ceadermtnboy
Member
The shooter must have shot gangsta style! Shot placement is the key. I do not feel more comfortable with a 45 over a 9mm. Hollow points and practice would have resulted in at the very least a longer stay in the hospital.
Shot 7 times with 9mm and lived to tell story
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joe_security
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The FBI Agent in Miami was Agent Morales. He used a Model 10 and a Rem 870.
speaksoftly
Member
I dare anyone who wants to get into the incessant D@#$ measuring contest that is the 9mm vs. .40 vs. .45 vs. 10mm to make the argument suggested above. Please tell us your thoughts afterward. I look forward to seeing the threads and will have popcorn in hand.
gwnorth
Member
For any firearm - handgun, rifle, shogun - in any caliber, you can find individual and extreme examples of both survival and death. I remember one accidental hunting death from a single .22lr round shot from over 100 yards away. And a news report of an individual shot from across a room with a .357 and walking away and into the ambulance on his own (bullet reportedly went clean through the lung and tore the pericardium).
Single examples of extreme conditions prove nothing.
Single examples of extreme conditions prove nothing.
FIVETWOSEVEN
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There was one story posted here on THR about a guy that was shot 4 times with .45 ACP and walked out of the hospital on the same day. Two 9mm in the chest should drop the target vs. emptying the magazine in their gut.
Mad Magyar
Member
Thank goodness, I thought this was heading to the ad nauseum "Miami Shootout again!!!"
speaksoftly
Member
I'm sure the 10mm guys considered it a national holiday. Ha
I carry a Glock 29 (10mm) most of the time, but even still, just like everyone here who has stated: Shot placement is they key. I know during stressful situations they may not be always possible and speed is more important, but thats why you train and learn how to stay calm in stressful situations.
Old Shooter
Member
I suppose considering your cousins friend "lucky" depends on your point of view. If he had been lucky he wouldn't have gotten shot in the first place! Just goes to show you can poke a lot of holes in a person and if you don't hit the right places you just wasted gunpowder. 9mm hardball is plenty enough to put a person down, but you do need to hit the right spot. I wonder if a .45 hardball hitting that person, in the exact same places, would have done any differently?
The thing about mass shootings is that in many, albeit not all, cases the prospective victims will simply be cowering in fear, completely helpless, allowing for excellent shot placement. However, if you're a novice shooter, then just placing a few random shots anywhere in the torso should get the job done because the victims will have more than enough time to slowly bleed to death.
Obviously this is a very different scenario from a shootout or trying to defend oneself against determined attackers because in these cases the key is to stop the bad guys as quickly as possible in order to limit the harm they are able to inflict. Mass murderers have the luxury of time for causing deaths, as well as relative safety if they are in a gun-free zone, as they are in the vast majority of cases.
I'm not sure what you're saying here, but there was one notorious 9mm JHP round fired by an FBI agent that performed exactly as it was designed to, but had to penetrate another couple of inches to reach the heart of one of the bad guys. It stopped short, thereby prolonging the gunfight (one would surmise, anyway--it's hard to say), because it was a lateral shot that had to penetrate an arm first, as well as more of the torso than we normally think of when we consider penetration. This was when the FBI fully realized that all kinds of crazy things can happen in shootings (of any scale) and decided to deal with the issue head-on. A number of conclusions were drawn, none of which are completely definitive of course, but the one that stands out the most is the need for greater penetration than previously thought.
The fight was ended with .38 Special+P rounds (the famous "FBI load") from a revolver to the heads and necks of the bad guys, who had gradually become incapacitated by blood loss over several minutes, and one had lost the use of his shooting arm by another pistol shot.
As for the shotguns, the one used by one of the bad guys was loaded with #6 birdshot, and therefore was ineffective in inflicting serious wounds. The shotgun used by an FBI agent was loaded with #00 buckshot, and it probably managed to immobilize one of the bad guys when it broke several bones in both of his feet.
They wanted a hollow-point round that would penetrate to a greater depth. Back in those days, if you wanted to ensure expansion, you had to give up a fair amount of penetration because bullets weren't as sophisticated as they are now. The FBI didn't care what they had to do in order to get the increased performance they required, and 10mm Auto had a good balance of performance and capacity, so they went with that. Only a light load was required (and desired for lower recoil), which Smith & Wesson sniffed out as a business opportunity in creating the .40 S&W caliber, which the FBI subsequently adopted.
