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Speaking of ignorance of firearms in fiction and movies, this thread reminds me of why, about halfway into the first episode of NBC's series La Brea, I changed the channel and never watched it again. There were CGI dire wolf-looking critters that stood about 4 feet at the shoulder; at that size, had to be pushing 400+ pounds. One takes a running leap at one of the human castaways. While it's flying through the air, another castaway shoots what looks to be a .38 from a revolver at the creature, broadside, perpendicular to its jump. Naturally, the .38 round not only felled the massive creature with one shot, DRT, but stopped it on a dime, hurling it instantaneously sideways off it's flight path.

Now that right there is one heckuva .38 Detective Special. Maybe that's what we should be using to shoot down unknown balloons instead of $400K missiles.

Late getting back here again, but found a comparative reference that might serve: https://webpath.med.utah.edu/TUTORIAL/GUNS/GUNBLST.html. Doesn't address the matter directly, but does discuss what a shotgun would present...and it's highly doubtful to me that a 9x19, even if the bullet tumbled and it struck obliquely, would create a 1" entry.

At close range (less than 4 feet) [a shotgun] entrance wound would be about 1 inch diameter, and the wound cavity would contain wadding. At intermediate range (4 to 12 feet) the entrance wound is up to 2 inches diameter, but the borders may show individual pellet markings. Wadding may be found near the surface of the wound. Beyond 12 feet, choke, barrel length, and pellet size determine the wounding.

Thomas Fincham? Yet another novelist who doesn't bother to do much in the way of research when using firearms in his books. His kind are legion. Which has always baffled me. Some movies, I get it: the director wants something visually specific and doesn't care about the millions of people who know anything about small arms. A shotgun blowing someone off their feet and hurling them 10 feet across the room. Indiana Jones never running out of ammunition and never reloading his revolver.

But writers? If the novel is a farce or absurdism or fantasy/science fiction, that's one thing. But if it's intended to be realistic, it takes all of about five or 10 minutes to search the internet or ask on a forum like this one; I think Reddit even has SubReddits specifically for firearms questions and one for writers to ask technical questions.

If it is the Fincham novel I'm thinking of, the thing is chocked through with problems. Whatever happened to "write what you know?" When our plucky detective walks into the crime scene, there is the "smell of cordite in the air." Uh huh. So, considering cordite hasn't been used since around 1945, the family was shot with a WWII firearm? A forensic conundrum: a WWII or earlier firearm that fires a bullet that makes an entry hole 65% larger than the bullet's diameter. One super great thing about eBooks: they let me start something like this and File 13 it after a couple of chapters without having to worry about recycling.