.22LR For Defense? It’s About Probabilities, Not Possibilities

Probabilities, Not Possibilities

I have a review coming soon on the North American Arms .22LR mini-revolver.  And I’ve just done some ammo tests on the North American Arms .22 Magnum Black Widow mini-revolver.  And that’s got me thinking about bullet effectiveness, caliber, and some of the misconceptions in the gun world, especially with some oft-repeated statements such as:

“The .22LR has killed more people than any other cartridge in history.”

“The .22LR will kill you deader than crap.”

“The caliber wars are over.  Caliber doesn’t matter.”

And that leads us to the holy grail of gun statements:

“The only three things that matter are shot placement, shot placement, and shot placement.”

As with so many other subjects in life, there’s truth in all of the above statements, and all of the above statements can be misused to seriously mislead someone.  So let’s look at them and see if we can’t make some sense out of all this — especially in how it applies to armed self defense.

First — the notion that the .22LR has killed more people than any other caliber.  Is this true? I don’t know — I haven’t seen any studies done that actually attempt to correlate and compare these figures.  It is likely true that .22LR is the most popular caliber in the world, and it is probably true that more accidents happen with .22LR than with any other.  It may be true that more youth get involved in accidents with .22LR than other calibers.  But even if it ends up being true that the .22LR has killed more people than any other caliber, does that make .22LR the best caliber for self defense?  MOST DEFINITELY NOT.  For a number of reasons, but let’s start with the first and most basic — self defense isn’t about “killing” an attacker.  Armed self defense is about STOPPING an attack.  Whether the attacker dies is not our primary focus, and certainly shouldn’t be — after all, if your desire is to “kill” someone, then you’re not acting in self defense, you’re trying to murder someone.  If your intent is to immediately halt someone from doing you imminent serious bodily injury or death, that’s self defense — and stopping someone doesn’t have to leave them dead.

Let’s turn to the second statement — “The .22LR will kill you deader than crap.”  Is this true?  Yes, a .22LR is a lethal caliber that absolutely can kill.  A .22LR is more than enough bullet that, if it hits a vital structure, can bring about incapacitation or death.  But, again, does that make it an appropriate choice for a self-defense caliber?  I would say it has zero bearing on the discussion.  Example: when people die from gunshots, is that always because they were shot in self defense? Obviously not.  Accidents, and assassinations, are not cases of self defense.  .22LR has been used by assassins, with the specific intent to kill — and kill it can — but that cannot be attributed to self defense.  So if someone dies from an assassination or from a gun-related accident, what bearing does that have on the legitimacy of a caliber for being appropriate for self defense? None.  After all, what use is it to you, if you shoot your attacker in the gut with a .22LR, and they then proceed to murder you, and then drive to their friend’s house, get patched up, but get infected and die three days later from peritonitis?  Yes, the .22LR would have killed them — but it would have been useless in stopping them from attacking you.

You should absolutely respect the .22LR.  It is not a toy, it is a deadly cartridge — even from as tiny a firearm as a 1″-barrel micro-revolver.  It definitely is a deadly cartridge, but it is no more deadly than any other cartridge, and, in many ways, it is less deadly.  There is absolutely no terminal effect that a .22LR possesses, that a .380 doesn’t also have*.  The .380 does everything the .22LR does, and it does it with much more energy, more mass, and larger size.  And the 9mm does everything the .380 does, with even more energy, mass, and potentially larger expanded size.  And the .40 does everything the 9mm does, with even more energy, mass, and larger size.  Any of them (and, of course, the .45 and all other larger-than-.22 calibers) can kill just as easily as the .22LR can, but the key thing is that any of them are MORE LIKELY to kill (or injure or stop) a person, as the .22LR is.

*(see comment by Aaron below for an example of a unique terminal property of 22lr)

It’s not that the .22LR can’t stop someone, it’s a question of: is it MORE LIKELY or LESS LIKELY to stop someone, than a larger caliber is?  And the inescapable conclusion is: it’s LESS LIKELY than the bigger calibers are.

It’s not that it can’t do the job.  It’s just that, owing to its tiny size and lower power levels, it is less likely to get the job done than the other, bigger calibers are.  It really is that simple.

Of course, there’s a counter-argument here, which says that the .22LR is a more shootable caliber, easier to make more accurate shots with and easier to get back on target due to its lesser recoil.  There is some truth to this too, of course, but we’ll explore why this may or may not be a valid counter-argument in the section below on “shot placement”.

Caliber Wars

Next statement on the list: “The caliber wars are over.  Caliber doesn’t matter.”  As a participant in a few online firearms forums, I’ve seen this type of statement come up over and over.  And, usually, it’s repeated by a moderator on the forum.  The forums I visit have largely “outlawed” what they call “caliber wars”, and say that the caliber wars “are over”, and all the calibers are equal.  Which is patently absurd on the face of it.

I understand why they do it; I’ve seen caliber wars devolve into what amounts to nothing more than a “pissing match”, and it seems that people are so emotionally invested in their personal choice that they feel they have to defend it at all costs.  But it all seems so silly, when the answer is plainly and obviously staring us in the face.  Here, let me re-use a picture from one of my earlier articles, about Bullet Size:

HST-vs-22

One of those is going to do more damage than the other.  Both are easily capable of reaching deep enough into a body to hit the vital organs, but one of those is more LIKELY to hit something vital, than the other one is.  One of those is more likely to cut a major artery, or destroy the heart, or nick the spinal column, than the other one is.  It’s obvious.

For those who insist caliber doesn’t matter, let me turn the question around — say we’re in a scenario where, for whatever reason, you ARE going to be shot.  Maybe you’re a mob informant and the mob’s caught you, and their punishment to you is that they’re going to shoot you with one bullet.  You get to choose which gun they shoot you with.  The choices are either a .45 ACP, or a .22LR.  You’re GOING to get shot, so you have to pick one.  Which will it be?

I think that answer’s pretty obvious.  Caliber DOES matter.  It definitely doesn’t matter as much as many other factors, but it does matter.

Which leads us, finally, to:

“The only three things that matter are shot placement, shot placement, and shot placement.”

Okay, hold on to your hats, and keep your keys off the keyboard until I’m done typing, and maybe we can get through this with a minimum of outrage.  Is shot placement important? Highly important, yes. Is it the only thing that matters? No.  Is it, in fact, the most important factor?  Yes. And no.

Here’s where it gets complicated, and hopefully we can try to navigate these waters so it all makes sense.  The first and foremost thing is — what the bullet HITS is what’s most important.  That’s not the same thing as shot placement, although it is frequently mistaken for such.  But let me explain:

When facing a firearm being used for self defense, human beings will stop attacking someone for a variety of reasons, but they can be boiled down into two categories: voluntary, and involuntary.  And in many of these cases, caliber doesn’t matter, but it might.  And shot placement doesn’t matter for many of them, but it might.

Voluntary reasons

There are many reasons an attacker may choose to stop attacking you.  Sometimes merely seeing a gun might be enough for them to say “hey, wait a minute, hold on, we’re cool, I’m just gonna walk away.”  That may happen, but even then, caliber may matter.  For example, someone getting a face-first view of a six-inch barrel .45 revolver might be MORE LIKELY to be dissuaded, than that same person might be if they instead got a face-first view of a .380 pocket pistol.  Once again, it’s not a question of “will this be effective” or “will this be ineffective”, it’s a question of “which is MORE LIKELY to be effective”?  I think it’s a fair assessment to say that someone MIGHT be more likely to back off when they see you carrying a Dirty Harry-style big revolver, than they would be if they saw you had a North American Arms .22LR mini revolver.  So in this case we have an example of someone who could be dissuaded by seeing a gun, but even then, the caliber might make a difference.  Now, can we find cases where someone backed off after being faced with a .22LR mini-revolver?  Certainly.  But just because it CAN happen, doesn’t tell us how LIKELY it is to happen.  And it doesn’t invalidate the argument that it is MORE likely that someone will be dissuaded by a bigger gun, than they would be by a littler gun.

