What makes the .357 Mag 125gr unquestionably the best manstopper?

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Until it becomes legal and ethical to test live ammunition on live humans, there will be no controlled experiments on the ability of a cartridge to do anything. Moreover, humans being used in such an experiment must be, somehow, convinced to attack during the experiment, and somehow, all of them must attack with equal determination.

The next best thing is results from one load, used repeatedly, against real bad guys. Some LE agencies will have this information, due to using standardized weapons and ammo. The problem is, this info is not readily available to the public. One thing that is not so easily suppressed is the collective unhappiness of a group of officers with their mandated ammo. My employer did not have one single mandated duty cartridge until 1997, but all the rookies had to start with a .357 sixgun, and use it for their first year of service, until
about 1994. I started policin' in 1984, and during the time from '84 to '97, only heard one complaint about how a 125-grain .357 performed, and it was
third-hand info from an officer with an agenda. (He worshipped the 1911 and
.45 ACP; yes, we had those working with us, who thought any officer that did
not immediately switch to the 1911 at the end of his rookie year was just not
a man.)

Keep in mind that when Texas DPS switched to 357 SIG, one big reason was a collective residual affection for the .357 Magnum, which had been standard before the agency switched to the P220. Texas LEOs collectively tended to
really like the way the .357 Mag had performed over time.

Nowadays, there have been enough shootings with the .40 S&W, to date, LEOs are largely happy with it.

Moreover, for those who accept M&S, the better .40 and .45 loads in the M&S data were within mere points of the .357 Mag data, well WITHIN the point spread that M&S themselves claimed was their acceptable margin. (I no longer
recall what that margin was.)

Let's also keep in mind that the M&S data is now OUT OF DATE. Ammo technology has marched onward.

My wife has an M.D. After her name, works as a forensic investigator for a very large county's M.E., and sees more death scenes than most homicide detectives. She has told me that all good JHP ammo does quite well today,
when well-placed, and expands reliably. Before anyone claims that pathologists are seeing bodies only at the morgue, I will repeat that my wife works as a forensic investigator, and sees death scenes. Examination of blood spatter evidence is a science, and tells an investigator how fast and how far a bleeding person moved from point of injury to point of death. (Yes, "spatter" is correct.)

As I have said recently, in this thread pr another here, my wife has commented on the impressive wound channels caused by the Short Barrel Gold Dot .357 Mag, and the 357 SIG in recent shootings. (I don't recall the brand of the 357 SIG, but all of them are very close in spec.)

My take on all of this is that the .357 Magnum is a very good defensive cartridge, but with today's bullet technology, the other common duty cartridges are darn good, too. Shot placement is paramount, regardless.
 
What you have said is absolutely correct.

Now, general experience allows to make gross discrimination, but when we try to convert that into decimal points, we're engaging in imitative deception.

I can say, for example that the .357 mag 125-grain load does well. I can't say that it does 0.1779845% better than the .357 Sig, however.
 
"Either I'm losing something in the translation, or it must be a different book than the one I read?
If the person was shot once in the torso and they didn't stop, then it was listed as a failure to stop"

If they were only shot once and it worked, it counted as a stop.
If they were only shot once and it failed, it counted as a fail.
If they were shot repeatedly to achieve a stop (presumably because, you know, the first shot didn't do the job) it was excluded from the study.

Basically their system ignores the vast majority of one shot stop fails by design, because in real life if the first shot doesn't work you just shoot the son of a bitch again. This is a glaring flaw that has nothing to do with semantics, writing style, or complicated statistics. It's also a little depressing how some people seem to take pride in their ignorance of these subjects and seem to despise education generally, but that's a whole other discussion.

Treating being shot through the heart the same as a flesh wound is something that seems so glaringly wrong to me that I'm really struggling to understand how anybody can see it as anything but a colossal flaw that violates basic common sense. Normally the mantra is SHOT PLACEMENT! (and rightly so), but in this case we can ignore that as a factor in the effect of a handgun wound? Really?