Nowadays, because of advances in bullet design and manufacturing, you can get 9mm rounds that both expand reliably and penetrate sufficiently, so it's not as though 9mm were inherently lacking--it just needed the right bullets to come along.
The result would in all likelihood have been the same, but possibly not, and we'll never really know for sure.
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While I agree with that statement when it comes to just about anything, I would make one exception in this case...it proves that people put too much stock into testing, gelatin blocks, etc. when reality says the effects of a bullet will vary from person to person.
DustyVermonter
Member
Damn it, I just convinced myself to be comfortable with the idea that all I needed to stock was simple hardball ammo to get the job done instead of payin an arm and a leg for the fancy shmancy HP stuff. I just like to keep hardball .45 in my 1911, and wanted to carry that over to my other guns, after reading some of this stuff, I'm not so sure. I got enough hollowpoints to load at least 3-4 mags for every handgun I own, I just wanted to go old school. I still might
MICHAEL T
Member
Both were killed by 38+P to the head at close range. Agent staggered over to car and shot thru open driver side window Was his back up gun . FBI simply were not prepared for 2 bad guys who were willing to fight to the end .
Baby Face Nelson took several hits of 45 from a Thompson sub machine gun and at least 2 full hits from 00buck . He killed both agents escaped with help from wife and lived several hours with out medical attention . He was around 5'3" . people don't always just lay down like movies .
Even less than that, actually. Let's say we've got an 80 kilogram person (176 lbs). MacPherson's equations say that a 230 gr JHP .45 that penetrates 13" (the optimal) will destroy 49.6 grams of tissue, maximum (so a cross-torso shot). Round it up to 50 grams, and that's 0.0625%, or 1/16 of a percent.
Sebastian the Ibis
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Everyone in my grandmother's neighborhood by now if her stories are correct.
Impureclient
Member
I meant about carrying the 9mm not about his friend. I believe I am safe carrying the 9mm still. After hearing this story at first we were all under the impression that it was a .25 and it made
a little more sense how he survived it. Not to be so morbid but when we found out it was 9mm we wondered why it was so ineffective. Shot placement didn't even occur to us at the time when the story was told.
Of course I carry only hollow points and make sure I practice a lot with that gun to get as efficient as possible with it.
I asked further about where he was hit and it was one in the neck, two in arm and 4 in the lower back. All shots hit from behind as he ran away. So no lung, which I guess is why he lived through it.
I imagine it was a drug related thing so I'm sure the shooter being of that life style was not trained in where to shoot. Rather he apparently just emptied the gun very quickly and took off just as quick. The creepiest
thing about it all is how the shooter came back to make sure he was dead. How evil can a person be? There's the answer. Had he not hide in the water who knows what would have happened.
He said the shooter was a few feet away from him on the edge of the ditch while he went under the water and couldn't find him. The road where he was shot has no streetlights at all so that probably
helped him from being a well light target to shoot at. Other than the cars headlights they were in, it was pitch black.
Kids wonder why the are constantly told to stay away from drugs. If you want to live that lifestyle be prepared to die by that life style. Hopefully this opens his eyes as he was given a second chance at life.
HisSoldier
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I don't know where the notion comes from that the "tremendous recoil" of a .45 will make one a bad shot, I really enjoy the 1911 and have no fear of it nor anticipatory flinch. Try shooting one a few hundred rounds and I think you'll see what I mean. I wouldn't want anything less in a gun fight, in fact, I'd rather have my 10MM!
To draw conclusions on purely anecdotal information doesn't display good judgement. What organs, bones, blood vessels were hit with each of these 7 shots?
As someone else noted the FBI Miami shooting was ended with...what's this!...a 38 special. We all have seen how fast James Brady and Thomas Delahanty went down when hit by a 22. From an RG no less.
As someone else noted the FBI Miami shooting was ended with...what's this!...a 38 special. We all have seen how fast James Brady and Thomas Delahanty went down when hit by a 22. From an RG no less.
I was trying to be VERY charitable in order to make a point but you are correct.