But let’s move up the ladder — let’s say they see you have a gun but they don’t stop.  Some of those attackers MIGHT be persuaded to stop, if the gun was pointed AT THEM.  There’s a difference between them seeing that you have a gun (maybe holstered, or even held in a low-ready position) and seeing the muzzle of the gun pointed at them.  Sometimes merely the change in perspective of seeing down that barrel is enough to get an attacker’s bravado to dissipate and to get him browning his shorts.  And this could be a case of where an attack was stopped, without a shot ever having been fired.  Now, is it possible that someone might call off their attack if they saw a pocket .380 or a tiny .22 magnum pointed at them?  Yes, of course it’s possible.  But is it LIKELY?  I don’t have the stats to answer that question, I can only pose the obvious follow-up: is it MORE likely that they would stop, if they saw a bigger pistol pointed at them?  Again, I think it’s obvious that there are some people who will not be stopped by just seeing any size pistol pointed at them, and there are some who will definitely not be stopped by just seeing a pistol (any pistol) pointed at them.  But there’s a group in the middle, those who wouldn’t stop at a micro-pistol but WOULD stop when facing a behemoth.  And that’s the group at the heart of this question — is it more likely that someone would stop, if they saw a bigger pistol pointed at them? I believe it is more likely.  I think it’s obvious that there is some percentage of encounters that would be stopped by virtue of the defender having a bigger pistol, than would be stopped in the identical same circumstances if the defender had a smaller pistol.  Again, it’s not a question of whether a small pistol CAN stop an attacker, it’s a question of how LIKELY it is that the small pistol would be able to stop the attack.

Group Three: Seeing & Hearing A Gun Go Off

Okay, let’s move on.  Let’s assume that we’re facing an attacker who will not stop just because he sees a pistol pointed at him (regardless of the pistol).  That means we’re going to have to fire the pistol.  Now, obviously, you should never draw your pistol unless you’re prepared to fire it and you are in such a dire circumstance that you believe firing it to be necessary to save your life (or innocent life, or to otherwise meet the local and state statutes that govern the permissibility of using deadly force).  Maybe you’ll get lucky and before you fire, the attacker drops his gun or knife and backs off, and you won’t have to even discharge the weapon — but maybe you won’t, and you have to fire.  Is it possible that merely firing the gun might get someone to stop?  Most definitely.  Even if you miss, sometimes the muzzle flash and the deafening bang are going to trigger a response in the attacker that gets them to back off.  In a case like this, does caliber matter? Again, we don’t have statistics to refer to, but I’d think it matters less than in the other cases.  If you get to this point, it’s pretty obvious that the attacker isn’t impressed by the size (or lack thereof) of your gun, but I would have to think the sensory stimulation and attendant adrenaline rush that’s going to happen when they see that blast and hear that explosion, are going to affect them whether it comes from a bigger or smaller gun.  If there’s a possibility of dissuading them, the physiological reaction to a gunshot may make them rethink their actions, and it may not matter whether it comes from a bigger or smaller gun.  Put another way, I don’t think they’re going to calculate in their heads what the size of the sound was, I think the fight-or-flight instinct will kick in regardless of the magnitude of the blast — and, let’s remember, sometimes little bullets can put out an incredible amount of noise and flash.  A .22 Magnum or a 5.7×28 can be incredibly loud and have a huge fireball associated with them.  So, I don’t know whether caliber would make someone MORE likely to stop from experiencing the flash and sound, but I doubt it.  I think this one might be a case of caliber not mattering.

What About Getting Shot?

Now we move on to the next level — what if they are NOT dissuaded by experiencing the flash and noise of a gunblast?  Well, they move up the ladder of reasons why a gun might stop someone: next stop, getting hit.  For some attackers, the experience of getting shot might be enough to stop them from wanting to continue attacking.  Now, remember, we’re still talking about an attacker CHOOSING to stop.  Getting hit by a bullet, any bullet, is likely to be a really unpleasant experience, a feeling of intense pain followed by seeing blood bursting forth.  That can frequently be enough to get an attacker to call off the attack.  And, if that’s the case, does caliber really matter in that situation?  Again, I think probably not.  I don’t think people who get shot are really cognitively assessing their situation and thinking “I got shot, but it’s only a .22, so I’ll keep attacking.”  I think it’s more along the lines of “ack! Pain! Blood! Stop!”  Remember, we’re talking about an immediate incident, not some protracted long event — there’s a rule of thumb that says most defensive gunfights follow the 3-3-3 rule: they take place at 3 yards or less, with three shots fired, and are over in three seconds.  That’s not a lot of time for thinking and evaluating; that’s more of the realm of instinct and thoughts of self-preservation.  In my opinion (again, unbacked by studies to prove one way or another), I think the sensory overload of gunshot/blast/sound/pain/blood combines to make an immediate decision — the attacker will either immediately stop, or will not be affected.  I don’t think the caliber is likely to be involved in this decision-making process.  As such, I doubt caliber is that important for this level of attacker.

Involuntary Incapacitation

At this point, we’ve pretty much exhausted the opportunities for a voluntary stop.  If the attacker has faced this ascending ladder of prospects and has chosen to continue to attack, then there’s pretty much nothing else that is going to make them choose to stop.  Heck, they’ve had a gun pointed at them, they’ve been shot, they’re bleeding, and they’re still coming at you.  What else can you do?

At this point, you have to rely on your gun’s ability to physically incapacitate them.  What do I mean by “incapacitate”? I mean, take away their capacity to attack.  Actually physically render them unable to attack any further.  And for a handgun, that’s not easy — it means you are going to have to damage the vital structures of their body in such a way that they physically cannot continue their actions.

To force an immediate stop, typically that means you need to damage their central nervous system (specifically the brain stem, or the spinal column).  The brain stem is an on/off switch for a human being — if it is damaged, the person ceases to exist.  Immediately.  If you damage their spinal column, they will no longer be able to control their actions (i.e., they will be paralyzed, or worse).  Those actions will immediately stop an attack, instantly.  The brain is a less-likely immediate incapacitator; many people have been shot in the head and survived.  They may lose some functionality, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will lose ALL functionality.  The brain stem and spinal column are guaranteed fight-stoppers.  They are also extremely hard to hit, being very small.

The other way to bring a fight to a very quick stop is to do substantial damage to the circulatory system.  Destroying or substantially damaging the heart, major arteries, or other substantial circulatory system damage can cause the attacker’s blood pressure to drop below the level necessary to sustain consciousness.  An attacker who passes out from blood loss will be unable to continue their attack.  Again, they don’t have to die from the injury in order to stop, they just have to lose consciousness.  It is not easy to imagine a scenario where someone has substantial enough damage to their circulatory system that they pass out, but still manage to survive, of course, but we’re not trying to kill, we’re trying to stop, and damage to the circulatory system or central nervous system are the only known ways to reliably and predictably bring a fight to an immediate (or extremely quick) close.  Damaging the circulatory system may not result in immediate incapacitation; even complete destruction of the heart could leave someone with enough oxygen in their system and in their brain to be able to act for up to 10 to 15 seconds, so circulatory system damage is still not immediate, but it will result (within about 15 seconds) in involuntary incapacitation.  They won’t have a choice — once their blood pressure drops low enough, their body will force them to stop.

So the question is: does caliber matter, in bringing about involuntary incapacitation?  Yes and no.  A confusing answer, but let me try to simplify it — it’s not about whether a caliber CAN bring about involuntary incapacitation, because frankly they all can.  Again, it’s about how LIKELY it is, for any particular caliber to be able to bring about involuntary incapacitation.  A .22LR to the brain stem will result in the immediate death of the attacker just as quickly as a .45 ACP to the brain stem will.  A .22LR to the spinal column will result in the same immediate paralysis as a .45 to the spinal column will.  In both cases, hitting that central nervous system will result in immediate incapacitation.

The question is: how LIKELY is it to hit the spinal column with a .22LR, vs. how LIKELY is it to hit that same spinal column with the .45 ACP (or 9mm or .40 or other larger-than-22 caliber?)  It is my contention that the much-larger bullet maintains a higher likelihood of hitting the target (and things near it) than the tiny bullet does.  Put another way, the tiny bullet leaves no margin for error.  The larger bullet gives you more options; an inch-wide bullet means that you could miss the spinal column by .78″, and still hit it with as much damage as the .22 bullet.  If the large bullet is aimed left of the spinal column, but a quarter of an inch of its outer edge still manages to hit, then it will do as much damage as the .22 would if the .22 shot were placed squarely right on the spinal column.

Here we can see — it’s not a case of whether the .22 CAN incapacitate, because clearly it can, but by using the larger bullet you put the odds in your favor that you will be more LIKELY to incapacitate the target.

Same thing applies to the circulatory system.  You might place a .22 shot right next to the heart, right next to the superior vena cava, where the bullet slips right between these vital structures, hitting nothing, and doing only a minor flesh wound.  Whereas with the .45, with the identical same shot placement, there’s so much more bullet there that it might rip the superior vena cava and the heart both, causing rapid blood loss and forcing incapacitation.

circulatory

With a bullet hitting where the yellow arrow points above, and identical shot placement, a small caliber might result in effectively a non-event, whereas a large caliber might be an effective fightstopper.

