Speer: Caliber doesn't matter

Cartridge does matter. Period. Yes the gaps between the effectiveness of cartridges has been made much smaller with good bullet designs and better powders. But FT-LB of energy on target still matter in how effective the cartridge is.
 
But FT-LB of energy on target still matter in how effective the cartridge is.
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Not really. :D

Or at least not as much as most people think, and not the way most seem to think.

Ft/lbs of energy is a calculated figure using a formula heavily weighted to velocity. It is a way of using a common scale that all rounds can be calculated on, for a relative comparison.

It is not a good way of predicting how effective (or which is the best) a cartridge is in a real world shooting situation, because many other factors are involved and those are more important than the calculated ft/lbs is.

Consider this, you can load a .22-250 and a .45-70 to exactly identical calculated ft/lbs of energy.

they have identical energy, on paper, but quite different effectiveness in the field. Which would you pick to stop a bear, or bull or a buffalo?

there are good reasons we use varmint rifles for varmints and big game rifles for large animals and it isn't entirely the energy involved.
 
But suppose a bullet doesn't hit "vitals." It can still physically incapacitate a person through blood loss and shock. That is one advantage a .45 acp that expands to over one inch than a 9mm that expands to .55 inches (or whatever). The larger bullet that expands well will often cause more damage as it travels through the body than an expanding bullet from a smaller caliber.

Don't get me wrong, though. I don't carry a .45 nearly as often as I used to do so; in part because of better performance from bullets in 9mm and .38 spl.
 
When customers start talking to me about knock-down and killing power, I remind them that there is no measurement of knockdown power nor killing power. "yeah, but" doesn't work with me, I am heavily oriented to data and facts.

FACT: a lot of people get killed with 22s in citizen face-to-face confrontations. Now, I wouldn't go start a gun fight with a 22, either, but killing power has a lot to do with where you get hit. I suspect that 22LR is effective because people use it at close range and shoot multiple times and because that is what a lot of people have. And at close range, you will probably get hit in the chest/abdomen just because it's level with where people point a gun.

According to the FBI, the average number of shots fired in a self defense confrontation is less than 2. Not exactly what most people envision when talking about self defense confrontations. They think it's going to look and sound like D-Day on Omaha Beach. Sounds like most of the time one shot gets fired before somebody runs. No matter what you're shooting, most people do not want to meet a trauma surgeon while laying on a gurney.

Now, I'm not denigrating the 32s and 380s of the world, nobody wants to get shot with one because people die that way. But having more energy doesn't necessarily guarantee a kill, either.

So I tell people, no matter what you carry, get good with it. Practice until it's fluid, second nature, instinctive, you react without thinking. And Vista Outdoors is just publishing their opinion, just like the rest of us.
 
I agree: "Knock down power" & "killing power" are not measurable. KE does not == lethality (but it does help)

If the shot placement isn't CNS, then it comes down to fluid dynamics & physiology, not mechanics. How soon will the pump run dry and the CPU stop functioning? A bigger hole will allow for more draining. A .22 LR in a non-CNS area may eventually lead to death, but how long until then and how much damage can that person inflict until then? We shoot to eliminate threat, not to kill. Many modern 9mm HP rounds perform well in simulated media, 40S&W does a little better and 45ACP a little better. Even if they fail to expand, those 3 still do a pretty good job due to the depth they're able to penetrate, which increases the chances of more drainage. (Lots of other cals too: 10mm, 44 mag/spec, 38 spec, 357 mag, etc. included). There is a certain minimal power factor in addition to bullet diameter that helps in this nebulous equation. 380's have the same diameter as 9mm/357/38's, but it usually doesn't have the umpf to punch deep enough.

I do have a 380 and I occasionally carry it and like it a lot, but it isn't my preferred carry. I used to have a .25 and liked it a lot but was happy to sell it to someone else and turned that into my 380. With these lesser calibers, I know if needed, I'll likely have to pull the trigger faster and more to have the same effect as I'd have with the bigger boys. That's a fact of fluid dynamics.
 
