Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns .45 ACP +P Speer Gold Dots...Not Impressed!

My 45s are loaded with 230 gr Ball for only one reason.......I bought about fifty pounds of the darn things.
The price was just too good to pass up.

If you read anything I said, you will know I favor heavy bullets. Stay warm.

Dan

Kevin, I have shot enough game to influence my opion and Yea I believe that a bullet without enough penetration to reach the heart from any angle is not a good thing.
I have a realitve that is a Major on a Metropolitan Polic Department and he told me of an amazing story about a shooting that he investigated when he was on patrol. It seems that 2 men got into an arguement and one of them pulled a 38 and shot the other one in the forehead. When he went to the hospital to check on the one that got shot, the man was sitting up in bed talking and laughing with his visiters. My realative went to the Doctor and ask what is the deal, the doctor said the bullet pentratated the skull and the front of the bullet entered the brain just enough to say that in penetrated the brain and the doctor just removed the bullet and that the was and would be fine.
Yep, you can have all off those LOW penetrators that you want, but not me.

Jwp �

I�ll do you one better. About 1990, I treated a gentleman who was shot dead smack in the forehead with a .45 ACP, close enough that the guy couldn�t see because of powder burns to his eyes (I�m guessing 2-3 feet distance). When I arrived, the guy was conscious and alert, not in a tremendous amount of pain other than his eyes. There was an entrance wound about 1� above the right eyebrow and an exit wound above and to the rear of the right ear. On examination of the exit wound, I could see skull, but it was intact.

As it turned out, the bullet glanced off of the skull, traveled sub-cutaneously around the head and exited near the ear. At the hospital, the ER doc showed me the X-Ray which was quite cool. On the inside of the skull, there was coning (a piece of skull that was knocked off. Think of when a BB hits a window, and the cone shaped piece of glass drops out on the other side, but leaves the window intact), but no penetration. The doc said he would probably still need surgery, but otherwise he would be fine�never did find out about his eyes though.

The point being, NO handgun will reliably crack the skull�the key word here is reliably.

I'll be willing to bet that the bullet was a round nose ball and that the bullet struck on an angle. This type of thing happening with round nose bullets is well documented. A flat point is much less likely to do such, although nothing is 100%. I played ball in a mens league in the 70s that had been shot a point blank range with a 16 guage duck load as he was getting into the duck blind. The charge entered his solr plex, amazing that he survived, much less making the full recovery as he did... Iam in the penetration camp none the less 12" minimum....

JWP - I honestly don't know what the load is, but I've always suspected exactly what you do. But this isn't the first non-cranium penetration I've come across...In fact, for a few years, it was so common it became rather comical (at least to me). I've seen failures to penetrate the skull from .223, .22lr, .25ACP, .32ACP, .44 mag and .45ACP (I think that's the list-sad memory).

As you can imagine, I'm not a big fan of the head shot, but I'll take it if I have to. I didn't say handguns cant penetrate the skull, just not reliably.

Personally, I don't concern myself too much with penetration or expansion...I'm worried about shot placement. I've treated enough GSW's to know that deep penetration is rarely needed...But I'll agree that it's desirable in many circumstances.

When people seek to increase the velocities of cartridges like the 9mm and .45acp while at the same time, lowering the projectile weight, they are headed in the wrong direction. They buy into the "velocity kills" claim rather than staying with the "reach the vitals" school of thought. I don't really like hollow points. I like truncated cones. Give me a nice flat point with a solid bullet and not much will go wrong...other than perhaps over penetration.

Dan

Hey Kevin, ever see a head shot where the fellow shot wasn't out of the fight?

Now we are in agreement here, ecept the "so called over penetration". I beleive that over 70% of the shots fired by the police are misses, so the over penetrating the bad guy being undesirable is a bit missleading, IMHO....

Tracks - Yes, but it was a weak case. Home invasion and the home owner came out armed with a baseball bat. BG was hiding behind a door and shot the home owner in the head at near contact range with a .32ACP (Davis IIR). The bullet hit the skull, bounced right back and exited the same hole it came in through. The home owner proceeded to beat the living stuffing out of the BG (got a big kick out of that).

On the other side of the coin, I've seen at least two incidents where exactly the opposite occurred.

Both cases were drive by shootings where the "victim" was convinced they had been shot, dropped to the ground and were actually shocky (low BP, high pulse, looked like hell, cool, clammy skin etc.) on arrival. Physical exam showed no wound whatsoever, but the guy was convinced he was dying.

My partner and I, both times, had a significant pucker factor going. If we released a guy at the scene who was convinced he was shot, but we couldn't find a wound...and then he died...we'd be flippin burgers the rest of our lives. We went over both (one was convinced he was hit in the head, and the other in the abdomen), with a fine tooth comb and found nothing.

The guy with the phantom head wound, we actually transported and started Advanced Life Support treatment because his vital signs were so bad. He perked up about half way to the hospital.

Physchosomatic response is a powerful thing.