That’s not to say a little bullet can’t be a fightstopper… it can.  It’s possible.  It’s just less likely, is all.  You’d need extraordinarily precise shot placement with a .22 to bring a fight to an immediate stop.  If you used that exact same precise shot placement with a larger caliber, it would bring the fight to the exact same stop.  But the larger the bullet, the less precise your shot placement needs to be, to get equivalent fight-stopping performance.  The bigger the bullet, the MORE LIKELY to end the fight.  Even if it’s a small increase in probability, the more likely you are to be able to end a fight, the better off you are.  Which brings us to:

“The only three things that matter are shot placement, shot placement, and shot placement.”

Sigh.  This is one of those statements that gets trotted out with the intention of immediately ending all discussion.  I can imagine that many times, people who bring this statement to the discussion somehow think that they’re telling us something we don’t already know.  Seriously, who doesn’t know this?  We all know this, yet the dispute remains.

So while we’re already disputing, let me rock the boat significantly by saying “Shot Placement Ain’t Everything.”

(and yes, I’m ducking behind the furniture, knowing that the tomatoes are going to start flying).

But — look, shot placement is important, but it is not the end-all and be-all.  It’s close, but wrong, to assert that shot placement is the most important factor.  It’s not where you place the shot that is important, it’s WHAT THE BULLET HITS.  Now, lots of people will think that’s the same thing, but it isn’t.

If the bullet hits the spinal column, it will bring the fight to an immediate halt.  So, surely, advocates of the “shot placement is king” theory would advocate aiming for the spinal column, right?  No? Why not?  Ah, yes, because the spinal column is a very tiny target and extremely difficult to hit.  Right.  Got it.  But if the bullet DOES hit the spinal column, the target is going down, regardless of what caliber hits it.

Similarly, the brain stem — it’s nearly impossible to hit, and I’ve never heard anyone advocate that you should aim for it, since the brain stem is located at the top of the highly-flexible and highly-mobile neck.  But if you were able to hit it, the attacker would stop.

If you’re still with me, here’s where the whole discussion takes a turn — what if you don’t hit where you aim at?  What good is “shot placement” as a theory, if the bullet takes a turn?  And bullets do, occasionally, take a turn.  Some will be deflected off bones, some will just plain turn in a different direction.  When bullets hit flesh, it’s not a guarantee that the bullet will stay on the path that you sent it on.  Especially with small-caliber bullets like .22LR, their light weight and weak momentum leaves them especially susceptible to turning and veering off course.  So even if you put the bullet perfectly on target to hit the brain stem, there are chances that it may deflect or turn off course and only end up hitting flesh or fat.

Bullet-turn-gel

The above is an example of a .22LR bullet fired from a mini-revolver.  Actually there are several shots in that block, and you can see the various damage tracks that show what directions the bullet went.  A few went basically straight, but you can see where one took a turn upwards and exited the top of the block, and you can see the highlighted track where the bullet entered straight but then just turned downwards and ended up a good three inches off target.  Sometimes, bullets just don’t go where you told them to.

And that’s why “shot placement” isn’t nearly as important as “what’s hit.”  If you placed your aim squarely at someone’s heart, and the shot veered off and hit the spinal column, that person will drop immediately.  If you placed your aim squarely at someone’s spinal column, and the bullet veers off and hits only a lung, then that’s not likely to take them out of the fight right away.  Sure, it might slow them down, but it’s a case of where your “perfect shot placement” wouldn’t have actually done all that much good.

So what you HIT, is much more important than what you AIM AT.  Now, obviously, it’d be nice if those were the same thing, but unfortunately they aren’t always the same.  We can’t predict what the bullet WILL or WON’T do.  But there are factors at our disposal that can influence HOW LIKELY the bullet is to do what we want.  How can we put the odds more in your favor that you hit what you aim at?  Well, practice helps, obviously; you have to be able to hit where you’re aiming.  But that doesn’t solve the problem of the bullet veering off course, or deflecting off a bone.  So what does?

Mass.  Momentum.  Size.  Caliber.  Once again, these factors come into play.  A small lightweight 30-grain .22LR may be highly susceptible to changing direction in the flesh, but it’s unlikely that a 180-grain .40 S&W or a 230-grain .45 ACP will be so easily deflected.  Again, it’s POSSIBLE that the heavier bullet might turn or change direction, but it is not LIKELY that the heavier bullet will turn as easily as the lighter bullet will.

I’ve shot thousands of rounds of various calibers into ballistic gel (without bones) and can tell you, definitively, the heavier bullets are MORE LIKELY to stay on course and go where you told them to go, than the lighter bullets are.  I see more course changes and veering bullets from .22, .380, and 9mm, than I do from .40 and .45.  And I see more course changes in 115-grain 9mm, than I do in 147-grain 9mm.  As a general rule, the more mass and momentum the bullet has, the more likely it is to keep traveling in a straight line.  That’s not an absolute rule, but it is an accurate predictor of the likelihood that a bullet will go straight.

And the more likely the bullet is to keep traveling in a straight line (and avoid veering off course), the more likely it is to hit what you aimed at.

Which makes your shot placement more effective.

Boiling It All Down

So what does this all mean?  To me, it means that there are some things you can do to put the odds more in your favor.  While it’s POSSIBLE to stop a fight with a micro-pistol or mini-revolver, those are less likely to stop a fight than a bigger pistol would be.  It’s possible that a .22LR pistol might bring a fight to an end, but identical shot placement from a .45 is more likely to bring that fight to an end.

There are things you can control, and there are things you can’t.  You can improve your accuracy through training.  And you can improve your ammo performance through testing and selection of better-performing ammo that works best with your chosen pistol.  If you have the choice of carrying the NAA mini-revolver, or the Glock 19, you would be better armed and stand a better chance of ending any potential fight with the Glock 19.  That’s not to diss the mini-revolver, I have one and I love it, but I wouldn’t want to rely on it as my primary defensive weapon, because a bigger caliber pistol (such as a Springfield XD-S) puts better odds in my favor that if I had to use it, it might bring any potential fight to a quicker end, in many ways.  It’s easier to aim, it’s easier to control, it places the bullets more accurately, the bullets have more power to them, they have more mass and momentum, and they expand to a much, much larger size.

The first rule of gunfighting is “have a gun”.  And as we discussed above, just the presence of a gun, regardless of caliber, might end many potential defensive encounters.  So caliber isn’t everything, of course.  But as you ascend the ladder of reasons why an attacker might stop, you’ll see that the more power you can bring to bear on your side, the more likely you are to end a fight quicker and more successfully.  Sometimes the tiny mini-revolver or pocket pistol is all you can carry — and if that’s the case, then, hey, do so, but with an understanding that these little pistols are less likely to end a fight quickly, than a bigger pistol would be.  And whenever you have the choice, go for the more powerful weapon.  Put the odds in your favor as best you can.

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Why Bullet Statistics are Useless

What matters when choosing your self defense ammo?  Is it the muzzle energy?  Is it the velocity?  Is it the bullet weight?  Which of these statistics is most important?

NONE OF THEM.

(cue the internet howler monkeys, lining up to scream and throw poop at me, but stick with me for a minute please…)

Bullet weight, in and of itself, is not an indicator of terminal performance.  Neither is muzzle energy.  And neither is velocity.  In fact, they’re all interrelated — if you use a heavier bullet, it’s likely that the velocity will go down (and, when velocity goes down, muzzle energy usually goes down).  It’s easier for a cartridge to throw a lighter bullet faster than a heavier bullet, so for any equivalent powder charge, the lighter the bullet, usually the faster it travels, and the faster it goes, the more likely that the muzzle energy will be quoted as higher (since the formula for energy is (velocity squared x mass x 0.5), so any increase in velocity is going to have a much bigger impact on total energy figures, than any similar increase in weight would.)

Some manufacturers take advantage of that, making deliberately ultra-light projectiles, which will then travel faster than other manufacturers’ projectiles, which lets them quote much higher muzzle energy and velocity figures.

But what does that mean?  Not a whole lot.  What matters isn’t the velocity, or the mass, or the weight of the bullet — what matters is: what does the bullet do when it hits the flesh?  How deep does it penetrate? Does it reach and disrupt the vital organs? Or does it just impact on the surface or make a nasty flesh wound?  Does the bullet expand to a larger size? Does it stay on target or does it wander around and veer off course?  Does it plug up with clothing and fail to expand?  Does it stop in the body or does it zip right through?

Those are what matter.  And you can’t figure out ANY of those answers by studying weight or muzzle energy or velocity.  For example — assuming an identical powder charge, ANY 124-grain bullet is going to have identical weight, muzzle energy, and velocity as ANY OTHER 124-grain bullet.  So a 124-grain full-metal jacket is going to have identical weight, muzzle energy, and velocity as a 124-grain hollowpoint.  But their terminal performance will likely be extremely different.  In fact, that’s really the point behind Winchester’s new “Train & Defend” line — they’re making the identical same ammo in self-defense and practice rounds.  But even though the weight, energy and velocity are identical between the two, the “Train” rounds would be lousy choices for personal defense, as compared to the “Defend” entries in their lineup.

