Handgun Induced Trauma

[West Texas]

I've watched the shows, and heard all of the aurguments...but seeing a 350 lb mountain lion rolled completely over 2 times when it was shot with a Ruger Blackhawk in .45LC from about 15 yeards was all I needed to see. And that was BEFORE the reaction to the pain...that was just the cat knocked over...

THEN it wanted to fight. Another shot, this one to the head, took that option away...

A big piece of lead that flattens out into a BIGGER piece of lead tends to make things stop, sit up and take notice before they get the second hit, or bleed out from the first.

 

[45 Long Colt]

I carry a 22 mag NAA Black Widow with 3 CCI hollow points and 2 CCI mag snake shot.I agree that a LR has less stopping power but I beleive the magnum has a little more of a bite.

 

[Wolfwood]

heheh i want a pmr-30

30 rounds of 22 wmr in the palm of your hand



sounds fun does it not?

 

[M. Sage]

I've watched the shows, and heard all of the aurguments...but seeing a 350 lb mountain lion rolled completely over 2 times when it was shot with a Ruger Blackhawk in .45LC from about 15 yeards was all I needed to see. And that was BEFORE the reaction to the pain...that was just the cat knocked over...

THEN it wanted to fight. Another shot, this one to the head, took that option away...

A big piece of lead that flattens out into a BIGGER piece of lead tends to make things stop, sit up and take notice before they get the second hit, or bleed out from the first.

If it knocks a 350 lb cat over when it hits, it'll knock you over when you shoot. You're getting 100% of the muzzle force through recoil, plus a bit depending on caliber.

heheh i want a pmr-30

30 rounds of 22 wmr in the palm of your hand



sounds fun does it not?

Only if you load it with solid nose. .22 Mag won't penetrate enough from a handgun if it expands.

 

[verge]

LiveLeak.com - Policeman 'cut in half' after accident talks to camera man *VERY GRAPHIC*

Take a look at that. There's a guy that just got ripped in f*cking half from the waist down by a dump truck. Guess what? HE'S STILL CONSCIOUS AND MOVING AROUND! Yeah, that guy is dead now, but he was still a little bit active after suffering trauma on the most massive scale.

Actually

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f5f_1187419884


That guy is still alive.

 

[smittyb]

Only if you load it with solid nose. .22 Mag won't penetrate enough from a handgun if it expands.

Not saying it would be my choice for carry, but are you trying to factually state a hollow point bullet from a .22 WMR will not kill you?

 

[Wolfwood]

Not saying it would be my choice for carry, but are you trying to factually state a hollow point bullet from a .22 WMR will not kill you?

 

[M. Sage]

Not saying it would be my choice for carry, but are you trying to factually state a hollow point bullet from a .22 WMR will not kill you?

No, I'm not saying that, but the info I've been able to dig up suggests that it won't penetrate to the recommended 12". Would I want to get shot by one? Nope. But I'd take a solid nose over that for carry due to under-penetration worries in the HP.

What I'm saying isn't that the HP won't kill someone, or that it won't work. What I'm saying is that it's less likely to manage an incapacitating hit in a self-defense situation.

 

[SC-Texas]

tag

 

[SIG_Fiend]

Actually

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f5f_1187419884


That guy is still alive.

Holy crap that guy is alive?! That just goes to show you, human beings are resilient.

So long story short, if anyone still hasn't put 2 and 2 together it's this simple. Ballistic wounding factors are all about penetration and vital organ damage. It's that simple. If it doesn't penetrate enough to consistently do vital organ damage in less than perfect situations (bone, intermediate barriers) than it won't be reliable for defensive use.

 

[Texas42]

WOW

Resilent people and miracles of modern medicine.

 

[1TruePatriot]

"Knockdown power" is a complete fallacy. It is physically impossible. Hydrostatic shock is a complete fallacy as well. These myths have been disproved countless times. Many people fall down when being shot due to one factor. That is the psychological factor. A lot of times people tend to instinctively fall down when being delivered a trauma, due to the psychological shock factor of "Hey I just got shot!". There are just as many people that the same trauma will not cause that psychological response, and that stay up and fighting.

People need to do themselves a favor and read this: http://www.firearmstactical.com/pdf/fbi-hwfe.pdf



Now go read about the 1986 FBI Miami shootout and tell me about knockdown power. People will fool you. There isn't anything you can count on when it comes to disabling an attacker. Simply keep shooting and shoot them to the ground, and if necessary and if you think you can make it, take the head shot.

That's a fantastic study. It's actually to the point for something the government would publish. And sick as it sounds, if you have the privilege of ever speaking to someone who has used lethal force (police, some military) it's amazing what they will tell you about the real world results of the use of lethal force. It's then you realize you watch too much TV haha

 

[SIG_Fiend]

That's a fantastic study. It's actually to the point for something the government would publish. And sick as it sounds, if you have the privilege of ever speaking to someone who has used lethal force (police, some military) it's amazing what they will tell you about the real world results of the use of lethal force. It's then you realize you watch too much TV haha

Agreed. Real world results are obviously very important. I have known and talked to quite a few people that have fired shots in anger, and taken lives in OEF/OIF, their job (LE), etc. There is certainly valuable insight to be gained by learning from first hand experiences of those that have been there. The unfortunate thing, however, is you still have to take it all with a grain and filter it through the general scientific process and consider what makes sense. I have talked to former soldiers that have taken lives in war, and unfortunately some of them maybe don't have the greatest grasp on physics, exactly why everything occurred and how it did, etc. There are a number of times I've heard stories from soldiers experiences, and the physics simply do not agree. Things such as the fallacy of the .50bmg "shockwave" effect and how it can "rip limbs off" simply by flying close by someone. Anyways, my point is simply, we should always ask ourselves, do the physics add up? You can't argue with simple physics.