I did a month rotation in the ED during pharmacy school.

I remember two gun shot victims to this day.

1. Was a 3 year old male that got hit with a 40SW caliber that hit him in leg and buttock. Same round.

2. Was a 17 year old that got hit with a .22lr. Entered under the chin and went into the brain. The story was the gun was fired by mistake from inside the truck and hit the kid in the bed of the truck.

The 3 year old left the hospital a few days later with a nice scar. The 17 year old had the older doctors walk out of the room once they saw him —- saying he is dead. They let the resident work on him.

Where that energy is delivered the most important factor.
 
There is data, and there are studies, and we have a good deal of knowledge about wound physiology. What all that shows with regard to self defense could be summarized as follows:

  1. Pretty much every cartridge ever made has at times succeeded at quickly stopping an assailant.

  2. Pretty much every cartridge ever made has at times failed at quickly stopping an assailant.

  3. Considering ballistic gelatin performance, data available on real world incidents, an understanding of wound physiology and psychology, certain cartridges with certain bullets are more likely to be more effective more of the time.

  4. For defensive use in a handgun the 9mm Luger, .38 Special +P, .40 S&W, .45 ACP, .357 Magnum, and other, similar cartridges when of high quality manufacture, and loaded with expanding bullets appropriately designed for their respective velocities to both expand and penetrate adequately, are reasonably good choices.

  5. And that's probably as good as we can do.

Let's consider how shooting someone will actually cause him to stop what he's doing.

  • The goal is to stop the assailant.

  • There are four ways in which shooting someone stops him:

    • psychological -- "I'm shot, it hurts, I don't want to get shot any more."

    • massive blood loss depriving the muscles and brain of oxygen and thus significantly impairing their ability to function

    • breaking major skeletal support structures

    • damaging the central nervous system.

    Depending on someone just giving up because he's been shot is iffy. Probably most fights are stopped that way, but some aren't; and there are no guarantees.

    Breaking major skeletal structures can quickly impair mobility. But if the assailant has a gun, he can still shoot. And it will take a reasonably powerful round to reliably penetrate and break a large bone, like the pelvis.

    Hits to the central nervous system are sure and quick, but the CNS presents a small and uncertain target. And sometimes significant penetration will be needed to reach it.

    The most common and sure physiological way in which shooting someone stops him is blood loss -- depriving the brain and muscles of oxygen and nutrients, thus impairing the ability of the brain and muscles to function. Blood loss is facilitated by (1) large holes causing tissue damage; (2) getting the holes in the right places to damage major blood vessels or blood bearing organs; and (3) adequate penetration to get those holes into the blood vessels and organs which are fairly deep in the body. The problem is that blood loss takes time. People have continued to fight effectively when gravely, even mortally, wounded. So things that can speed up blood loss, more holes, bigger holes, better placed holes, etc., help.

    So as a rule of thumb --

    • More holes are better than fewer holes.

    • Larger holes are better than smaller holes.

    • Holes in the right places are better than holes in the wrong places.

    • Holes that are deep enough are better than holes that aren't.

    • There are no magic bullets.

    • There are no guarantees.

  • With regard to the issue of psychological stops see

    • this study, entitled "An Alternate Look at Handgun Stopping Power" by Greg Ellifritz. And take special notice of his data on failure to incapacitate rates set out in the table headed "Here are the results."

      As Ellifritz notes in his discussion of his "failure to incapacitate" data (emphasis added):
      Greg Ellifritz said:
      ...Take a look at two numbers: the percentage of people who did not stop (no matter how many rounds were fired into them) and the one-shot-stop percentage. The lower caliber rounds (.22, .25, .32) had a failure rate that was roughly double that of the higher caliber rounds. The one-shot-stop percentage (where I considered all hits, anywhere on the body) trended generally higher as the round gets more powerful. This tells us a couple of things...