Let’s take it to a silly extreme — if you were to pack 124 grains of corn flakes into the shape of a bullet and jam that into a 9mm cartridge, and successfully fire it, it would have the same muzzle energy and same velocity and same weight as a premium 124-grain Federal HST bullet.  But which do you think would be a more effective manstopper — an HST, or a wad of corn flakes?

The specs printed on the box don’t matter (much).  What matters is what happens when the bullet hits the flesh.  How it rips, cuts, tears or crushes flesh, and how much flesh it destroys, and how reliably and repeatably it does so, are what determines what makes a successful handgun bullet.  Not the ft/lbs of energy printed on the box.

Standardized testing (especially of multiple rounds) is designed to answer those questions.  But even then, there’s a further variable that has to be accounted for, and that’s what barrel length you’re using.  A test from a 4.6″-barrel service/duty pistol might show brilliant results for one particular type of ammo, but if you’re using a 3″-barrel concealed-carry pocket pistol, that exact same ammo might perform miserably from your pistol.  An example might be a 147-grain bullet that travels at 1000 feet per second from that 4.6″ barrel, and expands hugely, and penetrates 14″ — that’d be great.  But the 3″ barrel likely can’t impart that much velocity, so the identical same ammo might travel at only 900 feet per second, which might be too low to force the bullet to expand, so it might fail to expand and end up zipping right through your target, penetrating 32″ or more, which means it’d have (comparatively) very little terminal effect on your target, but would instead pose a big risk of overpenetration.  Same ammo, very different results — so testing can be informative, but only if the testing is comparable to what you’re going to be using.

So don’t be swayed by marketing, or by numbers printed on the box.  Look for some qualified testing that shows how the bullets really perform.  And, ideally, look for testing that’s done from a comparable-sized pistol as what you’ll be using.  And the more the testing conforms to industry standards, the more informative it will be.

I wish it was easier.  I wish we really could just look on the box and see meaningful statistics (barrel length, penetration depth, and expansion size) but the manufacturers don’t list that; instead they give us weight, velocity, and muzzle energy… and those aren’t actually useful in helping us know what’s really important: how much damage will this bullet do to human flesh if you (heaven forbid) you ever found yourself in a situation where you needed to use it against an attacker.

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The Problem With Meat Testing

The Meat Of The Matter

One of the most frequent questions I get asked is — why don’t you test on meat? Quit fooling around with “ballistic gel”, the people ask, because “I’ve never been attacked by a block of Jell-O. There are so many better things you could be testing on, like:
A roast
A ham
A side of beef
A pork shoulder
A pig carcass

At first glance, that sounds perfectly reasonable. After all, humans are made of meat, self-defense bullets are meant to work against humans, so why not shoot meat to get the most realistic assessment of performance?  Lots of other YouTubers do it, why don’t you?

Because, like so many things in this world, what seems superficially like a good idea can in fact turn out to be a lousy idea after a little more exploration and thought.

Skipping to the heart of the matter, here’s the problem: dead tissue (such as a carcass or a roast) responds to bullets very, very differently from living tissue.  Living tissue is wet, saturated with fluids, and very pliable and elastic.  It stretches and retracts.  Heck, just try flexing your muscles or extending your gut out or sucking it back in, and you can see for yourself — living tissue is very flexible.

Dead tissue isn’t.  Think of a ham — try stretching that out, or squeezing it in — it doesn’t work, does it?  It isn’t the same.  And it most definitely doesn’t respond to bullets the same as living tissue does.

Think of it like a sponge.  Soak a sponge in water, and it’s squishy and stretchy and — well, sponge-y.  Crush it in your hand, then let go, and it springs back to its original shape.  But squeeze out all the water and let it dry, and it becomes stiff and brittle, and you could break it in half.  Try crushing it in your hand, and it won’t spring back to shape, it’ll instead break and turn to dust.

That’s akin to the difference between living tissue and dead meat.  There’s a reason they call dead bodies “stiffs”, after all.  Once the living organism dies, gravity takes over and the fluids begin to drain out of the tissues.  Rigor mortis sets in after about 3 hours, and the tissue turns from what you used to be able to flex and stretch, into something very stiff; it’s difficult to move a corpse’s limbs at all while rigor mortis is in effect.  It doesn’t soften up until decomposition kicks in.

The tissue changes after death.  Dead tissue is not the same as live tissue.  It doesn’t respond the same way, it doesn’t have the same pliability, and it doesn’t stretch the same.

Putting a bullet into a roast can result in a tremendous hole left behind — but that’s deceptive.  Because dead tissue doesn’t stretch like living tissue does, the effect of the temporary cavity can be exaggerated when viewed in dead flesh — just like it is when viewed in clay, or soap, or a “bullet test tube” or other testing medium that doesn’t simulate the behavior of living flesh.  What might look like a colossal injury in a roast, may be nothing more than a temporary stretch that results in bruising in a living organism.  A bullet that blows a gigantic hole in a ham, might result in a small icepick wound in a living human.

In short — meat testing is pointless.  It doesn’t tell you anything valid, that you really need to know.  It’s a waste — a waste of food, a waste of time, a waste of bullets.  Cadaver testing CAN be useful, if it’s conducted nearly imminently after the moment of death, before too much changes in the body.  If you were a hunter who had just taken down a deer, for example, and you wanted to then test some handgun bullets in the corpse, that might be practical if you can do it immediately — within, say, five minutes of death.  Maybe 15 minutes at the absolute maximum.  In such a case, the tissue won’t have drained, it won’t have stiffened, and it will still respond like living tissue should.  But after about fifteen minutes, forget it — it’s too far gone.

Ballistic gel was engineered to simulate the response characteristics of LIVING tissue.  It’s wet, hydrated flesh (it’s made from ground-up pork skin).  It stretches and tears and resists penetration the same as living flesh does.  That’s why it was invented, that’s why we use it.

How do bullets tested in ballistic gel look, as compared to bullets taken from actual human bodies from real “street” shooting incidents?  Pretty much identical.  Eugene J. Wolberg, Senior Firearms Criminologist with the San Diego Police Crime Lab, did a study back in 1991 where he compared bullets fired into gel, against bullets that were extracted from autopsies of human shooting victims, and he correlated both the penetration characteristics as well as the appearance of the bullets, and found that there was a high correlation between bullets shot in humans, and those shot in ballistic gelatin.

I very well understand the confusion about, and the reason people gravitate towards, wanting to use meat in testing.  But it just doesn’t work.  It’s not practical, and it doesn’t deliver results that match real shooting scenarios and real autopsies.  Ballistic gel does, and that’s why it’s used for bullet testing.

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Why I won’t use or test .380 ACP “+P” or any “+P+” ammo…

In my ongoing series of testing .380 ACP ammo from micro-pistols, I’ve been repeatedly asked to test some of the so-called “+P” loadings.  Various manufacturers including Buffalo Bore, Magsafe, Underwood and others offer .380 ACP ammo in a “+P” version.  And now, with the 9mm Ammo Quest, I’m starting to get requests to test “+P+” ammo.  People want these types of rounds tested, which I can understand, but I’d like to explain the reasons why I think it’s a bad idea.

What is +P anyway?

There’s a standards-setting organization known as the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturer’s Institute (SAAMI).  SAAMI’s been around since 1926, and they establish and publish the standards for ammunition that the gun manufacturers then use to design their guns around.  SAAMI specifies pressure levels that ammo is allowed to obtain, for any given caliber.  For example, for .40 S&W, SAAMI specifies a maximum average pressure of 35,000 PSI.  For .44 Special, they specify a maximum average pressure of 15,500 PSI.

But for a few rounds, they specify a second listing — a listing for “+P”.  These are higher-pressure rounds and are listed separately, as a different caliber.  You can think of them as “+pressure”, as they are all higher-pressure variants of an existing cartridge.  There are four cartridges for which SAAMI has created “+P” categories: .38 Special, .38 Super Automatic, 9mm Luger, and .45 ACP.  That’s it.  There is no such thing as “.45 Colt +P” or “.380 ACP +P” in the SAAMI standards.  There is no general understanding that “overloading ammo makes it +P”; instead “+P” has a very specific, very defined meaning — it is a separate category for specific cartridges.  The differences are relatively mild, in that the +P variants are around 9 to 17% higher pressure than their “parent” cartridges:

Pressure:                 Regular                +P

.38 Special            17,000 PSI         20,000 PSI

9mm Luger           35,000 PSI        38,500 PSI

.45 ACP                  21,000 PSI       23,000 PSI

What About .380 ACP +P?

