Sarge, please forgive my assumption as to your backstory vis a vis "layman" status. I drew an inference based on your statement that the bullet stopped short of the heart, a statement I've heard from some others (all laymen) who DO make the assumption that if that bullet had somehow reached the heart the fight would have stopped there.
So you're asserting that a second, perforating (exit) wound to the chest wall would have no effect on the Platt's ability to press the fight for four minutes?
Sorry, I made no such assertion. But I will make two points based on my experience with handgun bullet GSW's. First, handgun bullets, including 45 ACP bullets, are very unlikely to perforate the chest anteroposteriorly, and I've never seen one perforate completely travelling transversely.
Would an exit wound on the left side of Platt's chest have caused him to stop fighting more quickly? It's pure speculation on anyone's part. But my guess is that it would not have. Platt fought on despite wounds that would have caused most men to lie down and die, out of pure meanness, demon possession, or some other motivating force. A second pneumothorax due to an exit wound might have stopped him a bit sooner, yes, but looking at the timeline of his actions in this fight, Hanlon and Dove would almost certainly still have died even if he'd only fought half as long as he did.
If the incoming shot had impacted his spinal column with enough remaining momentum to disrupt it- still no difference?
Again, I did not mention anything about a spinal hit. Dove's bullet's trajectory was well anterior to the spine, and as such would not have hit it or damaged it.
But there is no question that bullets passing anteroposteriorly in the middle of the chest do often cause spinal injuries and sometimes spinal cord injuries as well. I have a couple of cases in my files, one a 9mm bullet, the other a 40 S&W bullet, that caused significant spinal cord injury and instantaneous paralysis.
And is a 115 grain 9mm Silvertip or 230 grain 45 FMJ more likely to go 'completely through the chest' and accomplish either?
As I wrote above, neither is likely to completely transect the chest. If that
was my goal for some reason, I'd select a high-velocity 9mm 147 gr FMJ bullet, which has a higher SD than a 45 caliber 230 gr FMJ bullet, and is the proven "uber-penetrating" bullet in gelatin tests (45+ inches of penetration vs 25+ inches, to the best of my recollection).
As I said earlier, I don't care what you or anybody else carries. Just don't tell me a 9mm JHP will do the same damage when intervening limbs are hit.
And I don't care what you carry.
But I will tell you exactly that. We're talking about modern bonded handgun bullets, which expand reliably and hold together very reliably. Because of this and the significantly higher velocity of the 9mm, it could actually do
more damage than the 45.
I've written this and been quoted on before, and the vast preponderance of wound ballistics research bears this out: among service caliber handgun bullets, the anatomic and physiologic damage caused by a bullet is far more a function of its path and what structures it passes through than the caliber or construction of the bullet itself.
This assertion does not extend to bullets/cartridges outside of the standard service caliber class. OIf you were to take that same 230 gr 45 ACP bullet and drive it out of a 460 Rowland handgun at 1300 fps (equivalent to a hot 9mm 115 gr load), it will vastly outperform any 9mm bullet/round in existence. But within the defined parameters of modern service/defense rounds, these generalizations do most certainly apply.
