Sarge, as I tried to point out in the two posts above, your personal experience is valid and highly pertinent to your decision-making, but it doesn't generalize well.
Your statement about "going through intervening limbs" etc begs the question... do you think 9mm bullets won't do that? Because I can show you a very public shooting where a lowly little 115 gr 9mm bullet fired by Agent Jerry Dove in 1986 shot through Michael Platt's upper arm, then entered his chest and severed his right pulmonary artery and vein, which killed Platt.
Since you've brought up your personal experience (and I am in no way denigrating that, more power to you!) let's talk a bit about personal experience, and its relative uselessness: I've attended (and assisted in) dozens of autopsies and and scores of trauma surgeries, and I've been the treating doctor hundreds of gunshot wounds, and I've killed dozens of deer and hundreds of prairie dogs & gophers... I have fired my weapon in the hot zone, and I have been shot. But does that make my opinion any more valid than yours? Of course not! That's only my personal experience, and it doesn't generalize any better than your personal experience.
When I interview guys who've been in lots of shootings, their personal experiences tend to be no more generalizable than yours or mine. For example, one cop I know on a major metro force has killed (not shot, killed) seven men with his handgun(s), last time I talked to him. It might be 8 or 9 by now. The conclusion "Bill" has drawn from his experience is that he will only shoot bad guys in the head. Period. Now, "Bill" has shot more people to death than I have, or presumably you have... but does his personal conclusion hold water for everybody? No, it really doesn't.
This is why we have to take a step back from our personal experience and look at the results of many, many OIS's and look for the trends there.
Those trends tell us that, when using modern JHP ammunition, there's no difference between 9mm, 38 Special +P, 40 S&W, or 45 ACP. There might be a marginal difference when you factor in 357 Mag, 41 Mag, and 44 Mag, but not much. There is substantial evidence to show that mini-calibers like 380 ACP and smaller are really inferior to the major service calibers.
Last edited by DocRocket; 11/21/14. Reason: clarification
