Since 05-23-08
"Self defense - stopping power
and caliber"
Since 05-23-08
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May 23rd, 2008
by Grant Cunningham
This week's article is from a GREAT Blog,
written by a great Revolver-Smith. I don't have any experience with this guy's
work, but from what I hear, he's one of the best there is. This is the first
part of an EXCELLENT series that he just wrote. At the end, I'll give you a link
to where you can find the rest! Here goes...
I've gotten a bunch of emails recently regarding the choice of an appropriate
self-defense caliber and/or bullet. Around this one topic swirls more
misinformation - and outright inanity - than any other I can think of.
And now, here's mine! What follows is a layman's understanding, backed by years
of hunting and shooting experience, of the practical mechanics of wound
ballistics. It is not intended to be a complete and exhaustive study of the
subject. Instead, I hope to give my readers - who are, in all likelihood,
layperson's themselves - a solid base of information to help make good decisions
when choosing self defense ammunition.
Let's start by understanding that in a self-defense scenario our goal is simply
to cause the perpetrator of a crime to cease immediately his/her antisocial
activities. That's it - we want the miscreant to quit doing whatever it was that
caused us to draw our gun in the first place. The closer to "immediately" that
this occurs, the better for all concerned.
There are two mechanisms by which this can be accomplished: psychological
incapacitation and physical incapacitation.
The first - psychological incapacitation - is the least predictable of the two.
Some people will stop and run when grazed by a well-thrown rock, others will
soak up all manner of chemical, electrical, and physical deterrents without so
much as flinching. Since we cannot count on delivering a reliable jolt to a
criminal's psyche, we must focus on doing enough physical damage to cause
cessation of action through reduction of motor skills.
On this subject has been constructed all manner of measures, each attempting to
quantify the unquantifiable: "One shot stops." "Knockout index." "Wound channel
volume." There are more, and none of them ever seem to agree (at least most of
the time) on what actually works.
Well, folks, hunters have known something for a very long time, and it has been
proven in the field again and again: to reliably put the brakes on a living
entity, a bullet must do what I call The Twin Tasks.
1) It has to get to something the body finds important, and
2) It has to do rapid and significant damage to that thing when it arrives.
That's it. Either, by itself, simply won't deliver the results we seek - at
least, not in the physical sense. If the projectile fails at either of these
Tasks, any success that occurs is in fact a product of psychological
incapacitation, which we already know to be both unpredictable and unreliable.
Keep in mind that as the bullet traverses the target, it may repeat the Tasks;
in other words, it may encounter more than one thing the body finds important.
The more times that it does, and then completes the second Task, the faster the
incapacitation is likely to occur. (Note that I didn't say "will", only "likely
to". Handgun rounds are underpowered things, and with them nothing is ever
certain.)
Within certain limits, it doesn't really matter what the caliber is or what the
bullet is made of or how fast it travels, as long as it does both of the Tasks.
That's why there seems to be such a wide range of calibers, weights and
velocities that have shown "good" results in self defense shootings, and why
arguments about "stopping power" rage on the gun forums: there is, as the saying
goes, more than one way to skin a cat.
Remember, as long as both Tasks are accomplished, the envelope of "how" they are
is large enough to encompass a variety of approaches.
The reason that the "heavy and slow" and "light and fast" bullet camps exist is
because, generally, their choices just happen do both of those Tasks on a fairly
regular basis. Arguing about which is the "better" approach is really quite
silly, because when they work it's because they did both Tasks, regardless of
the actual mechanism; when they fail, it is simply because they didn't do one
(or both) of the Tasks, again regardless of their physical attributes.
It's at this point that someone invariably chimes in "but my cousin is engaged
to a girl whose brother-in-law heard about a guy who saw someone shot a fifteen
times with a 9mm, and the victim was still able to walk into a French
restaurant, order a 5-course meal, eat, chat with the sommelier, and stiff the
waiter before finally collapsing on the sidewalk while waiting for his cab!
That's why I carry a .467 Loudenboomer Ultra Grande - if it hits them in the
pinky the hydrostatic shock wave will knock them down!"
I'm exaggerating, you understand, but if you regularly haunt the gun forums
you'll recognize that it isn't all that far off.
Yes, small caliber bullets fail. Guess what? Large caliber bullets fail, too. As
someone once told me, "put on your big-boy pants and deal with it!"
A good friend of mine gave me a first-hand account of a battle incident wherein
a fellow absorbed several large caliber, solid torso hits, and was still able to
jump from his vehicle and cross a road before finally collapsing. The gun in
question? A .50 caliber heavy machine gun.
Yes, you read that correctly. Sometimes, folks, nothing works.
Our job, then, is to choose those calibers and bullets which seem to do the Two
Tasks fairly reliably, and prepare to deal with the times that it just isn't
enough. (With handgun rounds, those times are more common than the gunshop
commandoes would have you believe.)
In the next installment, we'll take a layman's look at the physics involved.
END
Pretty good, huh? Use THIS link to read the rest of the series!!