There is a reason multiple hits are excluded. Just because there are multiple hits does not mean it is a OSS failure. The first round may have been enough. Most of us train to shoot until the threat is gone. I'm not going to stop shooting and evaluate the effectiveness of each shot. Since there is no way to determine which shot was the stopper they exclude any multiple hit shootings. This almost certainly biases the study, it's self selecting for people who are susceptible to OSS - psychological or physiological.

The idea behind lumping all torso shots together is that with a large enough sample size the results will average out. So the larger the sample size, the more accurate the results.

Lastly, you have to understand that M&S don't present the study as being quantitative. Meaning they don't expect a load that gives a 90.45% OSS to give this number in actual shootings. They are perfectly aware the study is biases to the high side. The numbers are simply meant to give a hierarchal rating of the loads.
 
For information purposes: M&S wrote 3 books on this topic, two of these were published in 1992 and one in 2001. They have written no books since though they have maintained a web site and written a number of articles.

The criteria for what constituted a "One Shot Stop", OSS, remained the same in all books and articles.

The criteria were and are;
1) Only hits to the area from the collar bone to the waist line (torso hits) from any angle, counted. Hits to arms, shoulders, head, neck, etc. were omitted.
2). Multiple hits were excluded. In part because the aim of the study was to view the "effectiveness" of specific bullets and rounds. Though in the second book double taps were included.
3) To meet the OSS criteria the aggressor had to stop what they were doing and be, in the opinion of the shooter or another observer, physically incapable of further aggressive action.
4) If after being shot, the aggressor either collapsed or could run or walk up to 10 feet.
5) M&S say they excluded all reported shootings where they did not have more than one report of the shooting and where they could not examine the bullet, other physical evidence, etc.
6) They had to have more than 5 cases where a round met the above criteria before that particular round could be included in the study.

If you look at the actual criteria (see above) you can see that there are a number of problems with it. If you try to compare one caliber to another and even one load or bullet in the same caliber one to another the work shows it's limitations.

When they were asked (many times) to show the raw data on which their studies were and are based they have always refused to show it to any third party observers.

The very best you can get from their studies is that one particular bullet may work some better than another in a given caliber.

In the second book they include some information on the results of double taps.

By the time of the third book they were including information from ballistic gelatin tests which had become the industry norm for testing bullet performance.

To be considered an "expert" in any particular area of science I figure one should have some respect for science and knowledge of it. M&S fall short of that mark. For this reason I tend to be very wary of anyone claiming that one particular bullet and load is the "absolute best", "unquestionably the best", etc., under all conditions and for everyone.

tipoc
 
When they were asked (many times) to show the raw data on which their studies were and are based they have always refused to show it to any third party observers.
And that's an important point. Science (and this purports to be science) requires peer review. To be acceptable to the scientific community, all data (not just Marshall and Sanow's) has to be available for other scientists to check.

Sanow once told me the reason they don't do it is "because they would just pick it apart."

Well, yeah . . . that's the whole idea -- other scientists take your articles, data and methods and pick them apart and see if they can stand up to scrutiny.
 
.357 Mag 125gr unquestionably the best manstopper?

I always thought, at close range on unarmored foes, 00-buck out of a 12 gauge was "unquestionably" the best manstopper. Now I do realize this is the handguns subforum, not shotgun or NFA items, so perhaps that explains the .357 choice.

Even Marshall and Sanow said, in their later book, Street Stoppers, that the best handgun/caliber/bullet combos seem to top-out at around 95% (nothing got to 100), and that many calibers approached that top-out, from the lowly 9mm+P to the .45 (each with appropriate HP ammo).

So anyone should feel good about choosing .357 for SD (if he shoot it well); but several other calibers should do just as well.
 
Let's also keep in mind that the M&S data is now OUT OF DATE. Ammo technology has marched onward.

Not according to DML5. Lol. Of course, the rest of us understand this to be true, and in the circles I've discussed M&S, the most oft-cited reason to largely ignore it (after the completely unscientific methodology) are advancement in bullet design and materials, and cartridges that either didn't exist or were in their infancy when this data was gathered, leaving them with few or no examples.