      In a certain (fairly high) percentage of shootings, people stop their aggressive actions after being hit with one round regardless of caliber or shot placement. These people are likely NOT physically incapacitated by the bullet. They just don't want to be shot anymore and give up! Call it a psychological stop if you will. Any bullet or caliber combination will likely yield similar results in those cases. And fortunately for us, there are a lot of these "psychological stops" occurring. The problem we have is when we don't get a psychological stop. If our attacker fights through the pain and continues to victimize us, we might want a round that causes the most damage possible. In essence, we are relying on a "physical stop" rather than a "psychological" one. In order to physically force someone to stop their violent actions we need to either hit him in the Central Nervous System (brain or upper spine) or cause enough bleeding that he becomes unconscious. The more powerful rounds look to be better at doing this....
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      • There are two sets of data in the Ellifritz study: incapacitation and failure to incapacitate. They present some contradictions.

        • Considering the physiology of wounding, the data showing high incapacitation rates for light cartridges seems anomalous.

        • Furthermore, those same light cartridges which show high rates of incapacitation also show high rates of failures to incapacitate. In addition, heavier cartridges which show incapacitation rates comparable to the lighter cartridges nonetheless show lower failure to incapacitate rates.

        • And note that the failure to incapacitate rates of the 9mm Luger, .40 S&W, .45 ACP, and .44 Magnum were comparable to each other.

        • If the point of the exercise is to help choose cartridges best suited to self defense application, it would be helpful to resolve those contradictions.

        • A way to try to resolve those contradictions is to better understand the mechanism(s) by which someone who has been shot is caused to stop what he is doing.

      • The two data sets and the apparent contradiction between them (and as Ellifritz wrote) thus strongly suggest that there are two mechanisms by which someone who has been shot will be caused to stop what he is doing.

        • One mechanism is psychological. This was alluded to by both Ellifritz and FBI agent and firearms instructor Urey Patrick. Sometimes the mere fact of being shot will cause someone to stop. When this is the stopping mechanism, the cartridge used really doesn't matter. One stops because his mind tells him to because he's been shot, not because of the amount of damage the wound has done to his body.

        • The other mechanism is physiological. If the body suffers sufficient damage, the person will be forced to stop what he is doing because he will be physiologically incapable of continuing. Heavier cartridges with large bullets making bigger holes are more likely to cause more damage to the body than lighter cartridges. Therefore, if the stopping mechanism is physiological, lighter cartridges are more likely to fail to incapacitate

      • And in looking at any population of persons who were shot and therefore stopped what they were doing, we could expect that some stopped for psychological reasons. We could also expect others would not be stopped psychologically and would not stop until they were forced to because their bodies became physiologically incapable of continuing.

      • From that perspective, the failure to incapacitate data is probably more important. That essentially tells us that when Plan A (a psychological stop) fails, we must rely on Plan B (a physiological stop) to save our bacon; and a heavier cartridge would have a lower [Plan B] failure rate.

    • Also see the FBI paper entitled "Handgun Wounding Factors and Effectiveness", by Urey W. Patrick. Agent Patrick, for example, notes on page 8:
      ...Psychological factors are probably the most important relative to achieving rapid incapacitation from a gunshot wound to the torso. Awareness of the injury..., fear of injury, fear of death, blood or pain; intimidation by the weapon or the act of being shot; or the simple desire to quit can all lead to rapid incapacitation even from minor wounds. However, psychological factors are also the primary cause of incapacitation failures.

      The individual may be unaware of the wound and thus have no stimuli to force a reaction. Strong will, survival instinct, or sheer emotion such as rage or hate can keep a grievously wounded individual fighting....
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    • And for some more insight into wound physiology and "stopping power":

