"Stopping Power" Study

Status
Not open for further replies.
Interesting.

It's also interesting that although the differences are small the .357 seems to live up to it's reputation as the best of the best for "stopping power".
 
wally said:
...Let the nit picking begin...
Click to expand...

The article is written by the same author who believes that students should be taught to disobey (at least sometimes) school lockdown protocols. (See that article here.)

I'm not saying he's necessarily wrong, only that his opinions (on both ammo stopping power and school lockdowns) are peculiar and deserve particularly careful evaluation.

Cheers,
Dr. Detroit
 
Aside from being regurgitated Marshall & Sanow material, - redigested and re-regurgitated, Greg Ellifritz doesn't make sense.

The stuff he writes just doesn't makes sense.

I hope no one ever makes purchasing decisions based on his math.
 
I think most here will find these conclusions heresy, Let the nit picking begin!
Click to expand...
Maybe I missed it.

Where is the heresy?
What is there to nit pick?
Why didn't I do my research paper on something this interesting?

I think this is pretty mainstream thinking among folks who actually pay attention to this kind of stuff
 
What percentage of shooting incidents resulted in fatalities. For this, I included only hits to the head or torso.
Click to expand...

Why would you do that and call it "fatalities" ? There are documented shootings where a person was shot in the leg and even though they received medical attention relatively quickly, and yet they died, even though they were still alive when they arrived at the ER.

This is another problem I have with Greg Ellifritz - his word bending definitions. If you are looking for some specific meaning from torso and head shots - then call it "Head or Torso hit fatalities".


- One shot stop percentage - number of incapacitations divided by the number of hits the person took. Like Marshall's number, I only included hits to the torso or head in this number.
Click to expand...
OK here is the big problem here, One shot stop means - One. It is a discrete event. You have to define the event and count how many times it occurs. You cannot have a "One shot stop percentage" that is the result of a number divided by another number.
 
People have used dozens of different strategies to document or predict how effective different handguns will be for over 100 years. If you look at any of them, whether they be 1 shot stop percentages, ballistic gell, shooting live farm animals, or autopsie reports they all pretty much show the same results. Always have, even going back 100 years or more. Some would rather make their decisions based on urban myth than on facts.
 
Stopping power is just that .You shoot until the threat has stopped. Not until you think it has stopped, but until it is stopped!
 
You can conceal that M1 Garand if you have long hollow legs.:D

I was most impressed by the .22 numbers. Guess I need to consider getting rid of my 629's and getting a couple of Buckmarks and k-22's.

Very interesting read and study of data to say the least.
 
Submitted by cbaus on Fri, 07/08/2011
Click to expand...
Okay.

I note the high number of shots on target/persons shot for 9mm. This is interpreted by the label "Average number of rounds until incapacitation" but that might not be so. It might be that 9mm shooters were putting follow-up shots on target fast enough that two or more shots would land before it became clear that the attack was over.

In other words, if you can rapidly put many shots on target, and have been trained to do that in an LE or SD scenario, then we should expect very few fights that end with one shot.

If, on the other hand, you use a round that prevents a quick follow-up shot, we should expect more one-shot stops (as you'll have more time between shots to notice that the fight is over). And indeed, we find that the .44 Mag (with which I'd expect the slowest follow-up shots) shows the most one shot stops, edging out even the shotgun.

Anyone want to guess how many one shot stops you get with a submachinegun? ;)
 
Interesting.

For consistency purposes, they ONLY included hits to the torso and ONLY included cases where the person was hit with just a single round. Multiple hits screwed up their data, so they excluded them. This lead to an unrealistically high stopping power percentage, because it factored out many of the cases where a person didn't stop!
Click to expand...
I've said this about Marshall and Sanow's study for years.

A much better standard would be Stops/Encounters. In other words, what percentage of fights did the good guys win with each cartridge studied?
 
There is way too much about Marshall/Sanow that I just don't like. I never use their numbers.
 
This study makes me carryin my. 32 look like a genius!! In all seriousness it would take a fool to look at any of these studies and take their conclusions over known ballistics on the calibers.
 