But one doesn't need to pick it apart scientifically to see that it's flawed. For example, they show the .44 Mag. 240 gr. JHP to be only two percentage points more effective than a .32 ACP 60 gr. HP (75% and 73%). One would have to be completely retarded to believe that the .32 auto would be anywhere near as effective as a .44 magnum under any circumstances, yet this is what their report articulates. The reality is that one probably wouldn't even get to the heart if it hit a rib, while the other is going to make that rib into toothpicks and continue on to turn the heart into scrambled jello before exiting out the back with enough energy remaining to kill the poor b@$tid behind the BG.

I always thought, at close range on unarmored foes, 00-buck out of a 12 gauge was "unquestionably" the best manstopper.

If we're going to include long guns, I'd vote for a .300 Ultra mag pushing a 110 gr. V-max at about 4,200 FPS. That'd pretty well liquify the guts and splatter them behind the former human being.

So anyone should feel good about choosing .357 for SD (if he shoot it well); but several other calibers should do just as well.

Exactly. This is what I was getting at with my little list in a previous post; Any handgun pushing a decent sized bullet of proper contrction at a respectable velocity will get the job done, despite M&S nonsense.
 
For example, they show the .44 Mag. 240 gr. JHP to be only two percentage points more effective than a .32 ACP 60 gr. HP (75% and 73%).
Where are those figures from, please?

I checked Handgun Stopping Power. It lists 3 different 240 HPs for .44 Mag, varying from 80 to 86%. It lists one .32 HP (the Silvertip), with a 61%.

This table (which is barely updated from the book) lists between 80-88% for .44 Mag HPs; and 63% for the .32 Silvertip. I would appreciate an updated source!
 
Evan Marshall himself reminds folks, on his site, that the data in the M&S books is out of date. I like reading the anecdotes in the books; many are little gems of tactical insight. The guest-authored chapters, penned by men who have been there and done that, are quite good, too. I pay no attention to the old data, or the "Fuller index" that was an attempt to predict stopping power of new rounds that had no track record.

FWIW, Evan does not want anyone to defend him on forums. I will say that Evan, without Ed Sanow, is a very reasonable person, and leave it at that. I am old enough to remember articles written by each of them, before they started their stopping power project. Evan is back to being the Evan I remembered reading when I was a rookie LEO,
when I devoured everything I could find that seemed street-relevant. Evan worked for Detroit PD at the time, and I worked for another big-city PD; both of our cities were vying for murder capital of
the USA at the time. (I still wear the same badge.)

I don't think anything penned by Ed Sanow was of benefit to me. I never saw any indication that he had been under fire, or fired a weapon in the line of duty. He wrote like a typical gun writer.

I also liked reading stuff penned by Mas Ayoob and John Farnam, back in those days, and it was and is relevant, but Evan worked in an environment similar to mine, and had more experience laying hands on bad guys. It is possible that something Evan wrote may have kept me from being hurt or killed.
 
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Thanks, MachIVshooter.


The 75% number you quoted, however, for the ".44 Mag. 240 gr. JHP" is from a selected subset of the data, involving just one load with a database of only 4 shootings from 1992 to 1996; it is therefore not surprising that its percentage came out to 75%--there were only 4 other possibilities.

If we aggregate the data for .32 HPs and .44 Mag 240 gr JHPs (which seems to me fairer that using a percentage based on 4 shootings when many others are available) we'd find 140/227 (for about 62%) and 262/313 (about 84%) respectively. (Those numbers are hand-tallied and -calculated, so I apologize for any error; and I did lump the 240 SJHP with the two 240 JHP loadings.)

Personally, I think we should be careful in using FTI sources in evaluating Marshall & Sanow. I do not mean to suggest FTI is inaccurate (I think they are accurate, especially regarding the pernicious effects of the refusal to release raw data and to be more transparent about criteria for case selection), but FTI's tone is not of an objective evaluation, but rather of untempered gotcha-criticism. I would want to be especially careful not to inadvertently adopt that tone.

Warts and all, Marshall and Sanow's data and conclusions have promoted some conceptual milestones (that quickly opening JHPs may be better than "controlled expansion" in some calibers, that penetration beyond a certain level does not improve effectiveness, that short-barrel ballistics should be looked at separately, that looking at gel tests can help us design and select better bullets, etc.), as well as some intriguing puzzles (the inexplicable effectiveness of the .32 original Silvertip). All historical (retrospective) data studies will be open to criticism--just ask John Lott!--and I would argue should be accepted as studies with limitations, rather than rejected as junk.
I'd vote for a .300 Ultra mag pushing a 110 gr. V-max at about 4,200 FPS
Be very interesting to see a gel-penetration study of that load. The Hornady .308 110 load makes 9.25 inches.
 
