Posted on 12/24/2014 8:10:34 PM PST by Jeff Chandler
Detailed -- and interesting -- information about an impressive firearm.
Yep... I never went back in a lake or river for recreation again after seeing that scene.
According to this, a .44 Mag with wadcutters (or JHP) packs a rating of 136.
http://bushcraftusa.com/forum/showthread.php/15722-Stopping-Power-of-Handgun-Cartridges
In a firefight, I’d rather have an AR-15 in 6.8mm or an AR-10 in .308, with soft point or hollow point ammo.
Well, I would agree with you on the very rare, valuable, or interesting provenance items ("let's rip a few .45 ACP in that U.S. Army trials Luger to see if it works!").
However, on some items with delicate lock work (Colt Lightnings and Thunderers come to mind) functionality does indeed improve value. I like early S&W DA's, and their primary value is as shooters.
That’s the one. Open carry or cross chest concealed. No better carry weapon.
Tell that to the US Army who developed the Hatcher Relative Stopping Power Scale under General Julian Hatcher (then Colonel) who was charged with find a method for determining the best side arm for military use, Mr Rogers. I spoke of hitting something vital with the neat holes . . . a dying eventually as the target bleeds out. The death is unimportant in STOPPING POWER. . . which is where you miss the point. SHOCK to the body is the point, to STOP the person in a FIGHT situation from continuing his action. . . not necessarily to kill immediately but to STOP him. You STOP them with energy delivered to the target. You can kill someone with a minor amount of poison delivered which will kill them in minutes, hours, days later. . . but that does not STOP them instantly from shooting back at you.
And I addressed "hollow point bullets" when I wrote about bullets that are designed to increase the cross-sectional density of smaller, lighter bullets to slow them down. That covers hollow point or any bullet that is designed to expand in size on impact. You really don't know what you are talking about. . . in this case. I do. Sorry.
Those are bogus numbers. . . how can you have a 136 on a scale that only goes to 100? i.e. 100% of the time you can stop a man in a fight situation with one shot. It simply is not possible. These people who make up these numbers are using theoretical numbers based on velocity and bullet weight and NOT the entire SYSTEMIC data which also includes the firearm in the data. Without understanding the involvement of the firearm in the ability to deliver the round to the target, it is meaningless. How would that .44Mag perform if shot our of a 2" barrel? Not as well as if it were shot out of a 4" bbl gun and even better when shot from a 8 3/8" bbl'd firearm. Another consideration is WHAT is the target and its situation? How thick is the body? What distance will the bullet have to traverse? These over 100 numbers do not ever consider any of these data in their numbers that exceed unity. How do you stop someone more than once? As I said, it is not possible.
Functionality and the ability to safely fire a round are two entirely different things. A Damascus barreled shotgun may be perfectly functional, but completely unsafe to fire. . . because the method of manufacturing the barrel allowed corrosion between the wire wrapping pattern that was hammer welded. . . and over the years since it was manufactured, just by age, it has weakened, no matter how good it looks. Internally, the physically welded joined wires are no longer strong enough to take the pressures. As i told my customers Damasus and other barrels made by similar hammer welded means would shoot from now until Doomsday. . . yours. But no one knows when that doomsday would come as the metal lets go due to corrosion and fatigue. I had several Damascus barrels I kept where the chambers had blown to show them why these guns were now only wall hangers. . . and should NEVER be taken out into the field. They would probably do OK with black powder loaded shells, but they would chamber smokeless shells just fine. . . and blow up! No way should they be put in a position where that could happen accidentally.
A gunsmith can tell you if the timing and functionality of a Colt Lightning or Thunderer is working correctly without firing the gun, which puts it at risk of destruction. . . a badly timed revolver is a danger to itself and its user. My thinking was more on the antique flintlocks and cap and ball firearms. . . but also to any black powder antiques. If one wants to shoot them, use a replica. EVERY modern firing of an antique detracts from the value a bit. . . because it has to be cleaned and both shooting and cleaning are going to add wear and tear to the firearm and potentially destroy it. Why take the risk?
A few years back there was an interesting article in The Double Gun Journal, where the author rounded up a collection of dubious “wall hangers” and fired them (in a stand from a distance) with modern SAAMI proof loads. Forends popped off, guns came open, stocks cracked, but he failed to get a single blow up of the barrels.
Parker, I understand, had the option of damascus barrels into the 1920’s. Vintage shooters can have a gun re-proofed, or inspected by one of several gunsmiths who specialize in these barrels. Many have been found safe for use with black powder ammo, or the low pressure loads such as RST. There is a whole “low pressure” loading group at 16ga.com. I roll a 16 gauge 2 1/2” 7/8th ounce load that develops about 5000 psi max for my older guns (fluid steel barrels).
Your scale is bogus. It was always bogus. There is no shocking power with a handgun. With a rifle, sometimes. With a handgun, no.
“Unfortunately, although many still don’t realize it, the Thompson-LeGarde tests were fatally flawed and revealed nothing about handgun stopping power.