There isn’t one.  There is no standard, as specified by SAAMI, for .380 ACP +P.  It simply doesn’t exist.  ANY ammo, claiming to be .380 ACP +P, is, by very definition, nonstandard.  We don’t know how high the pressure levels may be.  The only thing we do know, is that the pressure levels are almost certainly higher than what SAAMI has established as the standard.

What About +P+?

Same thing.  There is no SAAMI standard for any caliber of ammo classified as +P+.  And therefore any ammo claiming to be +P+ is, by very definition, nonstandard.

So — Wait — What?

Think of it like this — the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) establishes movie ratings of G, PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17.  Those are the existing, standard ratings.  Those are all the ratings.  So what would it mean if someone released a move rated “PG-15”?  Well, in terms of the existing ratings, it wouldn’t mean anything — it’d mean they basically made up their own rating, right?  And what standards would it be held to? Certainly not the MPAA’s.

Same thing with ammo — the labels and standards are established, and the organization that establishes those standards has been around since 1926.  So if some ammo manufacturer makes ammo that doesn’t comply with those standards… what should they call it?  Apparently, ammo manufacturers have taken to making up their own names — such as .380 ACP +P, .45 Colt +P, and 9mm +P+.  None of those are SAAMI standards.

So Is It Dangerous?

The gun manufacturers certainly seem to think so.  If you read the owner’s manuals for their guns, as I’ve tried to do, I’ve never found a .380 pistol manufacturer that has said “it’s okay to use .380 ACP +P in this gun.” (edit: except for Kahr and now Beretta! See below.)  And I’ve never found a 9mm pistol manufacturer that has said “it’s okay to use +P+ ammo in this gun”, including Kahr (edit: except for HK! See below.).  Now, obviously I haven’t been able to check every pistol ever manufactured, so I guess it’s possible that there may be some special case out there (such as the Ruger Blackhawk being able to handle unusually powerful .45 Colt loads) but in general, the trend is very consistent and very clear — the manufacturers of the guns simply do not want you to use .380 ACP +P or any +P+ ammo in their guns.  Here are a few example extracts from various pistol owner’s manuals:

Excerpt from Bersa Thunder .380 owner's manual

Excerpt from Bersa Thunder .380 owner’s manual, (emphasis added).

Excerpt from Taurus PT738 TCP owner's manual

Excerpt from Taurus PT738 TCP owner’s manual

Excerpt from Ruger LCP owner's manual

Excerpt from Ruger LCP owner’s manual

excerpt from Ruger LC380 & LC9 owner's manual

excerpt from Ruger LC380 & LC9 owner’s manual

Excerpt from Diamondback DB380 owner's manual

Excerpt from Diamondback DB380 owner’s manual

Excerpt from S & W Bodyguard .380 owner's manual

Excerpt from S & W Bodyguard .380 owner’s manual

But Buffalo Bore Says It’s Okay!

True, Buffalo Bore does have an FAQ answer on their site that says that they believe their .380 ACP “+P” ammo is safe for use in a Ruger LCP.  Buffalo Bore acknowledges that there is no SAAMI standard for .380 ACP +P, but they say (paraphrased) “we’ve tried it and it works and we’ve never heard of any problems.”  They acknowledge that the gun manufacturers warn against using non-SAAMI-spec ammo, and they attribute the manufacturer’s warnings against it as fear of lawsuits, rather than any inherent safety issue.

Is this true? Possibly.  Or maybe not.  Maybe it’ll cause a problem, maybe it won’t.  But I’ve never been swayed by the argument that “we’ve tried it and haven’t heard of a problem” — because I’ve crossed the street many times and never been hit by a car, but I would never assert that “people don’t get hit by cars when crossing the street” because clearly they do.  So the question is: who do you believe?  The ammo company that’s trying to sell you ammo, thus assuring you it’s safe? Or the manufacturer of the pistol (who designed the pistol to be in accordance with SAAMI standards)?  It doesn’t matter to me which one you choose, I’m just telling you why *I* won’t test or use it.

But… Isn’t .380 Deliberately Underloaded And I’ve Heard That .380 +P Is Really SAAMI-Compliant…

Okay, I’ve been asked this one multiple times — the thinking goes that in the 1970’s the ammo companies all decided voluntarily to just reduce the power of their ammo (for fear of lawsuits or for whatever reason), and as such no factory ammo really performs to the actual SAAMI specs.  And, the people who advance this theory state that the so-called .380 ACP +P is really just loaded back up to the original standards, so it’s not really nonstandard at all.

Only — that’s just not true, at least according to Buffalo Bore.  I wrote to Buffalo Bore, explained the theory going around, and asked them this specific question: “does your .380 ACP +P ammo exceed the 21,500 maximum pressure levels established by SAAMI?” I received a prompt response which says, and I quote:

YEs our +P 380 auto loads all exceed SAAMI specs. Whomever told you otherwise is misinformed.

That is exactly what I would have expected; they are using the terminology “+P” to inform the customer that their ammo is indeed not compliant within the SAAMI specs.  They assert that it is still safe to use; I leave that to you to determine, but as always I want to provide the facts so that you can make your decision based on actual information, not hearsay and internet rumor.

Summary

Here’s the way I look at it — the manufacturers warn against using it.  There is a standards organization that sets standards, and according to them there is no such standard for +P+ or .380 ACP +P.  It may or may not be dangerous.  It will certainly shorten the life of your firearm.

As a tester of self-defense/personal protection ammo, I don’t think it’d be responsible to use or recommend nonstandard ammo for such purposes.  If there’s one absolute, overriding, unimpeachably important factor with self defense ammo, it is this: it absolutely MUST WORK when you need it to.  To me, all other factors are subservient to this.  As such, I cannot recommend using nonstandard ammo that the manufacturers expressly warn against.

Furthermore, I have a problem with the whole concept of using overpowered ammo in a defensive pistol.  If you’re acknowledging that a given pistol and ammo platform is incapable of delivering the results you want, then you have two choices:

  1. Use hopped-up, nonstandard ammo to try to get better performance, or
  2. Just use a more powerful pistol.

To me, the right answer is simple and obvious (if expensive) — upgrade to a better-performing cartridge.  If you can’t get what you need out of a .380, then it’s time to move to a .38 Special +P or to a 9mm.  To me the answer is never going to be “just run nonstandard ammo in the underpowered pistol”; I think that’s just adding uncertainty (and, according to the pistol manufacturers, potential danger of failure or even injury) to the mix.  And even if there is no failure in the pistol, you’ve almost certainly voided your warranty by using .380 ACP +P or any flavor of +P+.  Is it worth it?  Not to me… I say just get the more-powerful pistol and use the right tool for the job.

You don’t have to agree with me.  You’re free to make your choices based on whatever criteria you want.  I’m just laying out why I won’t use it, or test it, or endorse it for usage.

Edit 3/18/2014: In response to a reader comment saying that Kahr rates their P380 to “+P”, I called Kahr technical support for clarification.  The technical support guy I spoke to sounded knowledgeable (i.e., he wasn’t just reading a printed statement, I spoke to him at length and he was able to explain reasons for his statements). He said that all Kahr firearms are rated for +P except for .40 S&W.  I asked specifically about how they could rate a .380 for “+P” when no such standard exists from SAAMI, and was told that they consider “+P” to be between 17% to 30% higher pressure.  They consider anything above 30% higher pressure to be “+P+” and they don’t warrant their pistols for “+P+”.  I don’t know how they can make this statement about .380 ACP +P, since there is no standards body out there asserting that the pressures will be kept to less than 30% over standard, but — that’s what Kahr said.  So if you want to use .380 ACP +P, apparently it’s okay to do so in a Kahr P380.

Edit 4/26/2014: Another reader has written in to show that the Kel-Tec P-3AT’s user manual sends a mixed message about .380 +P.  The manual says “The P-3AT Pistol is designed and chambered for the .380 Auto cartridge. Do not use any other ammunition. The P-3AT will accept +P ammunition, however, not with continuous use.”  That sure sounds like it’s saying that .380 +P is okay.  However, a couple of paragraphs down, it also says “Never use ammunition where the pressure levels exceed industry standards.”  Which, of course, is the very definition of .380 +P — the organization that sets the standards, has not set any standard for “.380 +P”, only for .380 ACP, and therefore any ammo exceeding .380 ACP pressure would, by this paragraph, be ruled out of consideration.  So, it’s a mixed message.  But I think the proper interpretation is that occasional, infrequent use of .380 +P is considered okay for the Kel-Tec P-3AT.  Still seems curious as to how they can authorize the use of ammo that doesn’t comply to any existing written and codified standard, but — hey, at least there’s another option for those who do want to use that type of ammo.

