Video, 1911 ball ammo for defensive use?

JohnKSa said:
The report does state that living horses were shot with Colt .45 revolvers, but a quick skim of the document does not indicate how many were shot, only that there were "horses" plural involved. The living horses were shot in the brain and the report states that each one collapsed immediately. I'm not sure exactly what kind of information that provides given that there's not much doubt that a .45 revolver bullet will penetrate a horse's skull nor that once it does, it will kill the animal if it hits the brain.
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Yep. And that's my only point. I was not meaning to start a discussion on the merits of the Thompson LaGarde tests but just to establish from the facts of it that horses were included in the testing. Again, in an era where mounted cavalry was still used, it would be a natural and obvious thing to confirm equine lethality. Absent time travel, red herrings, like the state of LaGarde's memory in his later years, can have no effect on what was or was not in the original report.
 
In regards to the use of horses by the military;

So, shooting a living, moving, maybe running animal that your enemy is riding.

In the head, with a pistol, possibly from another moving/running horse.

I’m thinking most horses in battle took it somewhere in the body.

45,38, doesn’t matter, the results would have been very poor.

Doesn’t sound like a desirable situation to be in.
 
Pumpkin said:
In regards to the use of horses by the military;

So, shooting a living, moving, maybe running animal that your enemy is riding.

In the head, with a pistol, possibly from another moving/running horse.

I’m thinking most horses in battle took it somewhere in the body.

45,38, doesn’t matter, the results would have been very poor.

Doesn’t sound like a desirable situation to be in.
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Right.

The reason BEHIND the LeGarde testing had nothing to do with shooting horses although some have gotten sidetracked on that.

The testing was all about shooting men and finding the best sidearm for battle.

LeGarde's method was to shoot cattle in various parts of the body and make determinations as to what would best kill men.

His cattle blasting was a joke because cows have far bigger bones and body mass but he did also shoot human cadavers and that gave him at least a little useful information.

He clearly was biased toward the large calibers--possibly due to his colleague Thompson who had a vested interest in the .45 as he had ideas stirring in his head about a submachine gun in a heavy caliber.

Actually, most military men were biased toward the .45 in those days (and with good reason). With the bullets of that era the .45 was the most promising man killer.
 
Pumpkin,

The purpose of a horse headshot kill was for when a cavalry officer's mount had been badly wounded or otherwise injured, and the officer had to dispatch it humanely to end its suffering. Shooting enemy horses in the head at a gallop would not be an expected skill.
 
With the bullets of that era the .45 was the most promising man killer.
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I would not say "promising" I would go so far as to say, "proven". And when I say "proven" I mean they had a track record of use in actual combat against men, and men on horses.

And they used lead (alloy) bullets that were not designed to expand. Again, don't be completely literal, lead bullets often do expand, some, what I mean is that expansion of the bullet was not a design criteria.

The .45 Colt, .45 Schoefield, and .45 Govt were the official pistol rounds from the 1870s until 1892 when the Army adopted the .38 Long Colt.

The performance of the .38 Long Colt in the Spanish American war, and particularly during the Philippine Moro Insurrection was "suboptimal" in today's terms, in the writing of the day, they said the .38 "lacked stopping power" and the Army refurbished and reissued a couple hundred Colt SAA revolvers to "supplement" the .38s in use. And when I say "supplement" that is the official term, and what usually happened in reality is that the .45s replaced the .38s in field use when ever possible and practical.

And it was from this period that the people in the Army essentially decided that whatever the next official pistol cartridge was going to be, it was going to be a .45.

The 1904 Thompson-LeGarde tests, were, I believe, simply pseudo-"scientific" tests meant to support the already decided on .45 caliber choice.

The .38 Long Colt was the official round, from 1892 until 1911, when it was officially replaced by the .45ACP.

I'm sure there were at least a few people who weren't totally in love with the idea of jacketed pistol bullets, but the did work, at least as well as lead ones, generally, and the Army kept the .45ACP in service for over 70 years, so, I'm thinking it generally worked well enough to keep them satisfied.

Does that mean that .45 ACP FMJ (ball) is the best possible choice today for you or I, as civilians, to protect our personal butts? No.

Does it mean .45 ball is ineffective and useless because there are better options available to private citizens today? HELL NO.
 
