verdun59
Member
What perplexes me in this never ending discussion, is all the "bigger is better crowd" use .45acp.If they truly believed bigger is better why not move to .50cal ????
You mean that's not true?"With a 9mm it's 'bang bang bang bang bang bang', open up the door and he's dead.
With .45acp is 'bang, bang,' open up the door and he's dead.
With a 12ga it's 'BANG,' and then just look through the hole where the door used to be and you'll see where the bad guy used to be."
Spats,TomJ, what I'm about to post is not really directed "at you," but you happen to be the one that brought up a point that has consistently caused me some confusion.
I often see this argument used to support claims that "9mm is just as good as .45." I recognize that 9mm has, through advances in bullet technology, improved quite a bit over the years. What I fail to understand is why folks think that the .45 is the same as it was 40 years ago. Have not both cartridges improved? Have improvements in 9mm dramatically outstripped those that have happened to the .45?
As far as I've been able to tell, all handgun rounds are relatively poor man-stoppers. As a buddy of mine likes to say, "If I knew I was goin' to a gunfight, I'd go somewhere else. If I knew I was goin' and couldn't get out of it, I'd take a rifle . . . and friends . . . with rifles."
50 cal semiauto cartridges are far more powerfull than is needed for self defense, you would limit your ammo capacity even more than a .45, and all the guns chambered for 50 cal cartridges are far to large and heavy to carry and conceal effectively.If they truly believed bigger is better why not move to .50cal ????
Spats,TomJ, what I'm about to post is not really directed "at you," but you happen to be the one that brought up a point that has consistently caused me some confusion.
I often see this argument used to support claims that "9mm is just as good as .45." I recognize that 9mm has, through advances in bullet technology, improved quite a bit over the years. What I fail to understand is why folks think that the .45 is the same as it was 40 years ago. Have not both cartridges improved? Have improvements in 9mm dramatically outstripped those that have happened to the .45?
As far as I've been able to tell, all handgun rounds are relatively poor man-stoppers. As a buddy of mine likes to say, "If I knew I was goin' to a gunfight, I'd go somewhere else. If I knew I was goin' and couldn't get out of it, I'd take a rifle . . . and friends . . . with rifles."
Posted by Spats McGee: I often see this argument used to support claims that "9mm is just as good as .45." I recognize that 9mm has, through advances in bullet technology, improved quite a bit over the years. What I fail to understand is why folks think that the .45 is the same as it was 40 years ago. Have not both cartridges improved? Have improvements in 9mm dramatically outstripped those that have happened to the .45?
Well, the FOS guy refused to believe me, so I guess he can be in his ignorant bliss.
What this all translates to is the 45ACP and 9mm have roughly the same energy upon impact.
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....
...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....
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.
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.
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....
... 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....
The Army insisted on a .45 and refused to consider a 9MM more than a century ago.Posted by Hanshi: This "9mm vs .45acp" argument dates back to at least the 1970s. Don't believe me? well I was there.
Yep. And as Agent Patrick wrote in the report cited by Frank Ettin,Posted by texasgun: ...the .45 ACP round still tears a BIGGER hole and a WIDER wound channel than 9mm. that's a fact.