Hollowpoint 380 acp failures?

[russlate]

Can anyone cite an actual incident where a couple well placed ( center-of-mass ) 380 HP's resulted in a subsequent injury to the 380 holder? ( Like the perennial stories of where a 25 auto was emptied into someone and the recipient still killed/put the shooter into the hospital with a barstool? ) Or even multiple shots on target failed?

I'm deliberately turning this around from the normal questions of percentages of one shot stops to incidents where someone not high or drunk was able to proceed to injure the person defending themselves with the 380.

I also don't need to know if the shootee recovered or died, just if the defender was injured after he made the hits.

 

[clubsoda22]

I'm sure there have been cases where people absorbed multiple loads of buckshot and still delivered an a$$ whooping. If you're wondering about the .380, it's bare minimum. It will reach vitals and a headshot is not all that likely to deflect. I wouldn't feel unarmed with one, but i wouldn't feel particularly well armed either.

 

[RatFink]

I don't have a .380 story but...

Like the perennial stories of where a 25 auto was emptied into someone and the recipient still.....

My brother was the target of a home invasion robbery in 1985 (Back before they were trendy) he had his hands tied behind his back, on his knees and was shot muzzle to meat at the base of the back of his skull with a .25, the bullet entered the skin but not his skull, it then slid down the back of his neck and stopped, he laid down and played dead. The doctors left the bullet in because it was in a funky place. The next day he was release with 3 stitches and felt better than I did (I had a real bad hangover when I went to get him from the hospital)

The other person in the house was a quadriplegic that my brother took care of, he was shot 5 times in the face and neck with the same pistol yet lived for another 8 years after the attack, when he died it was because of his other health problems.

So these "perennial .25 stories" may seem like just stories to some people, to me they are real.

Sorry about the slight hi-jack.

 

[mete]

There was a man here that shot himself in the stomach with a 380, the bullet went between the muscle wall and the skin so he was unsuccessful....I used to have a 380 but after shooting numerous woodchucks and feral dogs with it I was very unimpressed so went to bigger things . ...In fact comparisons with various cartridges taught me the importance of big bore. So I say minimum auto round for defense is the 9x19.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

russlate, unfortunately you are asking a gray area question for which there may be answers, but they may not be relevant. All the shooter can do is to place shots in the correct areas. After that, the route of travel is out of the shooter's hands. COM shots CAN miss importantant structures due to random chance or deflection by bone. Poor shots can sometimes result in incapacitation because the rounds do get deflected into vital structures that otherwise would not have been hit.

Severely missing from many of the shooting reports made public is whether or not the shots 'well placed' or not.

 

[mini14jac]

There was a home invasion/murder a little over a year ago.
The victims were taken to a field and shot in the head with a .380.
(Don't know for sure, but it was probably a fmj.)
I believe 4 were killed, but one woman survived.

The woman that survived was wearing a plastic hair barrett, that deflected the bullet.

Then there was the guy that went to his workplace with a .380 last year.
He killed several of his coworkers, then tried to shoot himself in the head.
From what I read, it appears that the bullet bounced off his skull, and thay kind of made him crazy.
Don't remember how that one ended.

Sounds like small calibers don't do well against human skulls.

 

[Badger Arms]

I don't for one minute believe anectodes about 380 bullets bouncing off skulls, hairpins, etc. A 380, like a 300 Winchester Magnum, will deflect if the angle is high enough. Many 380 incidents are with FMJ bullets which have more of a tendancy to do that. The most likely cause of a 'grazing' shot is the high angle of the shot and/or just bad shooting. The head is a very hard target to hit and the skull inside is much smaller and rounder. With a 380 hitting anything plastic, I highly doubt it would deflect a straight-on shot and save somebody's life.

Notice I said earlier FMJ bullets. Hollowpoints are about half as likely to deflect depending on the design of the bullet. Bottom line on the anecdotes I've heard lately is that most seemed to involve the head... a difficult target in the first place. How many self-defense shootings to the HEAD are justified? If one believes the stories, the 380 is a very poor choice if you decide to kill somebody 'execution style!'

