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Life is full of engineering tradeoffs. Corvettes are more fun than Honda's . But Honda's are cheaper to own and run. Owning a Honda allows me to buy other nice things. The thing is that there are hard facts we can use to compare when choosing a car, things like; cost, resale value, fuel economy, acceleration, top speed, and handling comparisons.

Unfortunately there are no hard statistics when comparing how fast a particular bullet will stop someone. We do have ballistic gelatin testing which although can give us some good information on wound characteristics and penetration. Unfortunately, it's not perfect. We don't have any quantitative data, on this mysterious quality called stopping power. Some bullets will stop a human being faster than others. We know that bullet energy, expansion, and bullet mass are all factors. What we don't know how all these factors factor in on how fast the it will stop a threat.

It would be nice if there were actual facts rather than war stories from random police officers, If substantial data could be gathered maybe we could determine what bullet factors contribute to a faster "stop". Is it diameter, bullet weight, louder sounds, or greater skills of a 1911 operator over a Glock operator? Or maybe 1911s are more accurate? Maybe we can do some test on feral pigs or ISIS detainees, but without clear data though, reports of faster perp takedowns are just stories and rumors.
I'm not saying that .45 isn't a good caliber, cause it is. In fact, most of us understand that it's as good if not better ballistically than a 9mm. There are so many other factors. Weapons choice, ammo costs, recoil and availability.

The Annoyed Man wrote:
I will say this..... there have been a few times when shooting at falling steel plates that one of my 9mm bullets has hit the plate square on, dead center, and failed to knock it over; but a hit from a .45 puts the plate down with authority. I have ended up trying to place my 9mm shots on the plate so as to maximize the amount of leverage the impact has against the hinge. You never have to do that with a .45. I am fairly certain that a couple of 230 grain HST JHPs at a muzzle velocity/energy of 890 fps/404 ft-lb will hit someone harder than a couple of 135 grain Critical Duty JHPs at 1010 fps/306 ft-lb.

I don't know what you're using for range ammo, but you might consider Winchester WB NATO. It packs a little more punch than typical range ammo. I use it because it has similar recoil characteristics to my defensive loads. and it cost maybe a buck more than the standard WWB stuff

The thing is if you have 1911s you need the spare parts.