That's the issue. Passing the 40s speed doesn't help for sd. Especially when they are using the same bullets.
We always hear of "advancements in bullet design have made 9mm equal to the 40 or 45 of yesteryear" but the old silvertip from 30+year ago is right up there with anything for the 10? Lol. Idk. I'll definitely try the hst and gold dots when I see them locally.
The one thing the typical ballistic gel testing overlooks, is wounding effect. When a hollow point bullet expands, it creates a larger frontal surface area to that bullet. All the tissue then pressurized in front of that bullet now has to go somewhere. It if forced out sideways off of the bullet's newly widened meplat. But velocity is a key factor to this, because it determine how much pressure is created on the bullet's meplat, which determines how far that tissue is then sprayed out laterally from the projectiles path.
The expansion robs the projectile of energy and therefore velocity. And with that expanded nose, the
terminal sectional density of the bullet is much lower, meaning it will lose velocity much more quickly (or in a shorter distance through a given medium). Which is why we typically see hollow points make a small wound track for the first couple inches of travel through gel, until they expand. Then they suddenly makes a massive wound track which quickly tapers down in a cone shape as velocity is rapidly retarded due to the very low terminal sectional density of the bullet. A parachute effect.
As velocity reduces, the wound track also reduces, because as energy drops the pressure forming on the nose of the expanded bullet and subsequent tissue spray also reduce.
We all know that when we shoot for Center Of Mass (or rather, the thoracic cavity), we're hoping to hit the heart, lungs, or major arteries and veins. We're hoping to cause rapid blood lose. Because reducing blood flow to the brain will result in incapacitation (which stops the threat). The majority of the thoracic cavity contains lungs. The lungs will cause less rapid blood lose than a hit to the heart or the major blood vessels attached to it. So wound size is more of a factor here.
Yet, because we don't have a good way to measure wounding, we seem to ignore it and focus on penetration depth and expansion size of the projectile. Doing so fails to take into account the only factor that actually matters with a COM hit, which is how much potential rapid blood pressure lose can this bullet cause.
Further more, the temporary cavity seen in high speed camera capture of gel tests is largely ignored, as we're told the temporary cavity of handgun projectiles is meaningless. But the force created by the temporary cavity in gel may have a very different effect to the permanent wounding damage in various human tissues than it does in the gel block. Many of us seem to forget that gel is not people, and pay no attention to the variation in temporary cavities in gel when comparing handgun ammunition. I'm not saying the temporary cavity is directly important, but I am saying that the elasticity of gel is not the same as living tissue, and that different organs also have different elasticity from one another. The energy imparted that causes the temporary cavity in gel (and the size of that cavity), may well be relevant to the amount permanent wounding possible in living tissues. But that's inconvenient, so we tend to ignore it.