Got it,
They also carried carbines and rifles. Either of which would also have done the job. I do understand your point.
I’ve had to shoot a few of our cattle over the years, never easy and never with a pistol. Not saying I couldn’t have, you just have to use the best option available at the time.
 
.45 acp hardball.
Name some other rounds you'd reject if you knew you were going into combat.
.22 LR
.32 acp
.328 Fed Mag
.380
.38 Special
9mm (heresy, but that's my call)
.357 Magnum... uh... I might choose that in some cases.
.44 Special
then .45 acp hardball.

It's a big hole to start with.


.
 
When something goes wrong it's easy to blame the cartridge. It doesn't argue and makes a great scapegoat.

The 38 long Colt worked just fine, so did the 51 Navy revolvers. But someone blamed the cartridge so they made the 38spl. Then something went wrong and they switched to the .357 Magnum. Something went wrong and they switched to 9x19. Something went wrong and everyone switched to 40 S&W. Then something went wrong and everyone switched back to 9x19. All just excuses for bad shot placement or bad training.
 
Pumkin said:
Until it fails again.
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The Verminator said:
How did it fail?
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Got to mind the tense. He didn't say "failed," as in this has happened. He said "fails again," meaning until some future event occurs to rival the Miami Shootout that got the 9mm disfavored in the 1980s.

Maybe that won't happen, of course. The technology keeps changing. The Miami failure is one in which the shot placement was not at fault. There was one round of 9mm Silvertip that, at autopsy, proved to have been directed straight at the perp's heart from the side but that failed to penetrate adequately to get to that organ. Ironically, it was one rare instance where ball ammo probably would have got there, but the fast-opening hollow point stopped too quickly.

Since then, the bullet designers have learned not to assume a large temporary cavity will stop someone (an NIJ test report still had them believing in evaluating bullet "stopping power" by temporary cavity back then). Now, they are usually designed to strike a balance between expansion and penetration. Throughout the 1990s, comparing 45 to 9mm, you would see more gelatin penetration from the 45, pretty much in proportion to the difference in momentum of the two bullets of the same design type. The current crop of 9mm has penetration that has caught up to the penetration of the 1990s 45 designs. At least, they have in gelatin.

None of this is to say hitting the same perp in the same spot with a 45 wouldn't stop him faster. It is just that between the average person's qualification scores being better with the 9's and the higher magazine capacity available for the 9s, they are considered to produce better net effectiveness for most people. How much of that opinion is based on surmise and how much is from collected data, I don't know.
 
Unclenick said:
None of this is to say hitting the same perp in the same spot with a 45 wouldn't stop him faster. It is just that between the average person's qualification scores being better with the 9's and the higher magazine capacity available for the 9s, they are considered to produce better net effectiveness for most people. How much of that opinion is based on surmise and how much is from collected data, I don't know.
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As for the reasons, you left out a big one.

It was determined that all of the likely prospects for pistol bullets would need several hits to stop reliably--thus the faster repeat shots of the 9mm won the day.
 
The Miami failure is one in which the shot placement was not at fault. There was one round of 9mm Silvertip that, at autopsy, proved to have been directed straight at the perp's heart from the side but that failed to penetrate adequately to get to that organ
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Ah, the 1986 Miami shootout.. where the vaunted, approved 9mm HP failed!! :eek: FAILED I say!!! :eek::eek::rolleyes:

Or at least the FBI review said it failed. But did it really fail??? Sure, it "failed" to reach the heart, and it "failed" to instantly stop the fight, but the round MET ALL THE FBI REQUIREMENTS.

Pardon the rant, but its something almost never brought up in conversation about the shooting today. The 9mm HP met every requirement the FBI had. If it hadn't, it wouldn't have been authorized for duty use!

The bullet stopped approximately a half inch short of reaching the heart. IT was a lethal hit. Just not an instant stopping hit. The bullet penetrated every bit as much as the FBI said it had to penetrate.

However, in that one instance, the penetration the FBI required wasn't quite enough to give satisfactory results. The real world does that, every now and then, creates a situation out side of tested parameters, one that calculated values and testing didn't take into account.

The FBI review couldn't fault their "Hero" agents (though some of them did screw up royally) the guy who fired the 9mm round that "failed" did his part right. The round went where it was supposed to go. It went as far as it was required to go by FBI protocol. Just didn't happen to be an instant fight stopper, that time.