Edit 3/25/2015: The Beretta Pico .380 pistol owner’s manual says that it is rated to handle .380 +P.  The Pico has an unusual design with a very heavy barrel and two recoil springs, which make it able to absorb the additional energy from the .380+P rounds.  Also, a reader wrote in to point out that HK pistols state in their operating manuals that they are approved for the use of +P and +P+ ammo, although with the usual statement that using such ammo will shorten the life of the firearm.  I verified this by looking at the owner’s manual of the HK USP series (I don’t know what all HK pistols are listed as approving the use of +P+, but I can say that the HK USP definitely is).  As of now I still haven’t heard of any other manufacturer authorizing the use of +P+ in their firearms.

 

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If a Chest’s Only 10″ Thick…

Frequent question I get asked, and one that I’ve tried to address before, is this:

“If a person’s chest is only 10″ thick, then why should a bullet have to travel at least 12″ and up to 18″?  Wouldn’t that just mean massive overpenetration?”

Seeing as I just had to answer that question again, I thought I would put the response here, so that it can be available as a reference for anyone interested.

The question is a simple one, and it has a “common sense” answer: anyone with “common sense” would see, obviously, that since the average person is only 10″ thick, and the vital organs are located in the middle, then obviously you’d only need a bullet that penetrates six or eight inches at most, right?

The problem with this logic, as with all the recent labeling of proposals as “common sense”, is that it’s based on faulty assumptions.  As with an example that I’ve used before, it’s just “common sense” to know that the sun revolves around the Earth, right?  People could see with their own eyes that the sun rises up, and then sets down, and revolves around the Earth, and the ancient church held it as heresy to say otherwise.  It’s “common sense!”  Except for the fact that it was wrong.

So in that context, we have to first dismiss the faulty assumption — and that faulty assumption is, that bullet penetration figures = body penetration.  They don’t.  A bullet that penetrates 12″ of ballistic gel will very likely not penetrate 12″ of a body.  Remember, ballistic gel is not a body simulant, it’s a soft tissue simulant, and bodies are made up of many more types of tissue than just soft tissue.  Some is firmer than others, and there’s of course those pesky bones too — bones won’t necessarily stop bullets, but they will slow them down more than soft tissue would.

So when we discuss bullet penetration, we have to divorce ourselves from the notion that the bullet under discussion will penetrate a body to the same degree that it penetrates ballistic gel.  They’re not the same, nor were they ever intended to be the same.  Now, if you’re asking about a bullet fired into muscle  tissue (such as a big meaty thigh) then yes, the penetration through muscle will be very nearly the same as the penetration through ballistic gel.  And, our bodies are pretty much entirely sheathed in muscle and it’s a fairly safe bet that any bullet impact is going to go through muscle, but even so, that’s not the whole story.  Suffice it to say that the penetration figures do not relate to body penetration, so you shouldn’t directly compare them.

Quit Blathering And Answer The Question!

Okay, with that disclaimer noted and out of the way, let’s go on to the question at hand — and, first, the question is: how deep in the body are the vital organs?  Unfortunately, there’s not a direct one-size-fits-all answer to that, because (especially among Americans) one size most definitely doesn’t fit all! It depends on what we consider “average” for a human.  Skinny small people, obese people, and very muscular people, are all going to have varying depths to the vitals.  In general, the average torso is somewhere between 10″ and 12″ thick.  The vital organs are located generally within the ribcage, and depending on which organ we’re talking about, it could be as close as 6″ for a straight-on, unobstructed shot (meaning, the target is lined up face-on like a silhouette target, and there’s no arms or other intervening obstacles to get in the way).

Right — so now that’s sorted, let’s again raise the question — if the vitals are only 6″ deep, why on Earth would you need a bullet to penetrate 12″?  And if the average person is only 10″ to 12″ thick, wouldn’t a 16″ or 18″ bullet totally overpenetrate right through them?

Again, stick with me and you’ll see that it all does make sense.  These are reasonable questions on the surface, but once you start adding it up you’ll see that in fact the actual situation is more complex.  First, you don’t want the bullet to reach the vital organs, you want it to disrupt or destroy the vital organs, and that means it has to penetrate deep enough and still have enough speed that it’ll be able to damage the vitals and not just come to a stop right in front of them.  So yes, the shallower vitals may be located only six inches deep, but that means you’d want your bullet to go at least 8″, so it has a chance to punch into the organ and disrupt it.

So an 8″ Bullet is All I Need?

No, that’s not what I said.  We’re just getting started!  Let’s do a little simple math — 6″ of penetration to reach the vitals, plus we want at least a couple of inches of damage travel so that the bullet will sink in and disrupt them, so that brings us to 8″, yes.  But we have to factor in that we will almost certainly need the bullet to bust through the ribcage since pretty much all the vital organs are located inside the ribcage (except for the brain stem, obviously), and from a prior study I’ve shown that it takes about 2″ off of a bullet’s penetration capability to get through bone, so add another couple of inches of penetration energy necessary to get through the ribs, and that brings you to needing an absolute minimum of 10″.

Okay, So — A 10″ Bullet Is Good Enough, Right?

Only in the most optimistic possible case — if it’s a straight-on shot — no intermediary obstacles such as arms; no odd angles.  Just you and the attacker, squaring up against each other like some Old West duel, each of you standing square on to the other, exposing your chest completely.  Does that sound reasonable?  Doesn’t sound reasonable to me!  If you get in a gunfight, are you just going to stand there and take it?  Probably not — and if you’re not going to, why would you expect your attacker to?  Hint — he won’t.

So now we have to talk about less-than-perfect situations.  If you have to take a shot from a different angle (such as that the bad guy’s knocked you down, so now you’re having to shoot upwards at someone standing over you) then maybe add another 2″ to 4″ of penetration depth necessary because now you’ll be firing through a longer path to get to the vitals.  And now, let’s add in an arm, because if the bad guy’s pointing a gun at you, the geometry of the situation pretty much dictates that his arm will absolutely be in the path between your gun and his vitals.  Getting through that arm may soak up 5″ of distance, plus another 2″ of penetration power necessary to get through the arm bone.

 Okay, But … Um … Oh, I see…

Yep.  That’s why the recommendation from the wound ballistics conferences were that for a bullet to reach the vitals, it would require at LEAST 12″ of penetration power through soft tissue, and preferably up to 18″ if you want the bullet to be able to perform in all conceivable shooting scenarios and from all angles (which is perhaps more of a priority for law enforcement, but isn’t strictly limited to law enforcement).

Remember, you won’t be able to choose your shooting scenario.  You can’t stop in the middle of a gunfight and say “Excuse me, Mr. Bad Guy, but — see, I’m not a cop, I’m not the FBI, so I didn’t buy that 12″-penetrating bullet.  I just thought I’d only need an 8″ bullet.  So, could you please stop moving and put your arms up so that I can get a clean unobstructed shot at your chest?”

Um, yeah, good luck with that.  I think a better plan is to just follow the advice of the experts who do this for a living, and shop for ammunition that reaches the performance parameters that they identified as necessary: a minimum of 12″ of penetration power through soft tissue, with a maximum of 18″ of penetration.  And make sure that the bullet will deliver that kind of performance from YOUR gun!  Don’t go viewing tests that were performed from a 5″-barrel pistol, and think that you’ll get the same performance from a 3″ barrel, because you almost certainly won’t.  Use ammo that performs to the standards from your gun.  After that, it’s just a matter of placing the shot where it counts — or, preferably, be somewhere else before the bullets start flying.

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Dem bones, dem bones…

WHAT ABOUT BONES?!?!?!

(sorry for shouting, but — I get that question a lot.)

If there’s one common, frequent question I get asked more than any other, it’s — what about bones? Why don’t you factor bones into your equations? Why don’t you put pork ribs in your gelatin tests?  Why doesn’t ANYONE test with bones?

I tried to address that subject in a prior blog post (here).  But seeing as the question just came up again, I decided to do a little more research on the subject to see if I could present the information in a different way, that may help make it a bit more understandable and approachable.