The first test protocol involved shooting hung human cadavers and attempting to measure the swing imparted by the impact of a pistol bullet. No rigorous attempt was made to choose corpses of identical size and weight. No examination of the permanent crush cavity caused by the bullet’s impact was made. Nor was there any attempt to determine if this test had any scientific correlation with actual stopping power. (You will probably not be surprised to find that it doesn’t.)
The second test protocol involved shooting live cattle with the same small number of handgun calibers and loads. (I believe this took place at a slaughter house.) No attempt was made to differentiate between the sex of the animals, their size, or their vitality. Nor was their any attempt to standardize the number of shots fired at any one animal. Some were shot once, some twice and some animals were shot three (or possibly more) times. Thus, any comparison of loads was fatally flawed from the outset. If you read the raw Thompson-LeGarde data, you will discover that almost all of the animals were finally put down by a sledgehammer blow, not their pistol wounds. I actually read the results of the individual steer tests and the only steer I remember being killed outright by a bullet was hit with a high velocity round from a .30 Mauser pistol, which created secondary bone fragments that quickly killed the animal. However, Thompson and LeGarde ignored this result and did not conclude that the U.S. military should adopt the .30 Mauser cartridge.
These unfortunate bovines were vastly bigger and physically very different from human beings, which means that even had the Thompson-LeGarde testing on live steers been a carefully controlled study, which it was not, the results were inherently meaningless if applied to humans. The only valid conclusion based on the Thompson-LeGarde steer shootings is that no handgun caliber tested was effective at “stopping” steers...
...In particular, Colonel Hatcher extrapolated from the Thompson-LeGarde non-results his formula for Relative Stopping Power, to which he added bullet form coefficients based entirely on his personal and subjective opinion about the effect of bullet material (lead or FMJ) and nose shapes (mostly RN and flat point variations) on stopping power. Hatcher completely ignored expanding bullets of any sort in devising his formula. The result was rating the .45 ACP, 230 grain RN/FMJ service load a 95% effective one shot man stopper, which is a huge over estimation of that load’s actual effectiveness. The bottom line is that the Hatcher formula, based as it was on Thompson-LeGarde extrapolated into a mathematical formula, is worthless for comparing the actual stopping power of various handgun calibers and loads.”
http://www.chuckhawks.com/handgun_stopping_power.htm
“SHOCK to the body is the point, to STOP the person in a FIGHT situation from continuing his action.”
It doesn’t happen. If the bullet doesn’t hit anything vital, the person can still function. If the person is determined, he can function with anything short of severe damage to the central nervous system. Try reading the FBI, which took a more scientific approach that Hatcher did:
http://www.firearmstactical.com/pdf/fbi-hwfe.pdf
Or, they may be stopped by psychological reasons - they know they have been hit and their body thinks the proper response is to stop. That is why a 22 LR has had many one shot stops, and why the 45 has often failed: it all depends on what you hit and how determined the person is.
Any hunter knows you can gut shoot a deer with a 375 H&H Magnum and have it run away, or drop it with a 243 that hits a vital. You can also shoot a deer in the heart with either of those and have it run for 10 seconds. Or drop with one shot. It depends on the deer and what you hit.
You know what I’m writing is correct. Would you prefer to be shot in the shoulder with a 45 or in the heart with a 38? Which one will stop you first?
“Realistic Expectations: I think this is where we go astray; we expect way too much from our handguns. Hunters have known that seemingly equivalent shots on similar animals can produce very differing results. One may instantly drop while the other runs, yet both received lethal hits to the heart/lung area. This is so often seen that’s it’s accepted. Deadly force scenarios for most of us are much rarer and there are folks interested in self-protection that have no experience in hunting; they have never seen anything shot. They have never seen a deer with a shredded heart run a hundred yards. They have seen shoot-em’-ups on television and movies. Many of us do not have the proper “respect” for what adrenaline can do and most have not witnessed the damage a person on PCP can withstand and just keep going!
If a 150 pound deer can be shot through the heart with a .30-06 180-gr. expanding bullet at 2700 ft/sec and keep moving, should we expect that a 200 pound human hit with a 180-gr. expanding forty-caliber bullet at 975 ft/sec to be instantly incapacitated?
I believe it’s an unrealistic expectation to assume that any defensive pistol cartridge will deck a human being as though struck by lightning. It will happen on some occasions, but not all and probably not the majority...
...If you shoot a forty-five as well as a 9mm, go with the former, but do not expect it to be vastly superior to the nine. With equivalent hits, I doubt that much if any difference will be seen. If one does better with the 9mm, I’d cast my lot with it. Once you have a caliber capable of adequate penetration and expansion, placement is power.”
http://www.snubnose.info/docs/No_faith.htm
There is also a very good discussion found here:
Cool. The Kentucky Long Rifle of the 2nd Revolution.
Cool. The Kentucky Long Rifle of the 2nd Revolution.
Great photo shop. He could shoot the eye out ... of the neighbor in the next block!
Thank you for the links Mr Rogers. I have been out of the gun industry since the late 70s. . . and obviously there has been a lot of work done on this subject since then. Thank you for the education. I appreciate it.
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