"Stopping Power is a myth."
Depends on what you mean by stopping power. Right?
"Oh, so we are defining terms? Fair enough"
Yes.
"This bigger pistol bullet is better than that very slightly smaller pistol bullet. And has a much better of STOPPING a bad guy, right there."
Ok, yeah, that meaning... Stopping power is a myth.
"Why, what other definitions are there?"
Well, when I was just a wee ignernt gunnie, I thought stopping power was how effecting the bullet design was in 'STOPPING' inside a bad guy, thus transferring all its energy to said bad guy, vis a through and through wound. A good hollow point doing what it was supposed to do and expand had better stopping power than plain FMJ hard ball ammo.
"I never thought of it that way..."
Yeah, but I was dissuaded pretty quickly of that definition to yours. Your def being the more accepted one, I think, from other folks' context. I prolly would have been 'educated' sooner if I had read more gun magazines growing up. Before 2007 I probably had 3 Soldier of Fortunes under my belt, total.
That said, if MY definition was the rule, it still would not account for penetration. Who cares if the bullet stops in the bad guy but only in the first half inch. That's a punch that hurts, but not a hard one. Penetration PLUS energy transfer PLUS disruption of the circulatory and/or nervous system. And we ain't in ideal territory with either 9mm or .45ACP
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So, the winner of the stopping power contest is . . .
The Howdah. A pistol-sized, large caliber weapon, somewhere around 20 gauge, used in India in the 19th Century to keep tigers from crawling up the rear of elephants to get at the hunters in the Howdah on the elephant's back.
Either a pistol bullet goes through something important or it doesn't. This isn't hard to figure out.
Tam is right about going through something important but there is killng and there is "stopping". It could be someone has their death wound but the keep on coming which is as I understand it that the military went to the 45 when their 38's wouldnt stop the juiced up moros in the Philipeans. If you are dealing with a druggie or a charging grizzly bear you need to either hit the central nervous system or do enough damage to cause overwelming shock. Heavy clothing can be a factor in penetration also especially with hollow points. I favor heavy for the caliber flat point bullets. I usually load 180gr hard lead in my .357 mag here in Alaska.
I figure shooting anything is like shooting deer. 90% of the time the one hit does it, and does it immediately. You don't have to train much for what to do with shot #2 on that 90%. The thing is over. But man, that other 10% can be problematic. For a deer there might be some serious walking. For bad guys, that is what a lot of gun training is about.
Well, if bad guys ran away, leaving a tiny hard to follow blood trail, that is fine by me. I'm not following that. But that isn't what is likely to happen.
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