What in your opinion is the greatest factor in stopping power?

what (besides shot placement) is most important?

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Ill have to say penetration .

I strongly feel that once you hit the .38spcl / 9mm level all bets are off other than placement as long as the round has penetration enough to reach the vitals . IMHO placement is king and proper penetration is queen of "stopping power ". You should note tho that wildlife routinely runs off with fatal hits , and some folks fall down crying if hit with a bb gun . psycology of the shot person plays as large or larger role than anything they are shot with .

Has it occurred to all this talk about precise shot placement in a gunfight is, well, for lack of a better of word, misplaced?

Center of mass is about as good as you're going to get. It's not like he's going to be standing still like a silhouette target, waiting for you to aim at his vital organs and squeeze off a few rounds.

A head shot? Not unless you're the attacker and your victim, er, opponent, is in condition white.

Has it occurred to all this talk about precise shot placement in a gunfight is, well, for lack of a better of word, misplaced?

Center of mass is about as good as you're going to get. It's not like he's going to be standing still like a silhouette target, waiting for you to aim at his vital organs and squeeze off a few rounds.

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To me that's pretty much what I'm refering to when I say shot placement and not asking the attacker to position his heart in line with the muzzle. A lot of shootings seem to have misses, arm and leg shots, gut shots, etc. I'd say if you're able to reliably hit in the area from about the nipples to the top of the chest thats shot placement. Good shot placement doesn't mean that you'll hit sometime critical with every bullet, it just increases the chances of it by being in the right area to hit lots of critical things.

The original post said "other than shot placement." I haven't heard ANYONE argue that anything is MORE important than shot placement.

Is this a somewhat time-wasting thread? Of course it is, as are 95% of all the threads on all the different forums. This is the internet equivalent of sitting around talking crap.

The rule should be, though, no matter how silly the thread, try not to hijack the topic! "If you don't have anything on-topic to post, don't post anything at all."

Ok for anyone actually offended, this post is tongue-in-cheek, but it is funny how more than 1/2 the answers to the questions of what, other than shot placement, blah, blah, blah, are "Shot placement is most important!"

i'd say the greatest factor in stopping power is a balance between muzzle velocity and bullet weight. You've gotta find a good middle ground where the bullet expands and penetrates, but not too deep and not too shallow.

Precise aim.

Aside from shot placement? Divine intervention

I 100% agree with Denali

I'm with Bogie. After shot placement, bigger holes.

Stopping power is the right combination between bullet weight, bullet velocity, bullet diameter, and shot placement. Oh yeah, also how willing the BG is to stop attacking, or if he's on drugs, etc.
Way too many factors. Just get what you shoot the best and practice practice practice!

Bullet placement.

A .22 LR in the temple is just as good as a .30-06 in the chest, maybe better.

So what (besides shot placement) is most important? Energy? Bullet size? Momentum?

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This is the original question MikePGS ask.
So we all know bullet placement is the key.


In my opinion, the first must is penetration ( 12" of gelation penetration seems good for me ).

Second, making the bigger hole possible...

There is many variations on the way to obtain the best combination. Choose the best compromise for your needs.

First, hit what you're aiming at.

Next, the rounds gotta penetrate the vitals. We prefer they not overpenetrate, but I'll take that over underpenetration.

Then I'd worry about expansion, kinetic energy, temporary and permanent wound cavities, alignment of Mars and Uranus with Gemini, etc.

its been danced around and such but someone on here has a sigline that says... "shot placement is king and penetration is queen. Everything else is angels dancing on the head of a needle" or something to that effect...

For an immediate effect you have to hit the right place... Which requires the proper placement and penetration to get to it. Once you hit something like the spinal cord or heart or insert whatever I doubt it matters much if it is a .356 hole from 9mm ball or a .70 hole from an expanded .45 HP. Now how long it takes that guy to bleed out would make a big diff on size of hole, so dont just shoot once for both reasons. That being said I feel comfortable with anything between a 38 special to .45 acp to 357 heck even 380 for personal defense. All can be accurate and reach vital areas. I just hope either the person is either not all that determined to harm me or I get lucky and hit something vital cause bleeding out isnt the best of hopes.

-Tsi

IMO, the biggest factor besides the obvious of shot placement, is bullet weight, this is why you hear reports of troops complaining about the 5.56 lack of stopping power, because they are using 55-77 grain bullets that are going really fast, so they basically whiz right through. AK47 fires 122-154 grain bullets that move slower, so more energy transfer.

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WRONG. The 5.56mm projectile will yaw and fragment, and they tend to inflict nastier wounds than the M43 ball projectile. The 5.56 is, however, inferior to the 7.62x39 where hard targets are concerned. But that is mostly acedemic, as any likely battlefield barrier that will stop one will also stop the other. That's why burrowed enemies get the ma deuce or Mk 19 treatment.