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The 75% number you quoted, however, for the ".44 Mag. 240 gr. JHP" is from a selected subset of the data, involving just one load with a database of only 4 shootings from 1992 to 1996; it is therefore not surprising that its percentage came out to 75%--there were only 4 other possibilities.

That was my point; The problem with this "study" is that the parameters are, well, not really paramters at all. Just a lot of anecdotes that basically only prove one thing: Any bullet through the torso has a high probability of killing you. I don't think we need statistical data from 20,000 shootings to understand this concept, though.

If you took all the same loads and compared each one using 50 dead-center torso shots on normal sized men, you'd have something workable for drawing a useful conclusion. Of course, this is not really possible short of genocide.

Be very interesting to see a gel-penetration study of that load.

Perhaps I'll load some up for my sister's rifle (she has the .300, my only RUM is a .375). At those velocities, I don't expect there will be a block left to analyze; The hydrostatic shock of a decent sized bullet moving that fast is incredible. Even if it didn't reach 12", I expect the damage caused would have virtually 0% survivability with a torso shot on a real living thing in the 100-250 lb range.
 
That was my point; The problem with this "study"
Marshall and Sanow, I believe, never presented the 3 stops/4 shots data and then claimed that load had a 75% rating (those numbers I think were calculated by FTI, comparing the 1992 and 1996 data sets).

I believe M&S always presented aggregate numbers, not "1992-1996" numbers. So, if they never presented 4 shootings as stand-alone data, I'm not sure they should be criticized for "claiming" the load had a 75% track record--I don't think they ever made that claim.
Of course, this is not really possible short of genocide.
Some would therefore conclude that M&S did the best they could with what data was at hand (though they can still be criticized for lack of data-sharing and transparency).

As I said, historical studies have limitations. If someone has have one anecdote, well, he has a story. If he has hundreds of anecdotes, he begins to have analysable data. Analysis of such data will be limited by case-selection bias (when that exists, as it does with this dataset), and by mixing of disparate cases (center-torso vs. non-center-torso shots). But it is still data. We can be careful not to "overconclude" from such data, but some conclusions--or at least hypotheses--can reasonably be induced.
 
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Warts and all, Marshall and Sanow's data and conclusions have promoted some conceptual milestones (that quickly opening JHPs may be better than "controlled expansion" in some calibers, that penetration beyond a certain level does not improve effectiveness, that short-barrel ballistics should be looked at separately, that looking at gel tests can help us design and select better bullets, etc.), as well as some intriguing puzzles (the inexplicable effectiveness of the .32 original Silvertip). All historical (retrospective) data studies will be open to criticism--just ask John Lott!--and I would argue should be accepted as studies with limitations, rather than rejected as junk.

I'm not sure that M&S take credit for all of the contributions attributed to them in the quote above. If they do it is unfortunate because most of the things credited to them in the above, they were not a part of or not chiefly responsible for.

Of the things mentioned above the only one I recall them pushing early was that short barreled ballistics should be looked at separately and pushing the concept of designing bullets specifically for short barrels. This in itself was an outgrowth of their favoring light weight bullets at a higher velocity and followed the growth of the market for smaller handguns. It was a variety of ammo manufacturers and engineers there who actually saw the marketing opportunity for that and designed the bullets and not M&S.

The other things mentioned either predated them (the rate of expansion of jhps), they were not a direct part of (the selection of 10% ballistic gelatin as the industry norm, Fackler played a key role in that), The discussion of penetration depths and effectiveness was much older than they, etc.

