Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Why Ballistics Gel Works And Caliber Arguments Are Dumb

Any body that believes that the best loads in a 45 is no more effective than the loads in a 9mm are full of BS. I’ve shot way too many head of game with both to buy that crap.

Over the past 45 years I’ve seen countless new pistol loads offered as the ne plus ultra of anti-personnel loads and I’ve seen the FBI christen ‘ideal’ service cartridges three times now- followed by a stampede of lemmings behind them. Frankly I’d rather watch Bullwinkle than suffer through another one. At least Bullwinkle was written by witty people who assumed their audience capable of conscious thought.

If we ever solved the cartridge debates, what would we talk about?

Uh nope
I personally know someone that took a CCI Mini mag Hollow Point from a 6-1/2 barrel Ruger single six at a range of less than 3 inches from a drunk woman who was fugging around with a loaded gun she thought was unloaded.

The bullet struck him 3 inches below his nipple and 2-1/2 left of dead center of his chest.

Guy instantly thought it was a lung shot and walked to his kitchen about 40 feet away and grabbed a couple of plastic sandwich bags and held over the entrance and exit wound to keep the lung from sucking in air and collapsing his lung.

He sat on the couch for about 20 minutes waiting for the ambulance to arrive.

Ended up the bullet did not hit his lung but did hit his kidney,he had one tube going in to pump blood in and a tube sucking blood out of his penis .This after an hour long ambulance ride to the hospital..After a long surgery he was in the hospital for a couple of weeks and pissed blood for about a year.He survived and was not incapacitated by the shot IE could have done anything he wanted to .

Rare occurrence? Maybe

But to state that any shot to the chest is an instant death is not correct.
would identical shot placement with a 9mm or 45 killed him ? who knows as the wider bullet might have caught the heart or Major artery.Maybe not.

as a youth my friends dad worked as an anchorman for a local TV station, we hunted with many of the local sheriffs deputies as he know a lot of them. The de rigueur shooting instrument for the African American drinking establishments back in the day was some type of cheap 22 LR, I recall 3 stories of dead men shot with 22 LR's that did not make it to the door of the bar. More recently in my current location a black woman unloaded a ruger mark 1 into a rapist he did not make it out the door either. Like I said earlier until you get to 2300FPS pistol bullets are all about the same. Had the man in your story been shot by a .380, 9mm or 45ACP how can you say it would have been different? You just don't know until you have 250 shootings to tabulate ....

but thinking about this more why is it some hunters feel like they have to have a magnum of some type to kill a 100 pound WT Deer? Some can do just as well with a 223 and the right bullets as another cannot do with a 300WM.

So bullets matter more than headstamps?

Jimmy keeps posting all handgun bullets are the same and that is total BS, there are bullets for the 38 Special that would have went through his breat bone and through his chest. Bullets are not all the same fir handguns and neither are the wound channels.

The FBI specced out ammunition for their needs. They apparently train to get a lot closer to their bad guys than I do and work with a lot of people in the area. I typically work alone on Indian reservations and am not too worried about overpenetation, but am concerned about being ambushed or prevented from egressing on a muddy or snow-drifted, dirt road. My agency won't allow rifles, which would be my first choice in this scenario. So I prefer the heaviest bullets that are issued at the fastest speeds. Our 165 gr .40 ammo goes at about the same velocity as a 124 gr 9mm, (in general, or at least in the brands my agency usually buys) so to me, it's a no-brainer.

As is typical, we qualify from up to 25 yards. How about some ammo tests against Carhartt's and a wool shirt, thermal underwear, etc. at 25-35 yards?

I am going to buy the Underwood Lehigh 380’s. Your using a G42 to test them? I am going to use a P380. Did you see the Underwood 115 grain extreme penetrator 10mm at 1700 FPS!! Makes you wonder.

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If you believe that BS then hunt deer with a 380 and test the 20% theory.

Yeah, me too. Deer and humans are close but pain does not have the same affect on deer and are shot to take both lungs with a second hole to bleed a blood trail. I will not even use the 1911 for deer no matter the bullet. Even when you consider the 230 gr or more bullet compared to a 90 gr .380. Weight equals penetration so bullets are made to expand faster for people shooting and they stop before vitals.
A .22 is mentioned so much and it can kill just like any gun but hunting PA with archery I killed many, many deer that when cutting I found lumps on the chest walls. Looked like cancer so I cut to drop out a .22 bullet that had gone through both lungs. I also killed 4 deer with 6" of arrow inside with broadheads that had healed up. I developed a fear to reach inside deer.
Now the .223, Friends daughter used one, shot a nice doe and it ran with no blood trail. Whitworth was with us and we searched with no luck. An hour later I went to my stand and found her deer, almost 300 yards from where hit. I gutted and found the bullet made 6" only, no bone. I convinced him to get her a 30-30 and she loves it and has taken a lot of bucks with it.
If you can't kill a deer with a gun cleanly I would not shoot a man with it either. You will not get 20" of penetration in a human with a .380, forget it.
.44 mag can be too much with penetration too but watching shooting shows had a guy hang water filled balloons on a rack and he caught the bullet in no. 5 with a factory load, NOT a hunting bullet. I have pictures but every thing I try to post is too large.

I started going DIY on that kind of stuff! I use water jugs but I am thinking about springing for some ClearBallistics gel.