 

[cratz2]

I have no doubt that there are many, many accounts of bad guys taking multiple hits from everything up to and including 44 Magnum and still inflicting harm to the shooter. I'd imagine that 25s, 32s, 380s and 38s from snubs are among the most likely to not immediately stop a bad guy.

Only specific acct I can recall, and I may have a detail or two not quite right, was a guy that shot people in Bloomington and somewhere in Ill. I think one of his targets was a black guy, one guy was an Asian guy and he ended up near a Synagogue and eventually turned the gun on him self. I think only one victim died and all were shot with a Jennings Bryco 380. I seem to recall that he had a 22 revolver with him as well. When the Jennings didn't kill him, he had to use the revolver.

Also, remember there were about non-fatal 9mm injuries in the Columbine shootings and we must assume that most of those were on non-high, non-drunk, non-agressive kids, not hopped-up druggies that were the agressors.

I know of one incident in central Indiana where an officer shot the bad guy point blank with a 9mm FMJ and it literally bounced off his skull. Knocked the guy out and resolved the situation and that was that, so it can't be viewed as a failure but with enough rounds fired in enough circumstances, unbelievable things will eventually happen.

 

[happyguy]

There was an off-duty police officer who left his .380 under the seat of his car somewhere in Mississippi. He took the car to the garage and while the mechanic was doing something inside the car, the policemans 3 year old son shot him in the face. The mechanic received a broken jaw and had a tooth knocked out. He was also in the hospital in intensive care for awhile due to blood loss. He did live though, and would have probably been capable of putting up a fight for awhile too, at least until the blood loss got to him.

I know this doesn't reply exactly to your question but it is an interesting story for a couple of reasons.

Regards,
Happyguy

 

[russlate]

Thanks, fellows. Way back when, in the 70's a shooting took place where the guy defending himself with a 38 emptied the gun point blank into the torso, either 5 or 6 shots. I think the DA was all up in a huff about the entire gun being emptied into the deceased.

Bottom line, the guy with the gun had the ---- scared out of him and about turned that revolver into a full auto. The guy was still standing, I'd keep shooting too.

I think the 380 has it's niche, and I used to be able to shoot the 357 snubs and 4" 41's. I don't now. A 5 or 6 shot 38 on me and a 13+1 380 off body but close at hand and fire quickly and accurately sounds downright sensible to me any more.

 

[mini14jac]

I don't for one minute believe anectodes about 380 bullets bouncing off skulls, hairpins, etc

I'm not much on anecdotes myself, but those two that I mentioned were news stories.
The warehouse shooting was discussed extensively here, I believe.
A search on "shooting" or "380" may find it.

For the woman surviving the headshot because of her barrette, do a Google on "Carr brothers" and you should find plenty of info.
Really a brutal crime.

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

 

[Badger Arms]

mini14:

I'm sure the story exists, but how well was it reported. There are simple laws of physics we have to obey here. A skull is very difficult to penetrate, but a 380 bullet has significant energy. In order to deflect it, you have to have either a grazing shot or somthing substantial to stop the bullet. The more likely explanation for these stories is that the people were shot at close range, but the shots were not anywhere near perpendicular to the skull. The Hairpin deflection supposition sounds more like a magic bullet theory to me. The low mass of any hair treatment item means it would not be able to deflect much of anything. Perhaps it HIT the grooming item, but to credit said item with defeating 200 foot pounds of energy defies belief.

To the credit of the media, they never fail to get the story WRONG even if it's related correctly. When a coroner tells police, "The bullet struck the hairpin and then grazed off the skull coming to rest in the skin beside the jaw," it will be related by the police as, "The bullet deflected off the hairpin and bounced off the skull. They found it in her jaw," and the reporter will write in shorthand, "Bullet bounced off hairpin, skull, jaw." It gets written as, "The bullet was deflected by the hairpin and stopped without penetrating the jaw."

In the absence of a scientific study on penetration, I'm going to trust my instincts on this one. The only advantage a 9mm has over a 9x17 is the fact that you can fire at a slightly greater angle to the skull and expect penetration to be greater overall. Deflection will be less, but not on the order of magnitude that the anecdotes above reflect. And, by the way, I caught this fish the other day that was 80" long!

