Does .45 live up to the hype?

[Slamfire]

There are those who claim bigger through holes are irrelevant to self defense, and they are entitled to their opinion. But if you don't hit the central nervous system and incapacitate the prep, that individual will keep on motoring on till his brain runs out of oxygen.

I offer this interesting video from 2018

Women shoot attempted armed robber at Tulsa liquor store





both of the women hit 37 year old Tyrone Lee with small caliber bullets. You can see, Tyrone reacts as if bee stung, but as you can see, after he is hit, he is still very mobile, grabs, wrestles with one of the woman. I believe Tyrone is also reacting to blood loss, as you see several times Tyrone drop, stagger. However, Tyrone does not bleed out. He makes it to the hospital and survives.

Tulsa armed robber sentenced to 22 years in federal prison

Tulsa Armed Robber Sentenced to Federal Prison

Argue with the women about the ethicality of being locked in a store with a shotgun armed criminal who won't stay down.

 

[Kleanbore]

Where do the other rounds go?

The objective is for all of the aimed rounds to hit the assailant. Which ones strike critical internal body parts is a matter of chance, and that chance is improved by the number of aimed rounds fired.

 

[John Joseph]

With any caliber, if you successfully train with it in an accurate pistol, you'll hit with it.
Placement on target is primary. Everything else---follow ups, tissue damage, and blood loss is secondary to that.

 

[John Joseph]

The objective is for all of the aimed rounds to hit the assailant. Which ones strike critical internal body parts is a matter of chance, and that chance is improved by the number of aimed rounds fired.

Or the accuracy of the shooter.
Ever have to put a horse down?
Imagine a line from the base of the left ear to the right eye, and from the left eye to the base of the right ear. Where the lines intersect is the brain, about the size of a walnut. Shoot anywhere else in the head and the horse will just stand there and look at you.

 

[Kleanbore]

With any caliber, if you successfully train with it in an accurate pistol, you'll hit with it.

Well, you may not hit a moving target with a sufficient number of rounds to yield an adequate likelihood of hitting critical body elements..

It is much less a matter of "accuracy" than one of the proper balance of speed and precision.

 

[.455_Hunter]

The objective is for all of the aimed rounds to hit the assailant. Which ones strike critical internal body parts is a matter of chance, and that chance is improved by the number of aimed rounds fired.

That's the objective, but the reality can be radically different, especially in urban environments with lots of third party bystanders.

What's the old expression?- "Every bullet you fire has a lawyer attached to it."

 

[Kleanbore]

That's the objective, but the reality can be radically different, especially in urban environments with lots of third party bystanders

Yes, unfortunately that's true.

 

[John Joseph]

The objective is for all of the aimed rounds to hit the assailant. Which ones strike critical internal body parts is a matter of chance, and that chance is improved by the number of aimed rounds fired.

^^This^^ isn't exactly what they taught us at the peace officer's academy. COM was a volleyball size area in the chest. The object is to stop the attack.

 

[CraigC]

I'll say it again, ANY study that concludes that .25's and .32's are too small, while claiming that there's no difference between .380 through .45ACP (including the .357Mag) is fundamentally flawed. There's either something wrong with the data, the way it was collected or the way it was scrutinized. Or perhaps they simply figured out how to get the answer they wanted.

If there's no difference, why are we constantly looking for a better bullet? Why don't we just all use hardball?

 

[Terry Vincent]

No. Many attackers are stopped.

The CNS is a very small part of the brain.

What might that have to do with it?

It means you can’t outrun or dodge a bullet from a handgun at engagement distances, and incidentally, you don’t have to get direct center brain hit to render your aggressor unconscious. After all. we’re trying to stop the fight. Officer Gramin’s gun fight demonstrates this fact.

 

[redcon1]

There are those who claim bigger through holes are irrelevant to self defense, and they are entitled to their opinion. But if you don't hit the central nervous system and incapacitate the prep, that individual will keep on motoring on till his brain runs out of oxygen.