      • Dr. V. J. M. DiMaio (DiMaio, V. J. M., M. D., Gunshot Wounds, Elsevier Science Publishing Company, 1987, pg. 42, as quoted in In Defense of Self and Others..., Patrick, Urey W. and Hall, John C., Carolina Academic Press, 2010, pg. 83):
        In the case of low velocity missles, e. g., pistol bullets, the bullet produces a direct path of destruction with very little lateral extension within the surrounding tissue. Only a small temporary cavity is produced. To cause significant injuries to a structure, a pistol bullet must strike that structure directly. The amount of kinetic energy lost in the tissue by a pistol bullet is insufficient to cause the remote injuries produced by a high-velocity rifle bullet.
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      • And further in In Defense of Self and Others... (pp. 83-84, emphasis in original):
        The tissue disruption caused by a handgun bullet is limited to two mechanisms. The first or crush mechanism is the hole that the bullet makes passing through the tissue. The second or stretch mechanism is the temporary wound cavity formed by the tissue being driven outward in a radial direction away from the path of the bullet. Of the two, the crush mechanism is the only handgun wounding mechanism that damages tissue. To cause significant injuries to a structure within the body using a handgun, the bullet must penetrate the structure.
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      • And further in In Defense of Self and Others... (pp. 95-96, emphasis in original):
        Kinetic energy does not wound. Temporary cavity does not wound. The much-discussed "shock" of bullet impact is a fable....The critical element in wounding effectiveness is penetration. The bullet must pass through the large blood-bearing organs and be of sufficient diameter to promote rapid bleeding....Given durable and reliable penetration, the only way to increase bullet effectiveness is to increase the severity of the wound by increasing the size of the hole made by the bullet....
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    And sometimes a .357 Magnum doesn't work all that well. LAPD Officer Stacy Lim who was shot in the chest with a .357 Magnum and still ran down her attacker, returned fire, killed him, survived, and ultimately was able to return to duty. She was off duty and heading home after a softball game and a brief stop at the station to check her work assignment. According to the article I linked to:
    ... The bullet ravaged her upper body when it nicked the lower portion of her heart, damaged her liver, destroyed her spleen, and exited through the center of her back, still with enough energy to penetrate her vehicle door, where it was later found....
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Once you get above the minimum amount needed to get the bullet where it needs to go under all possible circumstances, more energy doesn't get you anything, HOWEVER not knowing what the needed minimum might be, and even if we did, delivering just enough and no more isn't possible, different situations need different amounts.

So, delivering the maximum amount practical is used to ensure, as much as anyone can, that enough reaches the needed point.

Personally, I'd rather have a bullet with enough energy to exit than rely on one that might stop just short of where it needs to go because some lab standard said it was enough and the real world said otherwise.
 
Frank Ettin said:
There is data, and there are studies, and we have a good deal of knowledge about wound physiology. What all that shows with regard to self defense could be summarized as follows ...
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I like a lot of what you're saying here. What matters is the ability of the round to penetrate to the CNS. Thereafter penetration doesn't matter, and I prefer expansion. I want as much chance of disruption the CNS as I can. Larger calibers are better in that they expand to a larger diameter.

I would say that while you're technically correct in that there are 4 ways to end a fight; there are practically 2. The threat can CHOOSE to stop, or the threat can me MADE to stop.

Sent from my SM-N981U using Tapatalk
 
What matters is the ability of the round to penetrate to the CNS. Thereafter penetration doesn't matter
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Actually, thereafter really does matter. Just getting there isn't always enough. It needs to go through it as well. A bullet stopping against the spine (penetrated to the CNS) isn't as effective usually as a bullet that goes through the spine. A bullet that penetrates the skull and makes it to the brain isn't likely to be as effective as a bullet that penetrates the skull and continues through the brain.

Sometimes, you can get lucky with a bullet that doesn't make it to the CNS, but forces bone through the CNS.
 
Ft/lbs of energy is a calculated figure using a formula heavily weighted to velocity.
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It is a calculated figure that has been shown experimentally to relate to the potential of a projectile to create damage in a target medium.

It has subsequently been shown to be consistent with the general laws of motion and the science of terminal ballistics.

It is "heavily weighted to velocity" because that's what the experimentation showed was the correct way to calculate it. And because mathematically that calculation can be shown to be accurate in the context of the physics of moving objects.