You Can’t Just Go Shoot Pork Ribs

First thing to face though, is: living tissue and dead tissue are not the same.  The dried-out bone that you give your dog to chew on, well, that bone seems like it’s as hard as a brick or made of stone.  The living bones in your body, however, are very different — when they’re alive, they’re hydrated, and they’re (comparatively) flexible.  Bones aren’t some big impenetrable wall of indestructibility, they’re — living tissue.  Harder than other tissue, yes, but still, living tissue.  They grow, they get longer, they break, they heal, they’re alive, and they’re very different from the dead hard cow skulls you encounter when wandering through a desert oasis…

… so, back to the question of bones.  Why don’t we use bones in gel? Because they’re absolutely unpredictable, they’re not consistent, they vary in size and composition quite a bit depending on the individual, their size, their weight, their level of osteoporosis, and they can vary significantly in their composition (such as whether it’s a thigh bone or a skull bone!)  And the penetration or deflection or bullet deformation that happens is absolutely and entirely dependent on the angle that the bullet hits the bone at, and at the angle that bone itself presents to the bullet (i.e., hitting the triangular peak of an arm bone or the rounded edge of a rib is going to affect the bullet very differently from smashing head-on (literally) into the front of the skull. Trying to account for the effects bone would have on a bullet’s performance is a nearly impossible task, due to the sheer overwhelming number of variables involved.

But Let’s Give It a Shot (hah!) Anyway…

However, attempting to solve Herculean tasks can be a little fun, so … I’ll try.  A bit.  With the understanding that nothing I say here will rule out the freak incidents where a bullet bounces off a skull or deflects off a rib or whatever.  We can’t predict those, we can’t rule those out, but we can say those aren’t typical or normal.

So — how much effect does human bone have, on slowing down or affecting a gunshot?  Not a whole lot.

(uh-oh, I’ve done it now…)

Okay, stick with me.  I know there’s a thousand anecdotes out there, and I know that there are people who know people who know someone who once got shot and their pinky stopped the .44 magnum bullet cold and we’ve all heard about the guy who got shot in the face by a .45 ACP that traveled under his scalp and ended up exiting out the back of his head without ever even penetrating his skull and all that, but — again — those are not the norm!  They’re atypical.  We can’t account for every possible variation or every imaginable circumstance.  All we can do is look at it generally, and examine tissue penetration based on observable science and the laws of physics and in light of the studies that have been done.

In general, we know that bullets go through bones.  There are innumerable headshots and chest shots that attest to this.  Sure, there are exceptions, but there are exceptions to just about every general observation — it would be foolish to ignore the mountain of evidence and focus solely on the exceptions, right?  If we did a study of a thousand suicides through headshots and (say, pulling a number out of a hat) 996 showed bone penetration, and four showed that the bullet bounced off, I think it’s only practical to determine that bullets as a rule do penetrate bone 99.6% of the time, right?  Those few cases where it bounced off would be relatively statistically meaningless in the general discussion of whether bullets can and/or do penetrate bones.  Note: I don’t KNOW those statistics, so if anyone wants to point a link to a verified study that shows the percentage of headshots that result in the bullet penetrating the skull, vs. the percentage of headshots where the bullet bounced off the skull, I’d be very interested to review that data and update this article to reflect it.

So let’s get to the central question: how much effort does it take for a bullet to go through a bone?

Is Human Bone A Bullet-Stopper?

Not really.  In a study in 1968 by Donald F. Huelke, J. H. Harger, and others, they undertook to find out what happens when steel sphere projectiles impact human femurs.  Which may be morbid, but it’s also interesting to see, in that very few tests have been conducted specifically and scientifically on human bones.  And the femur is the largest bone in the body (although I really would have preferred that they do their study on ribs or the skull, beggars can’t be choosers, and for purposes of our article here we gotta start somewhere so we’ll go with the femur study.)

They fired two projectile sizes, .25″ and .406″ (roughly about the size of a #4 buckshot ball or a .25 ACP bullet,  and a .40-cal S&W or a 0000 buckshot ball) at dozens and dozens of actual human femurs, and recorded the damage done to the femurs, as well as the impact speed and the exit speed of the projectiles.  In other words, they catalogued exactly what the impact with the bone cost the bullet.  Knowing that, we can hope to add to their findings by calculating just how much power the bullet would retain and how much more damage it can do, after having impacted the bone.

(Side note, it’s interesting to me that they determined that embalmed bone was a good substitute for actual living bone.  I have not verified that through other studies or sources, but will have to go on their word for now.  We know dried-out dead bone is a lousy substitute for living bone, but apparently the embalming process allowed the bone to retain similar properties to when it was living… at least, according to this study…)

So what did Huelke and Harger etc. find?

A .40-caliber ball at as slow as 252 feet per second was able to punch entirely through the bone, although it was only traveling at 40 feet per second after exiting the bone (and, thus wouldn’t have penetrated much further).  Considering that the average 9mm round is usually traveling 4x as fast and weighs a good 30% more than the sphere they tested, it’s a pretty safe bet that the 9mm is going to have no trouble going through bone.

So Now Let’s Bust Out The Calculator…

If we examine their data at typical handgun velocities for the size of the rounds, and run the data through the Schwartz Quantitative Ammunition Selection formula, we can determine penetration depths and remaining penetration capability and, effectively, figure out just how much penetration their spheres “lose” from having to first penetrate a bone.

As an example, let’s take a .406″ sphere such as they used.  They used a steel sphere, which would weigh a little over 69 grains.  A lead sphere would weigh more but, interestingly enough, in a follow-up study they determined that weight was irrelevant for the purposes of determining the damage done; they instead found that size and velocity were the determining factor, so … in interests of keeping this approachable, I’ll substitute in a 90-grain .380 ACP bullet and a .40-cal 000 buckshot ball for the .406″ sphere.  They’re not a direct comparison, but they’re relatively similar to the tested steel sphere, at least ballpark similar.  A 90-grain .380 ACP FMJ should travel at about 820 feet per second when fired from a 2.8″ micro-pistol, and a load of NobelSport 40-caliber buckshot is rated on the box for 820 fps velocity, so — the parallels are too convenient to ignore, so let’s use an 820fps velocity for the start of our comparison.  Using Huelke et al’s data from page 100 of their study, it shows numerous entry and exit velocities for the .406″ sphere.  Let’s examine the closest line, which is 814 feet per second, which gives us the most reasonably comparable approximation of our 90-grain round-nose .380 ACP FMJ and our .40-cal buck ball.

According to Huelke et al’s data, the sphere at 814 feet per second blasted through the bone with an exit velocity of 619 feet per second.  Using the Schwartz formula, I find that a 69.4-grain steel sphere at 814 feet per second would penetrate 13.04″ of soft tissue, but here’s the fun part — it would be slowed down to 619 feet per second after traveling only 2.44″ of flesh!  So what did the bone impact cost the bullet, in terms of penetrating power? Only 2.44″.  After passing through the bone, that steel sphere would still be able to penetrate 10.60″.

Put another, simpler way: the steel sphere started out at 814 feet per second, but after passing through a bone, it was down to 619 feet per second.  If we fired that steel sphere into muscle tissue instead of bone, it would slow down to 619 feet per second after only 2.44″ of tissue.

So the impact with the bone lopped off about 2,44″ of the bullet’s ability to penetrate flesh.

That ain’t that much.

Okay, let’s try now with the .380 ACP equivalent — 90 grain, .36″ in diameter, so about 10% smaller diameter than the steel sphere.  This isn’t going to be exact because, of course, the bullet size isn’t exactly the same, but I warned you at the beginning that we can’t be exact because of the millions of variables present in such an experiment, so … let’s roll with this as another variable, okay?  A .380 ACP 90-grain FMJ, which is close to the same weight and close to the same velocity as Huelke’s .406″ steel sphere, when traveling 814 fps will (according to QAS) penetrate 16.48″.  In order to bring the velocity down to Huelke’s observed 619 feet per second, how much flesh would the bullet have to cross?  Just 3.01″.  That’s it.  After smashing through the bone and dropping to 619 fps, the bullet would retain enough power to penetrate an additional 13.47″.

Seems like that bone isn’t an impenetrable wall after all, doesn’t it?

Now let’s try it with a more-similar projectile; we’ll use a spherical buckshot ball that measures .40″.  This should be exactly the same size and speed as what Huelke et all used, and although the weight is a little heavier for a lead sphere vs. a steel sphere (about 95 grains vs about 69.4 grains), remember that in their follow-up study they found that weight wasn’t a determining factor in the amount of damage done to the bone so, again… we’re gonna roll with it.  From a Raging Judge, I measured .40-caliber buckshot as penetrating an average of about 17.56″ (IIRC) into calibrated 10% organic ordnance gelatin.  According to QAS, those 96-grain lead .40-caliber buck balls, at 814 feet per second, should penetrate 17.49″.  Seems like an ideal comparison point to me…  especially because the ammo is rated on the box for 820 fps, so it seems like everything’s lining up.  So how much would the bone slow those buckshot balls down?  Again, using the exit velocity of 619 fps, QAS tells us that it would only take 3.25″ of flesh to equal the velocity drop that Huelke observed.  Now, sure, that’s a drop, but — is it that much?  With a round that would normally penetrate 17.49″, shaving off 3.25″ due to bone still leaves it able to penetrate 14.24″ of flesh, after it’s burst through the bone.  And that’s still plenty enough to reach the vital organs and disrupt them.