Under no circumstances will the physical impact of a bullet fired from any man-portable firearm ever knock someone down.

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Wow, this is a dumb comment. If we alter this to say that PLANNING to knock someone over would be stupid, I'd be on board.

A friend of the family is a cop (a BIG freakin cop - probably 6'3", 240), chasing bad guy, who wheels around and shoots him in the chest with something small, I think he said it was a 22 (this happened in the mid 80s). He's on a dead run, takes one through the badge (he has it encased in plastic - eerie). It hits a rib and goes sideways, making more like a 6" cut on his chest. He said it was like getting hit with a sledgehammer, knocked him flat on his butt.

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Glad you have some anecdotal "evidence" to support a BS claim. The original comment is 100% correct. Energy dump is a myth, and no projectile that can be fired from a firearm will physically knock a person down. ft/lbs don't matter where this is concerned; it is MOMENTUM. Bullets simply don't have much. In fact, ft/lbs are really only useful for determining a cartridge's relative power WRT ability to achieve X penetration & Y expansion.

A .22 LR in the temple is just as good as a .30-06 in the chest, maybe better.

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My money would be on the '06. I had a buddy accidentally shoot himself in the left cheek with a .22 zip gun. He was in a lot of pain, but still coherent. The bullet had gone all the way through his brain and lodged at teh rear of his skull. 13 years later, he's stil doing fine (some short term memory problems).

a .30-06 round to the chest would almost gaurantee death. There is a phenomenon known as hydrostatic shock and temporary cavity stretch that begins to occur ~2,000 FPS. This is why rifle rounds are so much more devastating, despite their typically smaller diameter.

I would definitely wager a persons survival odds are better with a .22 to the peanut than a medium caliber rifle round to the torso.

Placement is the greatest factor in stopping power. Then comes penetration.

But that's already been noted.

Other than shot placement, bullet choice, and caliber size, not much.

What I would like to throw out for debate is the whole issue of penetration. In one of the FBI publications regarding handgun wounding and effectiveness (http://www.thegunzone.com/quantico-wounding.html), they recommended that 12" penetration is the very absolute minimum for any round and that 16-18" of penetration is ideal. They base this off of a few things. One, they note a bullet breaking the skin is equivalent to 4" of ballistics gel, furthermore, they caution that most shooting do not take place under ideal chest fully exposed scenario, and you may need to shoot through a part of an arm in order to reach the juicy bits in the center. As of late, some of the murmurings I've heard regarding penetration is of a shift to the idea that a little over-penetration (>12" penetration) in a bullet is preferable, since it maximizes the likelihood of a bullet being able to reach vital organs irrespective of angle. Additionally, if the BG's muscles are tensed, it further increases the effective thickness of the torso, as ballistics gel replicates the density of relaxed muscle with contracted muscle most probably presenting a more dense medium to penetrate (lets say ~1.2x equivalent, raising the minimum penetration to about ~14.5"). Equally, if the skin on the back of a BG's back presents the equivalent of another 4" of ballistics Gel, then hypothetically (assuming average thickness of a human torso is 12") a bullet with about 20" of penetration may not even reliably exit a BG (4" for front, 12" for middle, 4" for back). Granted, the later is rather academic, and not based on any factual information.

It should be noted that for a hand-gun, an exit wound is entirely unimpressive. From personal first-hand observation of bullet entry and exit wounds (specifically through a youth's lower leg/calf muscle from either a .35-.40cal Glock) are nearly identical, with the exit wound being of roughly the equivalent size to the entry, based on Eyeball MK1 measurements. This was a bit of a personal surprise, as I had bought into the "Fist-Sized" exit wound hype.

Like he said, "Other than shot placement"...

Yes, shot placement is paramount.

However, assuming good shot placement, does everyone think anything at all will work? I feel very strongly some rounds are better than others.

Since this thread in the handgun section, I will limit my remarks to handgun rounds - what passes for standard defensive handgun rounds. (A Thompson-Center Contender in .35 Remington would probably work well, but it's hard to holster and requires much practise to reload quickly.)

Penetration and tissue/organ damage have been mentioned, but these comments are not quite on the mark; not wrong, just not complete. The main requirement is a large wound channel. Part of this is penetration, but also includes a radial damage area to tissue, organs, bones and blood vessels.

A Central Nervous System (CNS) hit will normally guarantee a 'stop'. So we're on the same page, what I mean by 'stopping power' is the ability or tendency to immediately render an assailant incapable of continuing the attack. This may include death, but does not include simple pain.

