mljdeckard
Member
Forget 'stopping power'. There is cavity trauma, and you want all you can get. Anything else is luck.
To the extent that it is there, it's WAY less than most folks think it is.there is "knock down power" maybe not enough to actually knock you down but its still there.
Even a relatively low energy pistol round can cause enough TWC to cause INelastic tissue to tear--it just can't make a big enough cavity to cause elastic tissues to tear. There is definitely inelastic tissue in the human body. The liver, brain, spleen and kidneys are some examples of inelastic tissue which could therefore be damaged by even the temporary stretch cavity from a pistol round....pistol round has the potential to increase the TWC (not enough to hit the breaking point).
Then why did you ask?
Forget these articles, stick with practicing your preferred gun-ammo combination and reliably shooting your bullets into the CNS target areas.
So YOU wrote the article that you linked here without bothering to disclose it to everyone? That's enough reason to not read anything you post, especially when your article starts with: "There has been some discussion on “stopping power” of late so..."If you had read my article, you would know that, while I don't explicitly make any particular recommendation that shot placement, and therefore training, is what really matters.
That is a fairly apt description, however there is one important difference. Because the bullet can penetrate past the skin and surface musculature/fat/connective tissue, it has the opportunity to access organs which would normally be too protected to be significantly affected by a punch."Temporary cavity"? You know what that is? That's the same as if you get punched or kicked. It may hurt a lot, cause deep bruising, but it rarely incapacitates.
The term “stopping power” is, at best, an awkward attempt to quantify the ability of a given cartridge or load to incapacitate an attacker.
"Nothing short of a central nervous hit..."
Recently there was a fatal shooting in town. The summary I was given was the victim (a very well built older man) was approached by a skinny young kid, who demanded a wallet. The big man refused, the kid produced a gun and threatened to shoot if he was not satisfied. The man proceeded to strike the kid in the head vigorously, until the kid was able to fire a single shot into the victim's forehead (above the eyes). The man continued to pummel the young man's head against the ground severely until his homies retrieved him and made their getaway in a car, at which time the victim lost consciousness and died soon thereafter. I believe the kid was located a day or two later with severe untreated injuries. Exceptions to every rule, though it is likely the shooter was using cheap FMJ ammo of low power (evidenced by the need to rob people for money)
“The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but that’s the way to bet”.
I like that. Not sure how it applies to my example (he was big and strong, but the punk did have a gun...infinite force + immovable object, I guess)
TCB
Exactly.Deaf Smith said:...if you use a round that is one of the more powerful rounds with excellent bullet design AND good shot placement you will have the odds in your favor as for as 'one shot stops'....
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....