Dr Bill England wrote this quip in regards to an article in the September 2019 “Blue Press”.
Getting settled back in at home and the "Blue Press" was waiting for me and I read the article by Duane Thomas. Interested but deeply flawed article. But as always, the purpose is typically to sell stuff, not logically develop a thesis. And telling people what they want to hear is always a good way to sell stuff.
The crux of his article is in the first paragraph: "Results from the street have shown that there's no real difference in overall stopping performance between the popular service autopistol cartridges. Once we accept that 9mm and .45 work the same, it's awfully hard to justify choosing a more heavily recoiling gun carrying less ammo, when we could be choosing a more lightly recoiling gun with more ammo.
This article desperately needs footnotes to support his premises. I'm a pretty widely-read guy and have been following the wound ballistics literature for nearly 40 years. That first sentence could have come from a political platform: an appeal to authority and invention of supporting evidence and undefined terms. "Results from the street" needs to be documented. I have not seen a good scientific study supporting this conclusion. I'm sure Marshall and Sanow are good guys, but collecting anecdotes isn't science, nor is asking your experienced street cop buddy what he thinks. "Stopping performance" is similarly elastic like Bill Clinton talking about "investing in America."
What do we need a bullet to do? We need a bullet to penetrate the target and damage vital structures, leading to rapid incapacitation. If we really need instant incapacitation, we need the bullet to destroy the high spinal cord or penetrate into the brain, but we better be damn fine shots to make this happen. To get the penetration we need relatively heavy for caliber bullets, as ably demonstrated by McPherson. Our probability of damaging those vital structures and rapidly causing exsanguination is improved by increasing the diameter of the penetrating bullet, hence the desire for expansion if it does not overly impede penetration, as the area will increase by the square of the diameter and the rate of exsanguination will be increased by approximately the fourth power.
Does size really matter? Of course it does. Let's first consider a thought experiment. Let's imagine a target, be it a whitetail deer or a 250# felon trying to kill you with a knife. First consider a handgun firing a sewing needle at sufficient velocity to completely penetrate the target but not expanding. Second, consider a .22 rimfire. Third, consider a 9mm 124gr JHP. Finally, consider a 12-gauge slug. Any knowledgeable shooter would quickly concede that these four projectiles would cause tissue destruction and hemorrhage in increasing proportion to the size of the projectile. However, many seem to think that there is a "magic zone" somewhere in the neighborhood of 9mm to .45 ACP where the slope of this line suddenly becomes zero.
OK, discount the thought experiment. For a useful scientific study, we cannot simply look at gelatin or just corpses. Doing a prospective study where a couple hundred humans get shot with different cartridges won't pass the institutional review board or get funded by NIH. But there are good retrospective studies that do this. But to be a good study, it needs to avoid selection criteria that influence the results. I was impressed with the recent Braga study in JAMA:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...rticle/2688536
Yes, this was a "Guns are bad and we should ban them study" and clearly the authors don't understand the difference between caliber and cartridge chambering and designations. But the beauty of the study is, they counted everybody that got shot where the cartridge could be identified and they used non-arbitrary end points of "dead" and "alive". And for commonly utilized cartridges like 9mm and .45 ACP, they had a sufficient number of shootings to demonstrate the trend. Smaller calibers were less likely to result in fatal injuries than larger calibers, and this included the 9mm/.45 ACP range.
No, the results are perfectly linear. For better data, you'll need more than 367 victims. I don't think the 10mm Auto is death ray, even though it was 2/2. And I'm not switching to a .32 ACP even though it was about 50/50. I suspect the pocket pistols were likely pushed against the victim's chest or head when fired.
So why is the 9mm Parabellum becoming so popular? First, it is not a bad defensive round as the Braga study demonstrates (but don't try and con me that it is just as effective as a .45 ACP). The pistols are generally smaller, lighter, and less expensive. Ammunition is cheaper. It's easier to "qualify" recruits with a 9mm, but don't pretend that this administrative benefit is correlated to effectiveness. It's easier to shoot faster with a 9mm so it is of course more popular in shooting games like IPSC and IDPA.
A 1911 is an aficionado's pistol, I'll concur. It requires a little more skill, experience, and knowledge to run and maintain this platform than a striker-fired 9mm. Given that, it can certainly reliably feed modern JHP. But most people don't want to be bothered. As the sage opined, "We all have to find our own salvation."
It is certainly possible to kill a Cape buffalo with a .303 British rifle. But enough people got killed trying this that most African countries have a cartridge minimum starting around the .375 H&H. Yes, it is based on muzzle energy but it really comes down to adequate bullet diameter, construction, and velocity to reliably penetrate and incapacitate Mbogo. And the .375 will do this. But you'll be challenged to find many professional hunters that will claim it works "just as well" as a .458 or .470, given a shooter who can place shots accurately with either rifle.
The .45 ACP does have more recoil than a 9mm, but not so much that my wife or 13-year-old son could not happily shoot it proficiently and accurately during training and practice. But "training" and "practice" are also in short supply these days. So if you chose to carry a 9mm pistol, please feel free. It is not a bad choice and if you like it and practice with it, that is a good thing.
Please don't start your argument by claiming it is "just as effective as a .45 ACP." But I figure in another decade, we'll see plenty of articles lauding the mighty .380 ACP and how it is just as effective as a 9mm with modern bullets.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Tokarev
