magnum loads have a better stopping rate than some 00 buck shot. So if you are carrying a shotgun and a .357 Magnum and come upon a bad guy should you throw your shotgun down and go for your .357 since according to M&S studies it's a better stopper? I think not.
Well, it always seemed to me that if you judge bullets by the same standard, with out regards to the definitioin of the OSS, you'd still get a good perspective of bullet performance in relation to others.
In other words, the ones that top the charts by one standard would do so using another. The value of M&S' work was that it alowed me to choose my own SD ammo based on performance----any way you wanted to define it.
Jake Balam
New member
Has anyone seen that deadliest warrior show on spike?
They use ballistic gel dummies with all the bones and internal organs. that would be cool do do a study with some of those. About as close as you can get to real life.
They use ballistic gel dummies with all the bones and internal organs. that would be cool do do a study with some of those. About as close as you can get to real life.
BINGO!! You can control your choice of caliber, bullet configuration, velocity to some extent and your skill with the gun. You can't control weather, distance, clothing of the perp, perp's body mass-metabolism-use of substances (meth-head)-clothing, natural barriers, lighting, etc, etc......
This is why we get stories of a survivor of 5 center of mass hits with a .45 and another drops like a lead weight when hit COM with a .22. Both outliers but it happens.
2damnold4this
New member
I don't know if this has already been posted in this thread:
http://www.firearmstactical.com/briefs3.htm
http://www.firearmstactical.com/briefs3.htm
Guess no one has read , "Shooting To Live" by CAPTAIN WILLIAM FAIRBAIRN
and CAPTAIN ‘ERIC ANTHONY SYKES
Those old boys ran the Shanghai Police at the time when the city was run by gangs.
They address somewhat over 600 shootings and what they conclude in their book is you can't tell what a pistol round is gonna do, no matter how big or type of bullet it its. The relate stories of bandits soaking up several 45 soft expanding bullets and not being stopped or brought down.
I've seen the same thing in my CS Investigations, dude soaked up a chest shot from a 44 Mag and live. Person gut shot with a 22 RF who died in the ER.
As a side note, Fairbairn did mention people who were gut shot, though they may not be stopped or put down had a tendency to drop their weapon (or what ever they were holding) and grabbing their guts. If you've ever been hit hard in the stomach you can see there might be something to that.
and CAPTAIN ‘ERIC ANTHONY SYKES
Those old boys ran the Shanghai Police at the time when the city was run by gangs.
They address somewhat over 600 shootings and what they conclude in their book is you can't tell what a pistol round is gonna do, no matter how big or type of bullet it its. The relate stories of bandits soaking up several 45 soft expanding bullets and not being stopped or brought down.
I've seen the same thing in my CS Investigations, dude soaked up a chest shot from a 44 Mag and live. Person gut shot with a 22 RF who died in the ER.
As a side note, Fairbairn did mention people who were gut shot, though they may not be stopped or put down had a tendency to drop their weapon (or what ever they were holding) and grabbing their guts. If you've ever been hit hard in the stomach you can see there might be something to that.
Yeah, I haven't seen anything that proves conclusively that M&S were trying to mislead anyone. From what I can see they were a couple of regular guys who tried to do something that made sense to them but who got in a lot of trouble for the following:
1. M&S stepped on toes with their "results". There's no way they would have taken the abuse that they did if their conclusions had aligned with the opinions of certain folks a little better. The TKO "knockout factor" is an excellent example of how absolutely bogus mathematics, without a shred of scientific validity, with zero experimental repeatability, presented without any attempt at rigorous defense or justification, are readily (eagerly, even) accepted by the community when they don't go against the grain.
2. M&S didn't know enough about statistics to present their data properly or defend it credibly.
3. M&S tremendously overstated the value of their data because they didn't understand statistics.
4. M&S were somewhat sloppy with their data which left them open to criticism such as that in KyJim's post above.