There is a good deal of useful information in their books. I give them credit for publishing articles by John Jacobs and others who disagree with the approach of M&S. The information on the history of the 40S&W and the 9mm, etc. is useful. The history of the various testing of handgun calibers and trials is useful. But their central conception of the OSS statistics is so seriously flawed as to render it about useless. Not completely useless but close to.

tipoc
 
I'm not sure that M&S take credit for all of the contributions attributed to them
I wrote they promoted them, not that they invented them. Ideas about terminal ballistics predate even Fackler and Hatcher--or Thompson and LaGarde, for that matter. Ordnance gelatin goes back to the 1940s. NIJ/LEAA gave high ratings to low-penetration/high-temporary cavity loads in 1975 and 1983.

The M&S theories produced a lot of discussion that ran well outside of LE circles--can we give them credit for generating a lot of talk on the subject, and thus getting lots of ideas--even opposing ones--out into the general domain? And for the hard work of compiling and looking at data that everyone else was happy to ignore?

Geez, guys, I live near Boston--but I always give those :cuss: Yankees credit for making our baseball seasons more...interesting, and every once in a while for fielding a respectable team! :D
 
NIJ/LEAA gave high ratings to low-penetration/high-temporary cavity loads in 1975 and 1983.
I remember it well -- they were laughably wrong, but at a high cost to the taxpayer.

What they did was construct a model man, sliced into 1 centimter layers, with each layer diced into 1 centimeter cubes. Then they had doctors score each cube for "incapicatation."

Next, they fired various guns and loads into Duxseal -- which leaves the temporary cavity -- filled the cavities with plaster, broke away the Duxseal, and plotted the temporary cavity (their assumption was that every cubic centimeter in the temporary cavity was destroyed.)

Then they used range data from US Army recruits qualifying with the M1911 to estimate the probable error and assumed the temporary cavity to be located in the body according to that data.

Ammunition that produced large temporary cavities was obviously favored in this "study" regardless of penetration.
 
I had a Marlin 1894 CS that was just about the cats meow with the 110 to 125 grain bullets. Hardly any recoil and right on target from contact range to 75 yards. All that extra velocity was nice too.
 
they were laughably wrong
I think that's harsh. They were incomplete. For their day, they were state of the art, and it's perhaps too easy to laugh at their errors in retrospect.

If someone holds the NIJ recommendations as partly responsible for the 1986 Miami Shootout, then I can certainly understand bitterness...but not laughter.
 
I wonder if the shooters and targets reaction to the blast and recoil has resulted in more one shot incidents?
A less irritating round to shoot might work just as well, but shooters are able to fire more rounds before seing the target react. This would screw the one shot stop stories.
I haven't been down range while a .357 is fired, but I suspect the blast would get my attention.
I am a fan of the .357.
 
Bottom line in regards to M@S; they did more research than any of us have ever done. So who are we to....
 
A less irritating round to shoot might work just as well, but shooters are able to fire more rounds before seing the target react.
You could have someting there. I took a .357 revolver to a course a ways back. Lots of different ammo. When I got home, I decided to load it with .38+Ps, or light .357s like Golden Saber; full-house .357s took too much recovery time for me.

But I never thought how that delay of the second shot might "produce" a one-shot stop.
 
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Personally I always give credit and some respect to M&S for what they have done that is positive. I have done that here. But we are on a thread which proclaims "the .357 Mag 125 gr. unquestionably the best manstopper" and the central people responsible for that bit of irresponsible silliness are M&S. They have earned the criticism through their hard work which was off track and has mislead a good many shooters, particularly the inexperienced.

Bottom line in regards to M@S; they did more research than any of us have ever done. So who are we to....

Such servility is not becoming. Their methods were wrong. That is pretty obvious. When a fella is wrong he's wrong regardless of credentials. If they were Doctors with years of training I might question their advice and look for a second opinion. In this case they did not have years of training and were gun writers who collected a number of stories. Had they said that and drawn some conclusions from the anecdotal evidence I'd have no problem. But when they proclaimed that their opinions were the last word on the subject and rendered all other opinions obsolete and that there was some science to it... well it invites a closer look into their claims.

Over the years myself and many others have found that the 125 gr. loads that get close to 1400 fps from a 4" barrel also produce a good deal of noise, muzzle flash and felt recoil, so much so that it slows down rapid and accurate shot placement. A 148 gr or 158 gr. round at about 1100-1200 fps from a 3" to 4" barrel works quite well and allows for rapid and well placed accurate shots for many, me included.

tipoc
 
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