Stopping Power

[beehlebf]

what Does stopping power mean? Bullets arent meant to knock people over they are meant to inflict internal damage. Stopping power wouldnt be the correct way to talk about ballistic power of a firearm am i right?

 

[481]

Yep. It is a colloquial term that has little meaning.

 

[45_auto]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=stopping+power

Click on the first link.

 

[Skribs]

Stopping power generally means how hard a bullet will hit you, i.e. energy dump. This does apply somewhat in terms of the Temporary Wound Channel, in that rounds with a fast enough energy dump can cause permanent damage with this shockwave.

But you're right. The actual measurement of effectiveness follows this general priority:
Placement
Penetration
Caliber
Hydrostatic Shock

 

[Freedom_fighter_in_IL]

Well I am one that believes "stopping power" is actually the referral to the bullets ability to penetrate, cause damage internally, and hopefully a CNS disruption. Assailant is "stopped". I.E. "Assailant advances, person fires and hits assailant center chest, bullet travels deeply through heart then exits through spinal region. Assailant effectively dropped in tracks. This is also the reason I practice the belief in triple tap. 2 chest one head.

 

[mdauben]

what Does stopping power mean? Bullets arent meant to knock people over they are meant to inflict internal damage. Stopping power wouldnt be the correct way to talk about ballistic power of a firearm am i right?

The way I most often see "stopping power" refers to a particular cartridge and loads ability to "stop" an assailent. This is a very contentious subject with many conflicting schools of thought. This should not be confused with the separate idea of "knockdown power" which most people consider a myth, since as you say bullets don't have the energy to actually knock down a person.

IMO, its impossible to get hard, empirical numbers for this, but combing various test media results and anechdotal "street" evidence its possible to at least arrive a some general idea of a rounds effectiveness. The classical "ballistics" of a bullet (MV, ME, etc) are only part of a bullet's "stopping power".

 

[kozak6]

Stopping power is a unitless numberless term intended to express the relative and subjective ability of a cartridge to stop a "bad guy".

Discussion of energy and momentum is generally more relevant.

I think "power" is often the wrong term to use anyways since power is technically a rate.

 

[Shadow 7D]

It was/is a 'buzz word'
a nebulous way to kinda define/push how 'well' certain calibers compared to others
only problem is
the M-S paper it was based or came from has NEVER EVER been duplicated, which is the basis of the scientific method. If a certain caliber is so gee wiz bang eeekgadzukums-blowemupem, you would think everybody could see the small mushroom cloud at the range.

 

[mljdeckard]

You are right.

 

[303tom]

Stopping power is a colloquial term used to describe the ability of a firearm or other weapon to cause a penetrating ballistic injury to a target, human or animal, sufficient to incapacitate the target where it stands.

I find this statement to be Completely False !

 

[Loosedhorse]

Perhaps the most important "stopping power" question is:

What caliber can reliably and instantly stop threads about stopping power?

"Stopping power" (as used by the people who use the term) is the ability of a round to end an attack. Beyond that, I understand that there are mounds of things to dispute...but I had thought the definition was not in question. Now, I see that wiki (and others) disagree.

Color me shocked.

 

[Sav .250]

Some time subjects are just pulled out of thin air. The value of it is in the responding posters comments. You be the judge..

 

[dagger dog]

The correct phrase is, terminal ballistics.

General J.S. Hartcher 1888-1963 devised his Relative Stopping Power Forumula, it is in his book published 1935, HATCHER'S TEXTBOOK of PISTOLS and REVOLVERS.

Later the US Army Ballistic Reasearch Labaratory, Relative Incapacation Index came along in 1983.

Just more info to ponder !

 

[SorenityNow]

I always thought that " stopping power " meant how many shots it takes to stop the bad guy

 

[481]

Stopping power is a unitless numberless term intended to express the relative and subjective ability of a cartridge to stop a "bad guy".

Discussion of energy and momentum is generally more relevant.

I think "power" is often the wrong term to use anyways since power is technically a rate.

I agree.

The (mis)use of the term "power" is a semantic abuse of a technical term that seems to carry with it the notion that every other variable of terminal performance (placement, expansion, penetration, impact velocity, retained mass, etc) may be ignored.

Look at Hatcher's RSP formula.

RSP = k x M x V x A x F

It is a popular equation put forth by many as one of many means of expressing "stopping power".

It gives a 9mm 124 gr. FMJRN @ 1,100 fps an RSP of 12.151 and a .45 Auto 230 gr. FNJRN @ 850 fps an RSP of 28.151 .

