On Ballistics, Center Of Mass, and Stopping Power
When you hear trainers telling to strike your targets at "Center Mass", this does not mean heart, lungs, kidneys, etc.
It means exactly that: Center Of
Mass.
Stopping power of a firearm doesn't come simply because you struck the heart. It comes from the transference of energy from the round into the torso,
and the shock waves that come from the release of that energy. Remember that the body is mostly water. Just as you can imagine a pebble fired at high velocity into the water, you can get an idea of what the human body tends to do when it is struck by a round. It wants to ripple outward from the impact point, particularly deep into the torso, in the direction of travel.
Ball ammunition tends to have modest amounts of energy transference, and may go right through the target. If the round exits the body,
it will take with it some of the kinetic energy that it had when it was originally fired. While certainly possessing lethal potential, ball ammunition may not stop an attacker reliably, as simply piercing holes in someone's gut may not create an immediately incapacitating wound, and much of the energy that was sent downrange escapes the target's body. Taken in real world terms, a gun-weilding attacker can still fire off a few rounds at you, even though you've shot him in the gut 3 or 4 times with ball ammo. The tendency of ball ammo to bounce off of bones and back out of the skin means even chest shots may not stop your attacker.
Using
hollow point ammunition, the round flattens upon impact like a tin can, and the energy is transferred more readily into the target, hence more stopping power. In many cases, the round won't pass all the way through the target, but get lodged below the surface, doing extraordinary damage to the tissue. Since the round does not escape the target, its energy does not escape either and 100% of the energy is transferred into the target. The result is a much greater traumatic "shockwave" into the torso. There are limitations to hollow point ammo, however, namely
velocity. At velocities of less than 1,000 fps, it may behave just like ball ammo.
Then you have special ammunition like
Hydra Shock, which expand at an even greater rate, simply because their "hollow point" is filled with a very soft substance, usually lead. That soft metal (located at the tip of the round, and surrounded by a "jacket" of harder metal) expands dramatically upon impact with the target, forcing the jacket around it to expand into a flower shape, even at slower velocities (less than 1,000 fps). This is great for your heavier ammunition of .380 or larger. A few rounds of Hydra Shock .45 will knock down a Sumo wrestler in mid-step. It may also be more effective at longer ranges, since its stopping power does not rely solely on velocity.
The other advantage to specialized rounds like Hydra Shock is its tendency NOT to penetrate walls. Taking an attacker down in your home, or in a building, and you are less likely to punch holes through the attacker and into innocent bystanders behind them, or obscured by dry wall, etc.
Follow the experts, and don't try to gauge where the heart is. In a gunfight,
Center Of Mass describes finding the very middle of that fuzzy blob (your attacker) floating in front of your FRONT SIGHT POST.
Get some good ammo, and rest easy. In a gunfight, concentrate on sight alignment, sight picture and smoothly squeezing off your rounds in rapid succession, and let the ammunition do the rest.