I offer this interesting video from 2018

Interesting video for sure but I notice there was a lot of missed opportunities to put extra holes in that bad guy and the shots didn't seem well aimed. The initial shot got him in the leg from the looks of it which definitely slowed him down for those two little wolverines. All in all, it's surprising they survived though.

 

[Slamfire]

Interesting video for sure but I notice there was a lot of missed opportunities to put extra holes in that bad guy and the shots didn't seem well aimed. The initial shot got him in the leg from the looks of it which definitely slowed him down for those two little wolverines. All in all, it's surprising they survived though.

I pulled targets with an Afghanistan veteran and he had a comment about the pucker factor with incoming rounds. Sure we could put then all in the middle, prone with a sling, with no one shooting back, but add a little excitement, the group might not even be on the target.

Those women did good, they made it out alive. I don't expect store employee's to be highly skilled shooters, and, I don't know where anyone can get realistic, life threatening training to "steady the nerves" while aiming.

Having never been there, and I don't want to be there, I have no idea what my shot placement would. be.

 

[JohnKSa]

Where do the other rounds go?

You'll notice that the comment you quoted is not just about pure shot volume, but is explicitly about aimed shots.

If there's a strategy to eliminate misses in real-world gunfights, I don't know what it is other than to not shoot.

Intentionally limiting the number of aimed shots you take in a self-defense encounter in an attempt to minimize misses is an obviously problematic strategy from the standpoint of survival.

Here's the best approach I know of. It won't eliminate misses, but it's about the best you can do.

• Don't shoot unless you have to.
• Don't shoot unless you have a target and a reasonable chance of hitting it. Don't use suppressive fire and don't simply lob rounds downrange on the off chance of getting a hit. The latter will mean different things for different people. I've seen some folks make consistent hits on human targets at 100yards with a handgun. I've seen others who have trouble getting consistent hits on the same size target at just 10 yards.
  
• Train with your self-defense weapons and make as much of that training applicable to real-world shootings as you can so that you have a good skillset and, more importantly so you know what your limitations are.
  
• Pick a gun/caliber combo that is shootable to cut down on the tempatation to shoot faster than you have a chance of making hits.
  
• Be aware of your target and what is beyond it to the extent that such a thing is possible while someone is trying to kill you.

 

[fxvr5]

Or the accuracy of the shooter.
Ever have to put a horse down?
Imagine a line from the base of the left ear to the right eye, and from the left eye to the base of the right ear. Where the lines intersect is the brain, about the size of a walnut. Shoot anywhere else in the head and the horse will just stand there and look at you.

Wrong on brain size. It's about half the size of the human brain. At an average of 1.3 pounds for a horse it's not far from half the average 2.8 pound human brain.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24335261/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8072950/

This is why you don't believe stuff posted on forums. People post absolute BS.

 

[redcon1]

For many years there were debates over the lethality of the different rifle calibers. And there are many more rifle calibers than pistol. In an attempt to determine what is most lethal Foot pounds of energy were posted for each caliber. Although foot pounds of energy seems to be a thing of the past I still like to review this data. Foot pounds may not be the best data but from everything else I am seeing (this thread included) I am going to continue to review the foot pound data.

Rifles and pistols aren't the same thing- until you're discussing magnum pistols perhaps but even then, a magnum pistol round doesn't deliver the same kind of devastating terminal effects of a high velocity rifle round. It doesn't break apart. It doesn't fragment. It just crushes a hole through tissue and thereby creates a permanent wound channel. Penetration then is the key component of handgun wounding. But if I had to choose between getting shot with a 9mm or a 44 magnum or equivalent, I'd choose the 9mm for sure. Magnum revolvers and their like are a different category than your typical autoloading SD round for sure. 10mm comes close to achieving that level of energy. In some loadings, it achieves it. 460 Rowland hits magnum energy all day long and gives you 11-13 of them in a Glock 21. Some of the 230 gr XTPs I recovered were 3/4" in diameter and I have no doubt that they would punch through any man. Recoil was enjoyable IMO but definitely more than 9mm.

