I wanted to say one more thinh about the ''what the polic use'' idea.
True, many fantastic loadings are marketed specifically for law enforcement uses. And most shooting studies involve police officers. But politics and personal whim dictacte as much what a given pd will carry as much as performance. Policemen carried .38 revolvers for decade, even when better options were available and all studies pointed to the dismal ''stopping power'' the available loadings provided. Has bullet technology made the .38, and truthfullyall other calibers, much more potent? You betcha. But that is a newer development not pertanent to the point. Those were not available 20, 30 years ago when policemen and women were going into harms way armed with an inadequate, even by the standards of the time, round.
I know that there are certain loads in 9mm, which is a caliber I already have a weapon chambered for, that I can shoot 10 BGs with and the law of odds tells me 9 of them will stop what they are doing after hitting them just one time, regardless of the fact that some police force somewhere else doesn't use that load anymore.
When I take all loads that provide THAT performance (91% one-shot stop) and then weigh the price between them, I find the one load with the largest number of shootings by far to also be 33% cheaper than the others. Brand X or Y may be better in ballistics gelatin, but all are equal in real life situations. So why go with anything different?
The answer is personal preference, something police officers and soldiers like myself are not able to excersize when it comes to ammo choice. I don't carry nato hardball, even though the largest armed force in the country mandates it, so why would I carry any other load simply because a smaller armed force carries it?
Yes, I also do believe in ''stopping power'' as tabboo as it may be on THR. All people are different, all situations are different, but given the same circumstance with the same BG and the only variable is what he is hit with, a 10mm will stop him quicker than a .40, a .45 will stop him quicker than a 9mm, and a .50 BMG will stop him quicker than all of those. A mack truck would probably provide the best stopping power I could hope for, but I don't carry a mack truck, a .50 bmg, a 10mm, or a .40. I carry a .45 and a 9mm, so within those groups I hope to find the best load I can afford to become profficient with that will give me a slight edge over something else I could have chosen.
Yes, I have done my homework. I take a bit of offense to your remark. And I stand by my decision, which I could change on a whim tomorrow and that wouldn't make me any less correct today.
To the OP, I apologize for getting off-track.