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bisley
Posts: 10,815 Senior Member
Interesting 'stopping power' evaluation of 1800 shootings by instructor
bisley
Posts: 10,815 Senior Member
I swiped this from another forum. It isn't a large enough sampling to answer all the questions, but the guy has a good common sense analysis of the data and the main conclusions he drew from it make sense.
http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/node/7866
What I believe that my numbers show is that in the majority of shootings, the person shot merely gives up without being truly incapacitated by the bullet. In such an event, almost any bullet will perform admirably. If you want to be prepared to deal with someone who won't give up so easily, or you want to be able to have good performance even after shooting through an intermediate barrier, I would skip carrying the "mouse gun" .22s, .25s and .32s.
http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/node/7866
Replies
http://forums.gunsandammo.com/showthread.php?15450-Caliber-Queens-This-Is-Your-Thread!
And the of your article has a different takeaway than the OP of that thread.
It also seems to confirm most of what folks have been saying: use a good handgun of 9mm/.38 Special with modern ammo, and there's not that much difference anymore.
That's the nice thing about 'old timers' disease - you get to read old stuff and enjoy it again, watch old TV shows, again, and meet lots of interesting people that already know you. :silly:
Somebody has added the mushroom cloud but leaving it out still shows a big difference.
I do not buy the 10mm it hurts your wrist comment, I make no bones about not liking excessive recoil; but 10mm isn't too much.
But, it is a factor of the gun used because relatively wimpy rnds can be a recoil burden such as .38spl +P in a small revolver.
But, I think the guy who did this study did draw a reasonable conclusion from the data sampling that he used, i.e. that 'stopping power' is an elusive term to define. He makes it clear, in his conclusions, that a more powerful weapon than the most popular pistol chamberings is needed for a certain stop against a determined attacker, in any conceivable situation.
He is just saying that the odds are in your favor that the average attacker will cease his attack when hit in a vital spot with most handguns, even though he might still be physically able to continue the attack. Adding follow-up shots increases this likelihood, in direct proportion to the number of rounds fired into vital locations. He clearly states that a rifle or shotgun is the desired weapon for gun fighting. In my opinion, the 10mm is a very good compromise between the more common handgun rounds and a rifle. If I were a LEO, or in any high risk situation, the G20 would be my first choice, because in addition to having an impressive terminal result, it can be accurate to 75 yards, without hold-over.
Look at the article link in the OP again. You can scroll down and nicely get the .357 magnum, .40 S&W, .45 ACP, AND the .44 Magnum all on your screen at the same time. Look at the bottom line - percent actually incapacitated by one shot - and you'll see very little difference between them even when you start getting into "crew served" cartridges. When you look at this guy's data pool and compare it to the physics of what a 10mm is actually laying down, it's pretty easy to conclude you'd be unlikely to see much difference with that round also.
I LIKE the 10mm, and was the first kid on my block to get a Glock 20 back around 1990, but it suffers from a few problems:
1. Agencies don't want it because the Lowest Common Denominator can't shoot it.
2. Never mind that penetration is a desirable asset in a defensive round - a lot of agency REMF types start nervously wringing their hands at the notion of a round that offers more than the barest amount necessary. Basically, they want a round that is able to turn corners, dodge around old ladies and baby strollers, liquefy a felon down to the point that is DNA is unraveled, and be stopped by a single sheet of wet toilet paper after exiting. My own opinion is that LE may be better off with truncated cone FMJ's that can deal with car doors, a certain amount of laminated glass, and odd-angle, cross body shots with arms in the way of the vitals, but for some reason, there's a lot of worry over the ONE well-aimed round that penetrates through a felon, and almost none over the statistically five to ten OTHER ROUNDS that missed the felon entirely and are now sailing down main street. Not saying it makes sense, but that warped mindset doesn't lend the 10mm many advantages.
3. Designing the gun for the round is a bit of a problem. Glock was one of the first, and is still one of the few manufacturers to design their gun from the ground up as a 10mm launch platform, rather than tweak an existing .45 to suit. Being basically a magnum, the round requires substantial mass to contain and control the forces it generates. The bulk and weight required pretty much limits it to duty weapons and hard-to-conceal sporting arms.
4. If you take the OP article link as pretty solid information, the 10mm won't gain you much in the defensive shooting arena except a hard kicking duty round that a lot of your troops can't shoot well, that cost more to feed EVEN BEFORE you consider you'll need to order more of it for the people that fail to qualify on the first go, that you can't piggyback into a commonly used, backup-sized gun (i.e. 2" and 4" .38's, or the baby Glock 9mm and .40)
So all that paints the 10mm into a bit of a corner. Most of the guys who look at it as a hunting round will steer towards magnum revolvers, which are MORE powerful and less maintenance-intensive. I've always seen the 10mm as the perfect round for a semi-rural cop in places like Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Montana, Alaska, etc... who may face a grizzly bear one day and a drug dealer the next - but that situation isn't a widespread norm.
As I say, I really like the Ten, but I've made my peace with the fact that it's not for everyone.
"Nothing is safe from stupid." - Zee
As to guns that shoot the 10mm, I don't remember who, but there is at least one company making a 1911 in 10mm. An all-steel handgun with a 5" barrel for 10mm makes sense in my mind.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer and politician
series Miami Vice. Although I purchased a DE when they first came on the market,
until recently I never understood the significance of the 10MM in the scheme of things.
Personally I don't see much difference in recoil between 1911's in .45 & 10MM.
Sense adding a 22 lb wolf recoil spring and buffer to the DE the recoil is much smother
and the gun doesn't feel like it's beating the slide stop to death.If I ever run into a BG
wearing a 56XL jacket, over penetration would not be my primary concern.
Ned, have I mentioned that Debbie has no issues with my .44 special load? We have a range at the ranch and she's fired quite a few of them out of the revolver and she loves shooting them out of my mod 94.
It would be very comforting to have if the (things went bad) and it was stoked with full power loads. This gun is highly modified and has a
Bar-Sto barrel, Bo-Mar adjustable sights and 30 lpi checkering.