Are we really to believe that the .45 230 gr. FMJRN really possess more than twice the "stopping power", whatever that might be, of the 9mm 124 gr. FMJRN?

This equation suggests that the units of "stopping power" is momentum times cross-sectional area times a dimensionless form factor making the unitary arrangement either lbs∙ft/sec∙in^2 or kg∙m/sec∙m^2 . This unitary arrangement is not an expression of power.

It is pointless to assign a dimensionless number or percentage (see Marshall & Sanow) based upon an arbitrary set of criteria to a caliber/design and assume that one will see the same performance irrespective of the countless variables that are involved in any shooting.

 

[Shadow 7D]

Also a good read, is Black Hawk Down
the Mogadishu militias are/were know to be Khat users
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khat
defiantly more than your morning cup of coffee.

 

[gym]

It's kind of self explanitory, stopping power, to the average joe, means the power to stop someone. When a civilian or article uses the term loosely, they are usually looking for that "magic bullett" where most of the time if you hit someone with this "magic bullett" it will stop them. Now I am not referring to the ballistic meaning, just the way the words are thrown around, like my 40 caliber has more stopping power than your 9mm. This would be a huge assumption depending on a dozen variables. But that's not what is usually meant. They want a garantee, that this one is better than that one.

 

[NDN-MAN]

MYTH

Please read ( One-shot drops: surviving the myth) From the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin Oct 1, 2004 Author: Edward F. Davis.

Stopping Power, Knockdown Factor, One Shot Drops. Are words made up to sell one weapon or one caliber over all the others.

It is alot like my bat is better than your bat. Because of who made it . What is t is made of. Who recomended it. Or who used it to hit more home runs. But as you know if you can't hit the ball. The kind of bat you use is not going to help to much.

As a side note. The only round that I have seen work as far as knocking someone down. Was a 12 gauge bean bag (riot) round. These do not penetrate the body. They use blunt force to knock down the threat. And they don't work all the time. Just ask a prison guard.

 

[Skribs]

I'm pretty sure the round I got to see while out on a job yesterday would knock someone down pretty well...ofc it was a 686,000 grain round, of 155mm bore width.

 

[pioneer461]

There's just no way to know what bullet will do what to which body. I've seen large dope filled bikers go down with one .22 lr round to the head, and I've seen bad guys take a load of buckshot center mass and keep on fighting. There simply is no such thing as a one-shot, magic bullet, which is why much of modern police training is to shoot until the threat is neutralized.

Rifles however, are a different animal. A well placed shot from a .308 to a suspect's CNS, will drop them like a lead balloon.

 

[Loosedhorse]

There simply is no such thing as a one-shot, magic bullet, which is why much of modern police training is to shoot until the threat is neutralized.

Funny, isn't it, that Marshall and Sanow believed the same thing. Chapter 1 (page 3) of Handgun Stopping Power begins:

Stopping power is an illusion.

It is important to start a book on handgun stopping power with that in mind. There are no magic bullets. There are no manstopping calibers. There is no such thing as one-shot stopping power.

Everyone reading this book will make more survival-oriented decisions if they expect their bullet to have little, if any, effect on the target. Instead they will fire from behind cover or get behind cover as soon as possible. They will fire numerous times. They will be more precise in their fire. They will keep their gun pointed at the target until they are absolutely certain the action is finished.

So...what's the argument about, again?

 

[Shawn Dodson]

"There is no such thing as one-shot stopping power."

Yet they wrote three books and dozens of magazine articles advocating just the opposite - "One-shot Stopping Power".

Seems just a little inconsistent doesn't it?

 

[Loosedhorse]

Or an honest admission of limitations. "One-shot stopping power" would be, IMHO, the perfect ability of a given round to stop a fight with one shot.

If a weatherman remarks there is no such thing as a perfect weather prediction method, and yet he keeps predicting the weather, is that "just a little inconsistent," or perfectly reasonable?

 

[303tom]

This is just wrong !
Stopping power is a colloquial term used to describe the ability of a firearm or other weapon to cause a penetrating ballistic injury to a target, human or animal, sufficient to incapacitate the target where it stands, & that is from wikipedia !
Even if you change it to this it is still wrong.
Terminal ballistics is the ability of a firearm or other weapon to cause a penetrating ballistic injury to a target, human or animal, sufficient to incapacitate the target where it stands.
Now you guys tell me WHY !

 

[45_auto]

The reason you think the definition is wrong is because you don't know what "colloquial" means.

Now you tell us what "colloquial" means to you.