Interpreting energy figures in the context of stopping an opponent is not a simple as looking at the numbers and seeing which one is larger--there are other variables that figure into the equation very heavily. In fact, trying to compare different loadings based purely on any single calculation is going to be problematic due to the complexity of the topic.

This is where people get into trouble--they want a single number because it seems like such an attractive way to gain insight. But it simply doesn't work because the problem isn't that simple and can't be simplified down to that level.

However, that's NOT because energy calculations are somehow invalid or because the calculation emphasizes velocity more than it does mass. The energy calculation is not invalid, it is not "just a calculated figure" and it does relate to a specific scientific property of a moving object that can be experimentally verified with repeatable results. It's because terminal ballistics, as it applies to stopping human attackers, is too complex to boil down to a single number.
 
Double Naught Spy said:
Actually, thereafter really does matter. Just getting there isn't always enough. It needs to go through it as well. A bullet stopping against the spine (penetrated to the CNS) isn't as effective usually as a bullet that goes through the spine. A bullet that penetrates the skull and makes it to the brain isn't likely to be as effective as a bullet that penetrates the skull and continues through the brain.

Sometimes, you can get lucky with a bullet that doesn't make it to the CNS, but forces bone through the CNS.
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You're correct. I should have said through; my oopsie. My point is that reliable penetration is only important through the CNS.

Sent from my SM-N981U using Tapatalk
 
Bigger bullets at higher velocities do more damage. They also thump harder whether you believe it or not, that's why the army went back to the 45 from the .38 Colt. I forgot to mention that shot placement is very important, most important in fact. A .22LR is very good behind the ear.
 
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I'd venture to say that the Army went back to the .45 Colt because they had used it before and knew what it would do, and not do with decades of experience. And the fact that it was a bigger bullet didn't hurt any. :rolleyes:

The .38 Colt's failure to stop Moro attacks as well as the .45 had stopped attacks in the past was enough for them to pull the "smallbore" pistol and go back to what they knew worked better.

And that mindset held firm, with good reason for a long time. When dealing with non expanding bullets at black powder speeds, bigger is ALWAYS better (more effective).
 
sounds like just so much BS to me. I have killed a LOT of animals through the years, and my observation is that caliber is important.
 
"I'd venture to say that the Army went back to the .45 Colt because they had used it before and knew what it would do, and not do with decades of experience. And the fact that it was a bigger bullet didn't hurt any."

The Army went back to .45 Colt in the Philippines because it's what was available after the limitations of the .38 Long Colt became apparent...

Supposed even some of the old Remington Rolling Block pistols in .50 caliber were also dusted off and sent to the Philippines, but I've not heard how they fared -- if they were actual used against the Moros at all.

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!

The inconvenient truth is that moving back to the .45 Colt didn't somehow prove the superiority of the .45 for all time and provide the impetus for God's Chosen Gun Designer, John Browning, to bestow upon a grateful world the .45 ACP AND the Colt 1911...

The inconvenient truth is that the .45 Colt failed to stop Moro attackers almost as often as the .38 Long Colt did. It did, however, have a much greater cumulative effect than the .38 LC, but it was far, FAR from being a certain thing, and it was not the laser beam of death so many have assumed it (and all other .45s) to be.

Another set of inconvenient truths is that Moros also were also often not stopped by either of the two standard rifle rounds in service in the Philippines -- the .30-40 US Army (Krag), and the .45-70 Springfield.

About the only thing that DID tend to stop a thoroughly pissed off Moro in his tracks was a load of buckshot from one of the Winchester 1893 or 1897 shotguns that were sent to the Philippines.
 
I've killed more than a few deer with the .243 and the .270, they fall down faster when hit with the .270. Steel plates fall faster when hit with the .45 than they do with the .38. Some argue that this has nothing to do with killing power, I say BS to that.
 
"Steel plates fall faster when hit with the .45 than they do with the .38."

That's called momentum. It doesn't have a lot of correlation against targets in which the bullet actually penetrates.
 
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