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WildBill wrote:This debate started before most of the forum members were born.

No, this debate came later. The one you're thinking of is "9mm versus .45 ACP."

loadedliberal wrote:No bad guy is going to like getting shot, I don't care what anyone says weather it's a .25 FMJ or a .44 mag JHP gettin shot hurts all stats aside. Now considering that JHPs are designed for self defense and FMJs for targets its an easy decision for me to make when it comes to my carry ammo and caliber.

No, nobody likes getting shot. But I have personally witnessed people who were shot and didn't know it. When I worked in the ER, we treated a patient who walked in with 4 or 5 entrance wounds in the back. He had driven himself to the hospital. On arrival, he walked up to the triage desk and told the nurse, "I think I've been shot," and then he got light-headed and kind of keeled over. He lived. He had been shot in the back by a .38 Special, as he was running away from a drug deal gone bad. All the hits were solid hits into the lung fields. I'll give the shooter this: to put 4 or 5 rounds into a subject who is running away and hit center of mass with each round is pretty good shooting. But he's lucky the guy was running away, and not toward him, because the vic had the ability to run a couple of blocks to his car, jump in, and then drive it 3 or 4 miles to the hospital, park it, get out, and walk his narrow behind into the ER. If he had it in his mind to kill the shooter, the shooter might well be dead.

Let that be a lesson to those who choose to carry underpowered cartridges. My dinkey little PM9 is stoked with 115 grain Corbon +P DPX. My scandium snubbie is stoked with 125 grain Critical Defense .357s instead of .38s. I'm not foolish enough to think that my .45s are some kind of magic talisman. SEE THIS THREAD. The bad guy absorbed 2 hits COM from bad breath distance, fired from a Glock 36 .45 ACP stoked with Cor-Bon "Pow'R Ball" ammo. The BG alive to tell about it, and so, thankfully, is the CHLer who shot him.

This is primarily why I am not a fan of the .380. I just don't have confidence that it will put someone down in most situations. I don't have confidence that a .45 ACP will put someone down all of the time either, but I have greater confidence in it than in the .380, and that confidence is earned and supported by the data. And being perfectly honest about my own abilities, I am a decent (not great, but decent) shot at the range, and I shoot regularly. But under the duress of an actual shooting, about the only thing that I think I can count on is hitting center of mass. I seriously doubt, with all the adrenaline dump and loss of fine motor control, that I would be able to aim specifically for the sternum, or the hip. Everything that I've ever read or heard first hand from people who have been in a shooting is that it all happens so fast that even if you train and are walking around in condition yellow/orange, you're never really ready for when it happens.

So why handicap yourself with a .380? I do not mean to insult anyone else's choices, and I fully acknowledge that the .380 in your pocket beats the .45 you left at home, but in the current market, where it seems like companies are on a race to develop the smallest micro pocket 9mm and .45 pistols ever made, pistol size ought no longer really a driving force in one's carry caliber decision-making. The Kahr PM9/CM9 disappears into a pocket and is flatter and smaller than even a scandium J-frame .357 (which is another great choice). Kimber makes the 9mm Solo, which is smaller yet. All these guns, and others, are small, light, pocketable, very concealable, and chambered in calibers more powerful than .380. I know it sounds dumb, but you guys are friends, and I worry that someone I know may get hurt because they didn't carry enough gun.

Anyway, that's my 2¢.

Bulldog1911 wrote:

AndyC wrote: Oh - we're playing the "what if" game now.

Isn't that the basis for most of these test's and discussions?

I'm not arguing weather Dr. Fackler or Andy know their stuff. In fact, I believe they do. My original statement was in regards to the physics of the bullet exerting all of it's energy. Considering Dr. Fackler's knowledge, I don't think he would argue the laws of physics that state an object at rest has 0 kenetic energy???? Therefore if the bullet has come to rest inside someone/something it has exerted all of it's energy. You can post as many studies as you would like, but that won't change the laws of physics.

How the bullet preforms upon impact is a separate issue.

The issue isn't whether the bullet dissipates energy along the wound track (it is actually dissipating energy as soon as it leaves the muzzle), it's whether or not the dissipated energy is what performs the wounding action. It isn't. It is the combined crushing/tearing of tissue by the bullet along the wound path, and the hydrostatic shock radiating outward from the bullet along the wound path. And the effect of the hydrostatic shock varies according to the type of tissue through which the bullet is passing.

I remember the first time I read Dr. Fackler's report. It was an eye opener. It was after reading it that I decided that (for me), fat and relatively slow bullets were a better bet than small and relatively fast bullets..............and then there's the .357 magnum.

That's why my carry guns have mostly been chambered in .45 ACP, and the two that are not are chambered in 9mm and .357—both having decent to good penetration with good bullet performance.

AndyC wrote:I don't either - but if I have any doubt about a given bullet's ability to penetrate deeply enough into a human, I'll take one that penetrates more. I'm not dying because my bullet couldn't dig deep enough and it's also very likely that at least one bullet will miss in a gunfight anyway - which would be going a lot faster than one which hit but over-penetrated.

That's why you gotta love .45

AndyC wrote:I'd rather have a wide permanent cavity than a narrow one, sure - but I won't trade penetration for it.

This is why I am not a fan of the frangible ammo types. To me, the best bullet is the one that penetrates deeply without overpenetrating. That would mean a hollowpoint bullet. Obviously, from a purely wounding perspective, the JHP that makes a large permanent wound cavity AND produces an exit wound would be the superior choice—which is why that is a better hunting bullet. But, from a purely safety perspective in a self-defense scenario, I don't want the bullet to exit because it leaves less to worry about downrange.

WickedOwl wrote:I'm still going back and forth between JHP and FMJ, so it will be nice to hear different opinions. Anyone have a good website or video that shows the difference (in penetration) between the two?

You'll put your eye out with that thing....






I found, oddly enough, that hollowpoints feed more reliably in my .380s than hardball does. That said, neither is all that reliable. I don't carry them anymore, partly because of that, and partly because of a general lack of confidence in the cartridge. But that's just me.