 

[M. Sage]

Physics always wins.

 

[lalonguecarabine]

I don't know. It's always been common sense to me. My thinking: A big hole will hurt more than a little hole.
That being said, I wouldn't want to get shot with a .22, or even a .17 for that matter, but those sure won't be my first choice for a self defense round. There's a lot of great information out there for someone who really wants to know the science and physics of things as well as reports of real world performance. That's important to me as well.
But back to my "common sense approach": I know it takes less big holes than little holes to really hurt or preferably stop an attacker, and the quicker you end a fight where your life is at stake, the better.

One last thought on the resiliency of the human body: Currently, the news is reporting the shooting of the Arizona congresswoman. The reports say she was shot in the head at close range, and that the shot was what surgeons call a "through and through" (self explanatory). She is alive, responding to commands, and expected to recover.
Just thought I'd throw in a very current example, so all our accounts of this sort of thing weren't hundred year old stories from the Philipinnes, or Twenty-five year old stories from Miami Dade, etc.

 

[RetArmySgt]

I say the more holes the better. You can plug one hole easy but 20-30 holes is a little harder. Say a 12ga they may be small holes but there is a lot more of them.

 

[M. Sage]

I say the more holes the better. You can plug one hole easy but 20-30 holes is a little harder. Say a 12ga they may be small holes but there is a lot more of them.

But there is always the law of diminishing returns. If you use a 7 1/2 birdshot load, you get something like 300 holes in the target. Sounds good by that standard, but the holes are almost microscopic and will barely penetrate the skin, especially through clothing. That's why the first two considerations must be shot placement and penetration. Every other consideration comes after those. Just for the record, anything smaller than #4 buck is dangerously small and may not stop a determined assailant. You cannot rely on pain to stop an attack. In the heat of the moment they may not feel it, may be too crazy to feel it, may be too high to feel it or may simply be too pissed off and mean to care. There are also people who feel pain and it just makes them (more) angry. If you want to rely on pain compliance, use pepper spray. It's easier to clean up than blood and the legal liabilities are much lower. If you need deadly force, though, make damn sure it's actually deadly force that is capable of incapacitating an attacker through physiological damage (blood loss, organ failure, broken bones, central nervous system damage). Locked doors and social mores are all the deterrent that should be needed. Anybody who overcomes these to attack you should be assumed capable of overcoming mere pain to kill you.

Going with the other argument, bigger can be better up to a certain point. I'm going to slaughter a sacred cow here and say that most people can't handle shotgun slugs (or even buckshot) in a self defense/home defense situation. The recoil is so high that getting an effective follow up in the case of a miss, or engaging a second target in the case of multiple assailants is going to be almost comically slow. Also, a good portion of the population lack the upper body strength to hold, aim and operate a loaded shotgun properly. I let a female friend of mine check out my HD 870 and she didn't have the strength and mass to shoulder it and take a stance that would prevent her from being knocked to the floor with the first shot. And that was without 8 rounds of ammunition stuffed into the gun. This is going to hold true with handguns, too. 500 S&W is simply too damn much gun to be a good first choice for self defense against human beings, and I doubt I'll find any argument about that. Going too big is going to make it too expensive to practice much, and the recoil is going to make any practice you have "not fun", curtailing it further.

So what we have is that bigger is better and more holes is better... to a certain point. That point is going to change from situation to situation, from person to person. The key is finding where that point is for you and standing on it.

 

[lalonguecarabine]

That's true. When I said "a big hole will hurt more than a small hole", I was referring to the .45 as opposed to something like the .38, for instance.
I should have clarified.
Sometimes I forget that there are some people out there who will purchase a "hand-cannon" that they'll realistically never be able to shoot because it's too damn powerful (.500 S&W Magnum anyone?).

 

[RetArmySgt]

My two HD weapons are a Mossberg 500 with a 1.5oz HP Slug in the barrel and 5 000buck in the tube, and a 1911. I plan on lots of big holes if someone comes through my door. I agree that most people cant handle the 12Ga but practice helps. With my pump 500 have have beaten Benelli semi's with both Speed and accuracy.

 

[M. Sage]

That's true. When I said "a big hole will hurt more than a small hole", I was referring to the .45 as opposed to something like the .38, for instance.
I should have clarified.
Sometimes I forget that there are some people out there who will purchase a "hand-cannon" that they'll realistically never be able to shoot because it's too damn powerful (.500 S&W Magnum anyone?).

But if yo do research, the .38 is perfectly adequate. The people treating gunshot wounds wouldn't be able to tell you the difference between a .45 hit or a .38 hit. All they'll tell you is if anything vital got hit. When it comes to handguns, there is so little difference in their wounding characteristics it hardly matters. If you shoot a .45 better, shoot it. If 9mm works for you, go for it. .380 is even giving wounding potential right up there with the "big boys" now, so besides the fact that they're usually in tiny packages, you're not going to find yourself undergunned with something chambered for it.

I've yet to hear a doctor say that someone who was shot with a 9mm would have died had it been a .45. I have yet to hear a doctor say that someone who was shot with a .45 would have lived if it had been a 9mm.