I trust that his data is accurate, but I think there's more going on than just a change of caliber. .38 special had more than the 9mm, but the .38 has less power with the same diameter. What I think the difference here is with the .38 people are firing one or two shots, whereas with the 9mm they're firing three or four shots (or more) and thus skewing the data higher. You don't know if shot #1 or 2 would have stopped him because shot #3 was only a quarter second later.

Another interesting thing is the .22, average number of rounds before incap is really low (1.38, second only to shotguns), whereas the percentage of folks who were not incapacitated was higher than everything but .25 ACP and .32.

I'd also like to point out that the definition of "stop" includes both voluntary and involuntary stops, and voluntary stops are entirely random.

I guess a lot of this is shown in the discussion after the numbers, but it still does highlight the issues. I still believe, as I've posted in other threads, that due to the random nature of shootings, the only way to definitively lable the "stopping power" of different calibers and bullets is via high-end computer simulation, involving accurate ballistics, physics, and anatonmy.
 
I think this is the most significant data from the study:

Ellifritz_Failure_to_Incap.jpg ​

The assailants not incapacitated are the ones who can still hurt you.

And as Ellifritz says (emphasis added):
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....
Click to expand...

philoe said:
This study makes me carryin my. 32 look like a genius!!...
Click to expand...
Not really. See above. The .32 failed to incapacitate more assailants than any other cartridge.
 
It's not nit picking - there are serious flaws in what Greg Ellifritz is presenting here.

How many people fight off an assailant the way you try to figure out how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll lolipop?

Shoot once, see if the attacker is still coming... shoot twice, see if the attacker is still coming, shoot a third time and see if the attacker is still coming.

Greg Ellifritz also doesn't elaborae in this article on how he treats a shooting where 3 officers engage a single perpatrator.

I wonder if he's taken into account last weeks shooting in NYC where police officers fired 84 rounds at a suspect and hit him in non-vital places 7 or so times. Technically a few of those were torso hits, although the bullets didn't strike any vital organs.

I don't think anything usefull can be learned from his treatment of the data.
 
IMO, you did a great job compiling all that data. thank you

In other words, if you can rapidly put many shots on target, and have been trained to do that in an LE or SD scenario, then we should expect very few fights that end with one shot.

If, on the other hand, you use a round that prevents a quick follow-up shot, we should expect more one-shot stops (as you'll have more time between shots to notice that the fight is over). And indeed, we find that the .44 Mag (with which I'd expect the slowest follow-up shots) shows the most one shot stops, edging out even the shotgun.
Click to expand...

very good point. i had never looked at it that way.
 
"Anyone want to guess how many one shot stops you get with a submachinegun?"
Nice one LoosedHorse! ;)

It's an incredibly valuable compilation of data worth consideration! What Anyone needs to remember IMHO is that the variables of actual case studies like these (and then the definitions used to define them) will inevitably skew any conclusive results for Anyone to make Any conclusively accurate and broad statement like "caliber A is going to Stop a perp better than caliber B". So, personally, I would never draw such a broad conclusion from such a study.

If there are 456 9mm hits on (the defined) target vs 25 .32, how am I really supposed to conclude (based on numbers) which one is 'better' for the defined objective.... which I'm reading to be "immediate incapacitation" in this study. It just means that many more people used 9mm :)

Ellifritz did a nice job, and I'll be keeping it in mind, don't get me wrong...

There are just too many possible scenarios and variables (and definitions of said variables) to conclusively define "stopping power"..... unless of course I can get volunteers to attack me in the same way, every time, while I shoot them with progressively bigger calibers....
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

W
  • Locked
Good info on stopping power
Replies
20
Views
1K
gym
G
O
  • Locked
Have you read Greg Ellifritz and if so what do you think?
Replies
4
Views
597
Frank Ettin
Frank Ettin
J
  • Locked
An Alternate Look at Handgun Stopping Power
2 3 4 5
Replies
112
Views
6K
fastest45ever
F
L
  • Locked
Owning the Power to Control My Destiny
Replies
5
Views
402
Linda
L
P
  • Locked
Defining stopping power (Michael Courtney's thread)
2 3
Replies
59
Views
2K
Michael Courtney
M
Back
Top