Dan,

Question for you...Why would you choose a non-expanding TC (awfully Jeff Cooper of you) design over a JHP? Worse case with the JHP you get TC performance...best case, you get perfect JHP performance. With 230 grain JHP's, the average penetration is near to *20" so penetration couldn't be a concern is it?

*In bare gelatin

Kevin, if one can get 20+ inches of penetration then there is no problem. That amount of pentration is problematic with today JHP IME. I have a 230 grain Gold Dot 45 ACP bullet that expanded as large as a quarter and as expected penetration was minimal. Not every gold Dot has over expanded this way, but it is definately a possability. With a TC flat point one gets good wound channels and always excellent penetration...

The Psychosomatic response is the exact reason that the Even Marshal results are so suspect as he gives no regard to actual wound damage only whether or not hostilities ceased. While cessation of hostilities is great, suffice it to say that psychosomatic stops are irrelevant when dealing with a determined attacker

Many years ago I had to try and keep a guy alive long enough to get to a hospital. He had been shot by an undercover cop (with damn good cause) with a snubbie .38. Bullet went thru the upper right arm and into one lung. The guy was damn near bled out when we got him, all I could do was bandage the arm and pour Oxygen into him
I figured the guy would die, but a few years later I mentioned it to someone who knew him. The three uf us went out and got drunk together in some Mexican bar in Riverside Calif. He seemed to think I'd saved his life or something.
Bad dude, he and three of his buds spotted the cop for a Narc and were going to take him out and kill him, but the cop pulled a hideout, shot the driver (my guy), killed the front seat passenger, and nailed one of the back seat guys running, back of the head at about 25 yards

Kevin:

Jeff Cooper? Elmer Keith? The question comes down to the right bullet for the right game. Dangerous game gets a heavy where expansion isn't the primary quest. Shooting people qualifies as dangerous game because they are doing something dangerous to me or to someone else.

I've hung up my badge and credentials so I no longer care about the latest "Ed Sanow" wonder projectile. The world can keep spinning without me. I know what works...er what has worked, and I like solidly constructed bullets. By the way, my TCs in .45 are lead so there may be some expansion. The other TCs I carry say expanding on the box. Evidently the cone is exposed lead that is then copper plated. Haven't shot them in anything that would demonstrate that property.

As has been pointed out, a conservative estimate of rounds fired by law enforcement involves 70% misses. After 25 years of law enforcement, I'd have to say that estimate is low. I'd put it closer to 80% or even higher now that the semi-automatic pistol is in every holster.

People, CCWs, homeowners/property owners, kill several times more felons every year than do the cops. Most of them aren't carrying the most expensive anti-personnel ammo they can buy. Most of them probably don't even know what they are carrying as far as bullet construction, velocity, bullet weight etc. They shoot and the bad guy either dies or makes his getaway dribbling blood. While we decry overpenetration, we seldom read about a case of it. In fact, I can't remember a case of it. What we do read about is cops missing a lot. Dozens of rounds fired...perp hit once or twice (on a good day and not at all most times.)

No my friend, I believe over penetration is a buzzword that has little actual value in the discussion. It represents a potential tragedy, but it falls into the category of building a bomb shelter at your home...in the mountains!

I have nothing against hollowpoints. Nothing at all. They are probably "provably" better projectiles than the ones I choose to stoke my pistols with. I want to be able to break auto glass. I want to be able to sent a bullet at an angle through my patio door (making appropriate adjustments to my aiming point of course), I want to know that if the perp takes refuge behind my couch, I can use up a magazine feeling him out and flushing him for my dog to chew on! My Uncle Sheridan killed a Kraut by slowly cutting through a big pine tree with a Browning .50 until the poor soul had no where else to go. I didn't ask if his hands were up when he stepped out from behind the tree coz it's none of my business.

Regards

Dan

Tracks

It looks like the bullet ended the fight admirably. What more could be asked?

Dan

I can only recall one incident of overpenetration leading to an innocent being killed. A local agency had a bad guy take a golddot from a .357sig (not positive on the weight but I believe 125gr) exits badguy chest, passes through a hollow core interior door and hits second subject hiding behind the door in the head which was ultimately a fatal wound.

Underpenetration had been the case more often. I took a report where an intoxicated subject shot himself in the temple with a .380 silvertip that did not punch the skull, he then tired the other side with the same results. Now really depressed at his failure he cleaned up the blood, put on a beanie and went back out the party and later passed out. The wounds were discovered by a medic when he was being treated for alcohol poisoning.

If forget who said it but "act like your carrying a .25 with ball ammo and act accordingly" is always good advice.

I've loved this discussion. Thank you all.

Dan

I just picked up 10 bx/50 of the Speer GoldDot +P HPs for $217/shipped. That seemed like a good deal so if these perform as touted, I'll be a happy camper....

Well . . . .

Kevin has treated a Lot of GSWs.

Kevein Said Short Barrel GOld Dots.

I figgered, "Kevin's probably right."

So that's what I shoot in my 44 Mag.

Sometimes, I think too much. But I get smarter as I get older, and just go with what has worked for everybody else.

BMT