The actual amount of tissue destroyed by a handgun bullet is insignificant. An almost infinitesimal fraction of the total tissue in a typical human.
People don't want to believe that when they are arguing about terminal performance differences in common self-defense handgun calibers they're arguing about differences that are ludicrously small when one backs away and looks at the overall situation.
The only way incapacitation will result is if the bullet goes through something very important.
What's really irritating about this is that although it's common for people to act interested and apparently want to talk about this topic it's also common for them to be uninformed. Anyone who is actually interested in what happened has access to a TON of FREE information...
http://foia.fbi.gov/shooting/shooting1a.pdf
http://foia.fbi.gov/shooting/shooting1b.pdf
http://foia.fbi.gov/shooting/shooting1c.pdf
http://foia.fbi.gov/shooting/shooting1d.pdf
http://foia.fbi.gov/shooting/shooting1e.pdf
http://foia.fbi.gov/shooting/shooting1f.pdf
http://foia.fbi.gov/shooting/shooting2.pdf
http://foia.fbi.gov/shooting/shooting3a.pdf
http://foia.fbi.gov/shooting/shooting3b.pdf
http://foia.fbi.gov/shooting/shooting3c.pdf
http://foia.fbi.gov/shooting/shooting4.pdf
http://www.firearmstactical.com/briefs7.htm
http://www.thegunzone.com/11april86.html
http://www.thegunzone.com/11april86b.html
http://www.thegunzone.com/fbi-guns.html
http://www.thegunzone.com/quantico-wounding.html
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DustyVermonter
Member
Try explaining how the body is divided into "infinitesimal fractions" when determining how badly someone is wounded by gunshot, and compare the different calibers to each other in terms of how many grams of tissue would have been damaged to someone who was shot by a 9mm as opposed to a .45acp, and tell them how lucky they are that it was a 9mm instead of a larger "more desirable man-stopping" caliber, I'm pretty sure whoever it is, whether they live or die, they will be thinking the same thing as anybody else.......I'm shot! The only way "infinitesimal fractions" plays into this whole scenario, is the fraction of people who are going to be thinking about "infinitesimal fractions" after they get shot by anything. Shot is shot, and the fact that the guy lived after 7 shots of a very adequate manstopper(the little 9mm) that is known to make people dead before their bodies hit the sidewalk, makes him extremely lucky, bottom line.
The issue isn't caliber here as much as it is FMJ vs HP as shot placement was taken care of with at least 1 COM shot taking his guts out.
Had a good expanding HP been used i don't think the kid would have been so lucky. And thats also the thing about caliber wars as they are pretty much obsolete with the introduction of good HP ammo.
Many 9mm's can expand to almost the size of an expanded .45 hp round, But just lacking mass which will give less penetration.
So the caliber wars are dead to me, Now its the HP ammo wars that make more of a difference than the caliber.
Ill admit im speaking in general as i still prefer a .45acp which i carry 75% of the year and a .40 during the hot summer. I do so for penetration reasons and base my ammo grains on it too.
230 +P in the .45
and 165gr in the .40, I feel the 180gr is loaded too slow in most cases.
But a Head shot beats them all.
Ill even add as ive said this in a few threads before. People should start putting the .380acp in the same group of calibers for SD as the 9mm, .40 and .45 with all the improvements in powder and hollow points that are reliable. They are just 1"-2" short of FBI requirements due to all the new advances.
Had a good expanding HP been used i don't think the kid would have been so lucky. And thats also the thing about caliber wars as they are pretty much obsolete with the introduction of good HP ammo.
Many 9mm's can expand to almost the size of an expanded .45 hp round, But just lacking mass which will give less penetration.
So the caliber wars are dead to me, Now its the HP ammo wars that make more of a difference than the caliber.
Ill admit im speaking in general as i still prefer a .45acp which i carry 75% of the year and a .40 during the hot summer. I do so for penetration reasons and base my ammo grains on it too.
230 +P in the .45
and 165gr in the .40, I feel the 180gr is loaded too slow in most cases.
But a Head shot beats them all.
Ill even add as ive said this in a few threads before. People should start putting the .380acp in the same group of calibers for SD as the 9mm, .40 and .45 with all the improvements in powder and hollow points that are reliable. They are just 1"-2" short of FBI requirements due to all the new advances.
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