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To quote my favorite Arfcommer... me:
"A well developed sense of situational awareness will enable you to avoid far more trouble than any gun will ever get you out of."

And, when trouble cannot be avoided, the ability to perform will mean more than the instrument itself.
People argue endlessly over guns, ammo, and gear. Meanwhile, it's training and practice that will carry the day.

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Lethality is a useless metric.

If your attacker bled out 2 minutes after turning your skull inside out with a crowbar, you lost the fight decisively.

Exsanguination is a lousy defensive incapacitation mechanism.

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I have major doubts about docs doing an accurate analysis of bullet construction and caliber.  She says right in the article 'a lot of times we just leave the bullet inside' in which case, how do you know it's caliber and construction?  Several statements in this article lead me to believe there is no data here, only some kind of gut feeling by these docs.  How many of them even knows that the shoulder thing goes up?  Color me skeptical.

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Lol no.

You look at people carry handguns for a living, instruct, or are otherwise "serious students" of using a pistol for defensive purposes, and are allowed to pick their own gear, the LARGE majority are going to be packing 9x19.

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I knew the Medical Examiner in Memphis during the 80's, 90's and early 2000. He did thousands of GSW Autopsy's. He carried a .45ACP with ball ammo.

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pick a reliable gun. carry reliable ammo. shoot accurately.

more important, the SA to avoid a gunfight in the first place.

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Some of that may be discernable through imaging, even with the bullet in situ  I don't know enough about medical imaging systems to know for sure.  In others, the caliber/construction may be specified in police reports (assuming they read them).

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If there was ever a field where “experts” on different sides of an argument use “data” from studies that don’t really provide the data that is actually needed to actually make a decision on that argument, it’s the field of efficacy of handguns for combat/self defense.

If you’re going to argue that you need 15+ rounds to adequately defend yourself, you don’t need stats on how many people successfully defended themselves with high capacity guns, or even how many people died with low capacity guns. You need to know how many people died only because they ran out of bullets, and who would likely have won that fight if they’d had more bullets. Maybe its out there, but I’ve never seen or heard of that study.

If you’re going to make an argument about caliber with regards to mortality, we have all the data we need…sort of. But “mortality” is not the same as “immediate threat stoppage,” which is probably closer to what we typically argue about here. As already stated, you need your attacker to go down right now - not after several minutes, after he’s already killed you. Simply looking at stats about people who died, at any point, and which caliber killed them doesn’t really answer the question we’re asking.

There’s also a lot of emotional attachment and baseless “beliefs” used in these arguments. Those believes may be right or may be wrong, but either way they’re not based on any actual evidence - just “common sense” and gun-community legends. “Flesh from the bone.” Just look at the arguments by relatively knowledgeable people, in this thread alone, with regard to hollow point ammo. There are at least three completely contradictory arguments as to why it’s better than ball ammo. One guy sad the real advantage is that it’s more reliable than “white box shit” or something like that. That really has nothing to do with whether or not .380 is better than .357 at stopping a threat. There was also an argument made that it was “better quality.”

“.380 is no different than .357 mag? I’m not buying it!” Well, of course it’s different with regard to energy, wound channel, penetration, and a whole host of other things. But does any of that matter? If I drop a 50 pound rock on your head from 20 feet up, you die. If I drop a 5 ton rock on your head from 20 feet up, you die. Is anyone going to argue that the 50 pound rock must be less effective because its smaller and has less energy? More important would be what size rock could be dropped on someone from a height of 20 feet and NOT reliably kill you. Below that weight, the shape and speed might make a difference.  Once you’re above that weight, the shape, size, and speed of the rock doesn’t really matter any more.

With regard to handgun ammunition and mortality, this article seems to state that the LOCATION of the injury is more of a factor than the size of the bullet that caused the injury. If clipping the femoral is going to cause death, and a .32 has enough energy to reach it, then the .357 essentially becomes that 5 ton rock.

We actually need data on people that got shot and didn’t die, but were immediately incapacitated vs people that got shot IN THE SAME PLACE and didn’t die but WEREN’T incapacitated, and the calibers/bullet shapes in those incidents. There’s a host of other factors as well like multiple hits, size/mental state of the wounded person prior to the shooting, etc.

Until that data is out there, all of these arguments are pointless.

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One of the main reasons to carry "defensive ammo" is that your HST is a lot less likely to cause malfunctions than shitbox WWB.

The argument that pistols can't achieve X,XXX FPS so they inherently suck is retarded. About the fastest you can find factory loaded 45-70 is 2050 FPS and it will kill the shit out of pretty much anything on land. Handgun bullets use different woulding mechanisms than SCHV rifle rounds and are constructed accordingly.

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Lies.  We have all been taught that 9mm will blow out lungs.  Stick to the real science folks.

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As long as 45 stays the best, I'm happy.

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I guess you've been pretty bummed since around the time smokeless powder took off....

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Interesting article that my friend sent me. I'm sure it will spark interesting debates here.

Here are a couple of surprising statements from the data:








https://gundigest.com/article/a-medical-perspective-on-ammunition-and-lethality

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Keep in mind, all those inner city shootings aren't happening with fancy "defensive" ammunition.

And more than not, it's by 9mm or smaller.

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I guess you've been pretty bummed since around the time smokeless powder took off....

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ARFCOM fudds be like:
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/601/217/ff1.jpg

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Pardon my lack of instant inch to metric conversion skills, but isn’t 10mm smaller than .45?

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Um, about that...9x19 is older than .45 ACP, so that makes your roast attempt flipped on the script

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Shoot them in the head.

That's a no-brainer if there ever was one.

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Lol no.

.45 hasn't been best since well before the advent of .45ACP... you proved my point for me.  

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lol no back at ya.

I proved that you were being ignorant about the age of people in concerns to who uses it, and obviously 45 was best because 9 wasn't adopted by the US since the 80's in both mil and police despite being already available

It's just a type of caliber friend, if you don't like it that's fine by me but there is no need to treat it like a richard.

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I would argue that a CNS/ Head hit is more often than not, more fatal, in less time, than exsanguination.

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What I was getting at is that a Bren Ten is a big gun, they make smaller guns in .45 these days.

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I would argue that the majority of people carrying.45 acp are "gun people" and have better shot placement overall which results in higher lethality.

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That depends more on the bullet design and the twist rate, i.e. 55grain fmj in 1:7 twist. What does the damage is the hydrostatic shock, that will rupture arteries and veins and do nerve damage.

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They are all the same, so I just carry a .25 much easier for shot placement.

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I legitimately wonder if the .45acp correlation is that the majority of .45ACP pistols carried are SA vs. the the other calibers being DA resulting in first shot placement being on target better?

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This is why I carry a .50bmg pistol

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I would argue that the majority of people carrying .45ACP think they're "gun people".....