May I point out a fatal wound is not the same as a stopping blow? In the infamous Miami FBI shootout, Platt was hit early on in the exchange and suffered a non-survivable wound - the round destroyed the tops of both lungs and he was practically dead at that point. However, he stayed on his feet long enough to shoot most of the agents, killing several. He was killed but not stopped.

What causes incapacitation is either a CNS hit or severe physical damage which causes immediate loss of blood pressure resulting in physical inability to continue. In practical terms, the more tissue disrupted, the more organs damaged, the more bones impacted or broken, the more blood vessels severed, the faster the assailant will be incapable of continuing.

Wound channels are caused by a combination of bullet frontal area, bullet mass and energy derived from velocity. Additionally, the frontal shape of the bullet should be flat fronted to transmit kinetic energy directly forward, so the impact is directed into the target rather than 'slipping' through the target.

In my humble opinion, the optimum round is a large diameter bullet with adequate power to penetrate substantially.

A CNS shot is best, but a good shot with a big bullet is far better than a good shot with a little bullet.

OK placement
Then... size.
Think of the difference between a .22lr in the sternum vs a 2 lb cannonball in the sternum each traveling 1000 fps. The former is a painful "OWWW!!!" maybe mortal, maybe not; while the latter is... DRT.

I was always told that speed kills. However, this is not always true, I have to say that shot placement is of course number 1; however, in the original post we are to exclude shot placement. So next in line would be speed. If you are hit at 100 yards with a .22 vs with a 9mm then I would take the first wound. However, slaughter houses use .22's why? quick efficient kills. And if it can penetrate a 1-ton animal skull and drop it nearly immediately then I must say there is something behind that story. Just as assassins back in the day used .22's, because they would supposedly "bounce" around in the skull and make mush-meat of brain matter. Effective for an assassin, maybe; however, like the problem proposes, an attacker is coming at you so something a little heavier would be in order. Some of your posts would insist that the worse aim you are the bigger caliber? so if you cannot hit the side of a barn grab a 500 smith and wesson emergency survival and have at it. But for me, I will still take the trusty 9mm. Hollow points, expanding, the caliber is not as important. besides, what if there are more than one attacker? Most people are trained to "double-tap" to more ammo in that situation would be better. The ultimate self defense round? for me I like the .357 wether it is SIG or Magnum. 9mm is cheaper to play with, so that would be what I carry.

Ok, I have read this thread and though I like the charts and the great information about knock down power I cannot say I agree.

A .30-06 will knock down a person. Its ok if you disagree as you can do the following to prove your theory of a man not falling over from a gunshot due to impact;

Weight down mannequin (like at the department store) so that it weighs 175 lbs (the weight of an average man) and shoot it with your springfield .30-06 (at a safe distance) of about 25 yards.

Watch what happens. It is going to #1 explode where you hit it and #2 fall the hell over. So lets not discredit the power and devestation of a firearm even if its a cool excel graph.

It has to do with velocity... v^2 (though physics class was too long ago).
Be Safe!

Weight down mannequin (like at the department store) so that it weighs 175 lbs (the weight of an average man) and shoot it with your springfield .30-06 (at a safe distance) of about 25 yards.

Watch what happens. It is going to #1 explode where you hit it and #2 fall the hell over.

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did you try your experiment before you posted,didn't think so. if its free standing it might fall over.did you watch the mythbuster episode they hung a 200# pig carcus from a post on a ring and it barely moved when shot with a 308

Trauma. This can be achieved with shot placement, projectile expansion, or multiple small hits.

May I point out a fatal wound is not the same as a stopping blow? In the infamous Miami FBI shootout, Platt was hit early on in the exchange and suffered a non-survivable wound - the round destroyed the tops of both lungs and he was practically dead at that point. However, he stayed on his feet long enough to shoot most of the agents, killing several. He was killed but not stopped.

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Good example. The fatal shot to Platt did not stop him.

The non fatal shot to his partner, knocked him out of the fight by essentially blowing his lower jaw apart. Even though some time after he was hit in the jaw, he moved to the second vehicle, he returned no fire after being hit right near the beginning of the fight. Except for one shot from his shot gun, his buddy Platt did all the damage with his Mini 14.

Stopping power is not killing power. First a good CNS hit is number one, and doesn't matter the caliber as long as it can get through to the CNS.

A good shot to the legs or hips will stop many. Very hard to go anywhere without the legs working. Same with arm shots. Abdominal shots work well because of the severe pain. Liver and kidney hits work very well too.

Stopping the other guy is the issue, not killing him. If he should die during the defense action, so be it. It ain't about trying to keep him alive either. It is about stopping.

Personally if Harsh language works, all the better.

Go figure.

Fred