I have seen some bullet wounds in my day. I saw a point blank .357 sig FMJ to the thigh which sealed up quickly and didn't really incapacitate the guy. I saw a lady shot at point blank range in the left front shoulder clavicle area with a 22LR from a rifle. It looked to be a couple inches away from the heart and aorta and all that. She was laughing about it while we were patching her up. She was in no way incapacitated. Saw a guy shot in the hand with a 9mm point blank. His hand had a hole in it. he wasn't incapacitated. I saw a guy shot in the leg with a 7.62 NATO FMJ round at about 30 yards. His leg was nearly amputated at the mid thigh level. He was out of commission and he would have died without immediate medical attention. I always saw the ones that made it though, I never saw the ones that were DRT but I read about them every night here in my city and I'm pretty sure those gangbangers are just using 9mms.

 

[jdc1244]

According to this information, the “weak and anemic” .38 Special is as effective as the might .45 ACP as well as today’s golden child, the 9mm???

How can this be?? You honestly mean to tell me ft-lbs of muzzle energy are not the main deciding factor in handgun effectiveness???

.38 SPL and .380 ACP are perfectly appropriate and effective self-defense rounds.

Caliber wars are nonsense.

 

[redcon1]

Sure we could put then all in the middle, prone with a sling, with no one shooting back, but add a little excitement, the group might not even be on the target.
Having never been there, and I don't want to be there, I have no idea what my shot placement would. be.

At that range, I think it was a psychological thing. You or anyone with even a small amount of training could have emptied the magazine into that guy's brainpan at that range even under duress but she was hesitating and that's probably reasonable because killing another human being probably shouldn't be super easy but because she hesitated, that guy got a hold of her and got a hold of her gun and it's only because her daughter was there to back her up that she walked away but that was luck too because he actually pointed the mom's gun at the daughter at one point. But I'm confident that if you had been there shooting at that guy and not them, that guy would have been DRT well before the EMT arrived. I have zero doubt about that.

 

[.455_Hunter]

You'll notice that the comment you quoted is not just about pure shot volume, but is explicitly about aimed shots.

If there's a strategy to eliminate misses in real-world gunfights, I don't know what it is other than to not shoot.

Intentionally limiting the number of aimed shots you take in a self-defense encounter in an attempt to minimize misses is an obviously problematic strategy from the standpoint of survival.

Here's the best approach I know of. It won't eliminate misses, but it's about the best you can do.

• Don't shoot unless you have to.
• Don't shoot unless you have a target and a reasonable chance of hitting it. Don't use suppressive fire and don't simply lob rounds downrange on the off chance of getting a hit. The latter will mean different things for different people. I've seen some folks make consistent hits on human targets at 100yards with a handgun. I've seen others who have trouble getting consistent hits on the same size target at just 10 yards.
  
• Train with your self-defense weapons and make as much of that training applicable to real-world shootings as you can so that you have a good skillset and, more importantly so you know what your limitations are.
  
• Pick a gun/caliber combo that is shootable to cut down on the tempatation to shoot faster than you have a chance of making hits.
  
• Be aware of your target and what is beyond it to the extent that such a thing is possible while someone is trying to kill you.

I agree with most of the above. What I am hesitant about is the pre-conditioning in training that a stream of rounds, theoretically aimed, is the best chance of a positive citizen defensive outcome.

 

[3Crows]

Whew, I am glad this has been settled .

I keep hearing that 9mm is quicker on target than .45ACP and this gets repeated over and over even including this thread so it becomes true. So, I will just have to tell myself that I cannot be as fast or as accurate or follow up as well with a second or third shot from my Kimber PCII .45ACP vs. my Glock 19 9mm. The Glock is, at least to me, slower with the mushy trigger and snappy recoil. My Kimber alloy PCII is comparably pleasant to shoot and has a great trigger and I am fastest and most accurate with it. The Kimber is more accurate for me. Either way, at self defense distances, and an opinion could be given that anything beyond 10 yards, unless they too have a firearm, is not yet life threatening. So, once the bad guy is inside that 10 yard zone where I can consider my life truly in danger, and/or has displayed a firearm or deadly weapon, I bet fewer than three shots will be possible. I would prefer my three be from the 1911 in .45ACP. And is not about three shots the typical round count in such civilian defensive shootings (rhetorical).