The FBI wouldn't admit their requirements were inadequate, but they did change them. They blamed the 9mm round, as noted, blaming the cartridge is easy and it doesn't fight back. And that's exactly what they did.

interesting footnote, after the FBI said the 9mm was not enough they reauthorized use of the .357 and the .45ACP while they searched for a new, better round.

They settled on the 10mm round, and when they had trouble with it being too much gun for some of their people, moved to a reduced 10mm loading. A few years later, when S&W offered the same performance in a smaller case round, one that would fit in 9mm frame size guns, they got all starry eyed and pounced on the .40 S&W "like a duck on a june bug". And the rest of the nation's police agencies mostly followed.

Now, with improved bullet design, that meets the current testing protocols, (penetration, particularly as that was the "flaw" before) they're dropping the .40 and going back to the 9mm. But, its not "back" in their eyes, as they are going to the "new" 9mm, not back to the old version. Bureaucracies hate admitting they might, possibly, somewhere, have made an error, let alone a mistake.

Might the fight have been stopped if that one bullet had gone just a half inch deeper? MAYBE. But also, maybe not. Heart shots are often immediate stoppers. But not ALWAYS. Deer hunters will tell you, with rifles (and a lot more power than a 9mm duty pistol) that sometimes a heart shot is DRT, instant stop. And sometimes, a deer can run an amazing distance with its heart, literally destroyed.

The bad guy in Miami lived about a minute after that 9mm hit. During that time he killed and wounded several FBI agents. And he was trying to get away in another car when he was stopped by shots to the head at close range.

They entire time he was active after taking that 9mm hit, he was bleeding to death, mortally wounded, but not physically incapacitated.

IT wasn't a failure of the bullet, it was a failure of expectations.

Back to .45 ball ammo for self defense, yes, there are much better choices, and if possible and practical, you should use them. I do.

But I am reminded of one guy I know of that did use ball ammo to defend himself, and he was happy with the results. He said, I shot the guy twice, he fell down. Both rounds exited.

Can you realistically fault that?? or expect better?
 
44 AMP said:
Might the fight have been stopped if that one bullet had gone just a half inch deeper? MAYBE. But also, maybe not. Heart shots are often immediate stoppers. But not ALWAYS. Deer hunters will tell you, with rifles (and a lot more power than a 9mm duty pistol) that sometimes a heart shot is DRT, instant stop. And sometimes, a deer can run an amazing distance with its heart, literally destroyed.
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Interesting question.

This old deer hunter (who has bagged many whitetails in his long life) will tell you this: Most of the time, with a shot that takes out both lungs, a deer will run 30 to 40 yards and go down. If only one lung is taken out they will run a little farther.

The heart shot, on the other hand, will usually allow a deer to run 100 to 125 yards.

Why?

A doctor/hunter explained this to me.

It's simply because being unable to breathe causes more physical stress to the deer and it gives up quicker.

If its heart is destroyed but the deer's lungs are functioning--it can still breathe well--and breathing is more critical than the heart pumping blood.

The deer may be dying but it simply doesn't know it.

Thus it usually runs farther and this can often be three times as far.

So.........I doubt that if that nearly spent 9mm bullet had bumped into the heart of the killer Platt it would have changed the outcome in the least.

It had done its job well. It penetrated far and did as much damage as could be expected.

A man's fighting spirit and determination (maybe craziness) is what determined that so many FBI agents would be harmed that day.

Also........the perps were not finished off with head shots--Matix was hit in the spinal cord and Platt was hit in the chest.

Platt had run out of whatever crazed energy that kept him going.......he was semi conscious and doing nothing at that point--only his left hand was working and he had emptied his gun at Mireles seconds before so he wasn't shooting.

And I can't help but speculate........what if instead of that 9mm.......the bullet had been .45 ACP hardball?

Would the hardball have gone on to penetrate the heart AND the other lung?

Would that have saved the day?

All these questions are fascinating to ponder.
 
..and it's performance against automobiles.
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Historically speaking .45ACP ball has never been a great performer against auto bodies. Especially back in the day when cars were made of generally thicker sheet steel skins.

They made a special "metal case" .45auto load, to improve its performance against automobiles. Sort of an armor piercing load, but not exactly.

9mm FMJ has always been a better penetrator, its narrower and moves faster.
And, usually more pointed.
 
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