Handgun wounding factors and effectiveness pdf

Although no cartridge is certain to work all the time, surely some will work more often than others, and any edge is desirable in ones self defense. This is simple logic. The incidence of failure to incapacitate will vary with the severity of the wound inflicted. Failure to incapacitate is rare in such a case, but it can happen, and in fact has happened on the battlefield.

The round which destroys 0. However, only very large numbers of shooting incidents will prove it. The difference may be only 10 out of a thousand, but that difference is an edge, and that edge should be on the officers side because one of those ten may be the subject trying to kill him.

To judge a calibers effectiveness, consider how many people hit with it failed to fall down and look at where they were hit. Of the successes and failures, analyze how many were hit in vital organs, rather than how many were killed or not, and correlate that with an account of exactly what they did when they were hit. Did they fall down, or did they run, fight, shoot, hide, crawl, stare, shrug, give up and surrender? ONLY falling down is good. All other reactions are failures to incapacitate, evidencing the ability to act with volition, and thus able to choose to continue to try to inflict harm.

Those who disparage science and laboratory methods are either too short sighted or too bound by preconceived or perhaps proprietary notions to see the truth.

The labs and scientists do not offer sure things. They offer a means of indexing the damage done by a bullet, understanding of the mechanics of damage caused by bullets and the actual effects on the body, and the basis for making an informed choice based on objective criteria and significant statistics. The differences between bullets may be small, but science can give us the means of identifying that difference.

The result is the edge all of law enforcement should be looking for. It is true that the streets are the proving ground, but give me an idea of what you want to prove and I will give you ten shootings from the street to prove it. That is both easy, and irrelevant. If it can happen, it will happen. Any shooting incident is a unique event, unconstrained by any natural law or physical order to follow a predetermined sequence of events or end in predetermined results. What is needed is an edge that makes the good result more probable than the bad.

Science will quantify the information needed to make the choice to gain that edge. Large numbers thousands or more from the street will provide the answer to the question "How much of an edge? Severity is a function of location, depth, and amount of tissue destroyed. The numbers can be held down to reasonable limits by a scientific approach that collects objective information from investigative and forensic sources and sorts it by vital organs struck and target reactions to being hit.

The critical questions are what damage was done and what was the reaction of the adversary. Psychologically, some individuals can be incapacitated by minor or small caliber wounds. The will to survive and to fight despite horrific damage to the body is commonplace on the battlefield, and on the street. Barring a hit to the brain, the only way to force incapacitation is to cause sufficient blood loss that the subject can no longer function, and that takes time.

Even if the heart is instantly destroyed, there is sufficient oxygen in the brain to support full and complete voluntary action for seconds.

Kinetic energy does not wound. Temporary cavity does not wound. The much discussed "shock" of bullet impact is a fable and "knock down" power is a myth.

The critical element is penetration. The bullet must pass through the large, blood bearing organs and be of sufficient diameter to promote rapid bleeding. Penetration less than 12 inches is too little, and, in the words of two of the participants in the Wound Ballistics Workshop, "too little penetration will get you killed. Any bullet which will not penetrate through vital organs from less than optimal angles is not acceptable. Of those that will penetrate, the edge is always with the bigger bullet.

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Difficulty Beginner Intermediate Advanced. Explore Documents. Handgun Wounding Factors and Effectiveness. Document Information click to expand document information Description: The selection of effective handgun ammunition for law enforcement is a critical and complex issue.

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The idolatry of velocity, or lies, damn lies, and ballistics. Related Papers. Abstract 5 References Related Papers. There have been several attempts by ballistics engineers to increase the wounding ability of a round.

Of these, the hollow point round is the most common and effective. These are rounds designed to expand upon impact with a soft target. The expansive quality of these rounds creates larger permanent cavities. Still, no one should select a caliber based on the assumption that it will expand sufficiently to incapacitate an assailant. Ultimately, your selection of a caliber should be based first on the penetration, and second on the unexpanded size of the round.

These are the only two factors you can expect to remain constant in any situation. Even minor and common factors can significantly impact the wounding ability of a round, including damage to a hollow point through contact with any intervening material, from glass to bone.

Clothing fibers can wrap the nose of a projectile, preventing expansion. Shorter barrels or longer range of initial impact will likewise decrease the possibility of expansion. The concern that a round will pass through an assailant and harm an innocent bystander is largely exaggerated. Most rounds fired do not hit anyone at all. Rounds that do not hit the intended target are obviously more dangerous to bystanders than a round that hits the target.

Unfortunately, there is no valid, scientific method of analyzing actual shooting incidents. All studies are greatly flawed and there is no serious pursuit of better studies due to the enormous difficulty, if not impossibility, of scientifically analyzing real-life shooting incidents. What we do know, however, is that when most people are shot, they fall down. So any caliber is better than none. But you still want the best caliber possible, because while people are disposed to fall down when shot, not every target does.

And while you might think that lethality by caliber is the main factor you should be looking for, the simple fact is that while a 22 rimfire is deadly, it is far from the best round for incapacitating an assailant in the here and now. We do, however, have reliable information from labs with regard to how much tissue rounds destroy.

This is important because of permanent cavitation: The greater amount of tissue that is destroyed, the greater chance of incapacitation, all other factors being equal. Every shooting incident is a unique and unreplicable event. We cannot recreate these or even reliably use the data. We can, however, find the most destructive round we can handle and train with it regularly. JavaScript seems to be disabled in your browser.

You must have JavaScript enabled in your browser to utilize the functionality of this website. Table of Contents. Why Handguns? However considerations of caliber are equally important and cannot be ignored. For example a bullet through the central nervous system with any caliber of ammunition is likely to be immediately incapacitating.

Even a. Obviously this does not mean the law enforcement agency should issue.