3C

 

[Terry Vincent]

A few sage quotes may be appropriate:

It is not so much what you hit them with, rather it is where you hit ‘em.

It is not the noise you make, it the hits that count.

Mind set, skill set, tools: ingredients for survival…. (The clerk in the store robbery who was disarmed demonstrates mind set standards. Luckily, the other clerk had her six.)

Redundant: Shot placement is everything.

Handguns can never equal center fire rifles in incapacitation except in ocular-cranial cavity hits.

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

I'm trying to separate myth from reality, and every video game and movie seems to hype up the .45 like some middle ground between 9mm and .44 magnum, and while personally I tend to favor the 9mm because magazine capacity is nice I found that sentiment echoed in some research I did a while back while toying with the idea of moving to California for work and to be closer to online friends. A lot of professional shooters seemed to say between 9mm and .45 their favorite was 9mm because the only major factor between the 2 was price, and 9mm being a smaller bullet and the most popular cartridge for handguns on Earth costs less to make. 45 does probably have some more knock down power but how much more? Assuming identical loads (let's just say ball ammo) center of mass hits on a bad guy at about 10-15 yards would one .45 do enough to reliably stop the threat with one shot? Because if it can't live up to that then it would seem like the ability to get back on target and having the extra shots in the magazine for that follow up shot are doing so much more work than the extra weight of the .45's slug; not to mention we're already having to deal with the fact that each miss is that much more important if you have less shots to make in the first place.

First of all, stop using "knock down power". Just like "stopping power".

That's a BS term with absolutely no real/practical definition that amounts to nothing more than a marketing phrase.

It is, in fact, part of the myth you seek to separate from reality.

Comparing different calibers introduces far too many variables to allow meaningful dialog between them. Far simpler to hold caliber equal and adjust single variables such as velocity, mass, or bullet construction.

Every caliber has its pros and cons. And typically whenever people come in too heavy on the pro or the con side, they're introducing their own biases into the subject...more "myth" than "fact".

Coming from pistols, all ammunition is "underpowered". That's the nature of the beast in order to achieve portability and concealability. So any one bullet, of nearly any caliber, has only a small chance of reliably stopping a threat.

 

[redcon1]

A few sage quotes may be appropriate:

It is not so much what you hit them with, rather it is where you hit ‘em.

It is not the noise you make, it the hits that count.

Mind set, skill set, tools: ingredients for survival…. (The clerk in the store robbery who was disarmed demonstrates mind set standards. Luckily, the other clerk had her six.)

Redundant: Shot placement is everything.

Handguns can never equal center fire rifles in incapacitation except in ocular-cranial cavity hits.

It's the Indian, not the arrow.

 

[fxvr5]

I'll say it again, ANY study that concludes that .25's and .32's are too small, while claiming that there's no difference between .380 through .45ACP (including the .357Mag) is fundamentally flawed. There's either something wrong with the data, the way it was collected or the way it was scrutinized. Or perhaps they simply figured out how to get the answer they wanted.

If there's no difference, why are we constantly looking for a better bullet? Why don't we just all use hardball?

I'll say it again, read post #69.

 

[fxvr5]

Or perhaps they simply figured out how to get the answer they wanted.

That's some serious conspiracy theory stuff right there.

 

[JohnKSa]

What I am hesitant about is the pre-conditioning in training that a stream of rounds, theoretically aimed, is the best chance of a positive citizen defensive outcome.

As am I--I think that's abundantly clear from what I posted. Anyone should be hesitant about something like that.