 

[RED-DOG 40]

The whole scenario boils down to this. A well placed shot will take any thing/one down. PRACTICE,PRACTICE,PRACTICE. A person needs to do this under every conceivable scenario. It takes time and dedication , but it actually is fun once you get your ,(eye to brain), coordination down. I am talking about [ light-dark, hot-cold, distractions(ie: someone making a helluva noise, silence , standing,prone... well you get the idea]. It does put you at a very good advantage no matter what caliber you have. .Ofcourse if a person were to sling an eight shot pump 12ga. with 00 buck for carry.........

 

[Mr. Mysterious]

Tell you what...if you were a gangbanger and you shot a guy execution style in the head and you failed to kill them....you need a new name... like gangwanker or something.

 

[russlate]

The Chicoms continue to use a 9.3x18 Makarov to conduct their executions. Behind the ear. For practical purposes, you can buy 380 +P equivalent to the mak loads.

 

[rich2u]

Well lets turn the question around... If you had a choice which would you be rather shot with a 25 a .380 a 9mm or a 45 or a 44 mag.

Bottom line is the bigger the bang the less room for the fickle finger of fate to F you over. Even a 22 is leathal with a perfect hit a 44 mag just hit the center torso & your pretty sure the guys not gonna be pissing with you.

 

[Grump]

1980s, one of the towns south of Provo, UT, IIRC. Domestic dispute (really mean BG returns to do harm), and one solitary shot from a first-generation AMT Backup, fired COM at near-contact distance.

The victim was DRT. I don't remember the dates, but I think it was reported in both the Utah Valley paper (can't remember the name) and the BYU Daily Universe.

Back to the topic--YES, I also want to evaluate calibers and ammo on the basis of two-shot failures rather than one-shot stops. Among other things, the current LEO and SD-culture doctrines of double-tap or shoot till the threat drops has made it a bit less likely to have one-shot encounters.

 

[mini14jac]

Well as I said, I doubt that the round was a hollow point.
I read many reports from several different sources on the Carr brothers murder spree.
The things that were well documented:
1. The victim was shot in the head.
2. The bullet did not penetrate the skull, but glanced off a plastic hair barrett, shattering it in the process.
3. She was knocked unconcious, and woke up bleeding from the head.
4. The weapon was a .380 auto.

It was a barrett, not a hairpin that deflected the bullet.
If you've had daughters, you know there is a lot of difference.
A barrett is a wide device made of metal or plastic.
The one in the story was plastic.
If a windshield can deflect a .45, I don't have trouble believing that a hard piece of plastic could deflect a .380

The victims were forced to kneel and shot in the head from behind.
Whether the shooter was directly behind the victim, or to the side was not reported. All were shot from close range.

I guess the important thing from the story is that 4 victims were killed with one shot each.

As for the .25 auto, I grew up in a small town with several "beer joints".
The .25 seems to be the weapon of choice for a night out drinking.
There were many reports of it being used in bar shootings as I was growing up.
One resulted in the victim being paralyzed, after the gun was emptied into him.
I believe all the others lived.

Again, I'd be willing to bet most of those didn't involve hollow point ammo.
Wouldn't have mattered anyway, as it would have been travelling too slow to expand.

 

[Mr. Mysterious]

Now that I think back to it there is a lady that lives on the outskirts of the town I grew up in. She always wore a little knitted ear thingy...she was always a bit whacko... turns out that when she was young her bf was so distraught that she tried to kill herself by shooting herself in the head...didn't work...

 

[cratz2]

Or, not to be too morose but, if you decided to take your own life with a handgun, and you had a selection of a 380, a 9mm, a 40, a 357 Mag or a 44 Mag, which ones would you even consider?

I daily carry a 9mm and have complete faith in it... against someone else. No way I would point that dinky little 9mm at myself... 357 or 44 ONLY.

Does that make me deluding myself to the abilities of the 9mm I carry or just hypocritical?

Or just an wannabe over achiever?