What About A Different-Size Bullet?

In their study, Huelke et al didn’t compare solely .406″ spheres, they also conducted tests from .25″ spheres.  We can run a comparison to see how they did simply and easily enough.  Let’s take as an example a .25 ACP FMJ bullet, the same diameter (but obviously not the same weight) as their lead spheres.  We’re looking mainly for a reasonable velocity here, so — according to SAAMI, a 35-grain .25 ACP bullet should travel at about 900 fps.  So for our calculations, we’ll use Huelke’s 900fps data.  According to them, at 904 fps, a .25″ steel sphere (which weighs 16.4) grains will blow through a femur and still be traveling 558 feet per second when it exits.  Well, using the Schwartz formula, it says a 16.4-grain steel sphere at 904 fps would normally travel 9.67″ through tissue, but it would drop to 558 fps after only 2.75″.  Again, this is quite consistent with what we’ve seen from the .406″ sphere, is that having to go through a bone only costs about 2.5-3″ of flesh penetration from a bullet’s total.

Now let’s take a 35-grain .25 ACP FMJ and put it at the same velocity.  Unhindered it would pass through 14.91″ of tissue, but if it hit first hit a bone and its velocity dropped to 558 fps after clearing that bone, its total penetration would be 4.24″ less.  This is the worst case we’ve seen for how a bone would impact the penetration, and even then — it’s not all that much.  From 14.91″ down to 10.67″ is a drop, certainly, but not the impenetrable brick wall that bone may appear to be.

Accounting For The Weight Discrepancy — or, AHAH! The Flaw In The Science!

I said at the beginning that it would be impossible to account for all the variables, but there’s one here that I do want to account for, and that’s the weight difference between steel and lead.  In the Huelke study they used steel spheres, not lead balls, and in bullets we typically don’t use steel, we use lead.  Trying to translate the impact of steel balls into the impact of lead balls will raise some mathematical questions, but I want to address it because it’s possible someone might think that my conclusions are erroneous because I tried to equate the exit velocity of the lead ball to the exit velocity of the steel ball.

It’s true that Huelke et al did a follow-up study to assert that diameter and velocity of the projectile were the determining factors in bone damage, and that mass was irrelevant.  I find such a conclusion challenging to accept on face value, because I know for a fact that mass is highly determinant in penetration.  As an example, a steel sphere of .406″ fired at 1000 fps will penetrate 14.95″, but a lead sphere of .406″ would weigh more and, when fired at that same velocity, would penetrate over 20.46″.  So I have a skeptical eye towards that part of the study, but I think it’s pretty easily resolvable.

To determine the effect of mass, they fired steel spheres, and identical-sized spheres of Heavimet, which is a tungsten carbide alloy that’s 2.18x heavier than steel.  That way they had identical diameter and identical velocity but more mass.  Their observed bone destruction was the same between both (which is why I was okay with the idea of using lead bullets as compared to their steel spheres) but — here’s the kicker — they didn’t measure overall penetration!  Once it got through the bone, that’s all they were concerned with; they weren’t measuring the ongoing penetration (which is what I, and I think most terminal ballistics aficionados, would be interested in knowing).  And, frustratingly, while they measured exit velocity with the steel spheres, they didn’t report exit velocity with the Heavimet spheres.  Instead, they only reported the amount of kinetic energy lost, and, further, they didn’t report it as a percentage of impact energy, they only reported it as an absolute number of ft/lbs. Grrr. So, I have to back-figure velocity and energy impact data to figure out what the exit velocity actually was.

Based on the Heavimet study, they say that an 1100 fps steel sphere lost 25.1 ft/lbs of energy by impacting the bone, and a Heavimet sphere lost 26.2 ft/lbs of energy impacting the bone.  Because those numbers are similar, they used that as an argument to say that the sphere imparted about the same amount of energy to the bone and cause a comparable amount of damage (which they verified by visual examination of the damage.)  BUT — what they’re not saying is that the exit velocity of the Heavimet sphere would be the same!  Because it wouldn’t.  The additional mass of the Heavimet means it has more kinetic energy, and that mass will help it retain its momentum better. Using their numbers, a Heavimet sphere of 2.18x the weight of steel, at the same velocity (1100fps) would contain 2.18x as much kinetic energy in the first place (96 ft/lbs, as opposed to 44 ft/lbs for the steel sphere).  So even though they lost the same AMOUNT of energy, proportionally the Heavimet sphere lost much less of its total energy — and, therefore, we can deduce that it retained higher velocity.

So — let’s go back to our original 814fps sphere and compare for exit velocities.  In the original experiment, the steel sphere went 814 fps and weighed 16.4 grains, for a total of 24.12 ft/lbs of energy.  And, they say it had an exit velocity of 558 fps, which would give it 11.33 ft/lbs of residual kinetic energy, for a total loss of 12.79 ft/lbs of energy.  But a Heavimet sphere weighs 35.76 grains, and at 814 fps it would possess 52.60 ft/lbs.  If it lost 17.2 ft/lbs of energy by passing through the bone (which is what their chart shows in table 1 for a Heavimet sphere at 800 fps), that would give it a residual kinetic energy of 35.4 ft/lbs.  Well, in order for a 35.76-grain sphere to have 35.4 ft/lbs of energy, it would have to be traveling at about 670 feet per second — much faster than the 558 fps that the steel sphere retained!

So what does this mean?

It means that the numbers I gave you above (2″ – 4″ of penetration lost due to bone) are probably grossly conservative, and the true penetration loss is even less.  For example, let’s calculate the 35-grain .25 ACP at 814 fps.  Previously, using the steel sphere’s exit velocity, we came up with a loss of 4.24″ of total penetration due to the bone.  But that was based on a steel sphere’s mass.  Since the HeaviMet bullet weighs basically the same as our .25 ACP bullet’s real mass (35 grains), we can perhaps extrapolate that the velocity loss of one .25″-diameter 35-grain projectile (the Heavimet sphere) will be quite comparable to the velocity loss you’d see with another .25″-diameter 35-grain projectile (the .25 ACP lead FMJ).  So, assuming that the exit velocity will be similar, let’ see how much penetration it takes to drop the velocity of the .25 ACP down to the Heavimet sphere’s exit velocity of 670 fps… according to QAS, an 814-fps 35-grain .25 ACP FMJ will drop to 670 fps after traveling through just 1.5″ of tissue.

One More Caveat

Okay, last monkey wrench to throw in is: this is for round-fronted objects (buckshot balls, steel spheres, or full-metal-jacket round-nose bullets).  This doesn’t take into account hollowpoints or bullet deformation that may happen due to impact with a bone.

(Like I said before, there are a MILLION different variables, and it’s going to be nigh unto impossible to account for them all!)

Conclusions? Are There Any We Can Reasonably Reach?

In general, based on our spitballing and on the scientific studies of Huelke et al, we can leap (however unjustified and tenuously) to the conclusion that hitting a bone will usually result in losing about 2″ to maybe 3″ of total penetration.  Which pretty much lines up with a study I read a while ago from (can’t remember, was it Fackler, or MacPherson, or Roberts?) where the author tested and determined that impacting a bone caused a drop of somewhere around 2″ of a bullet’s potential penetration.  Can’t find that study, I’ve googled and tried to wrack my brains to remember where it was, so if any of my good readers out there know of it and can point me to it, I’d be glad to update this article with a link to it).

Edited 1/28: Finally found a link to what I’ve heard referred to as “The Canadian Study.”  This was a 1994 study done by the Canadian Police Research Centre, wherein they tested 9mm and .40 S&W ammo as a potential replacement for their .38 Special duty revolvers.  In this test, the CPRC fired about 18 different types of ammo from 9mm, .40, and .38 Special into calibrated ballistic gel — with bones in it!  And without, too, but the key point here is — they used bare gelatin, and they also used gelatin with pork ribs embedded in it.  They used standardized testing procedures, and they tested in controlled environments, and they used the same ammo and the same guns, with the only real difference being the presence of pork ribs.  Now, I said before, using pork ribs isn’t really a good idea since they’re not living, they’re not hydrated like living tissue would be, but — heck, it’s another data point, so why not look at their results and see what they got?  The report is 90 pages long, but I’ll boil down the essence of it for you:

.38 Special hollowpoints penetrated 21.8% DEEPER after passing through bone, than they did in bare gel.

9mm hollowpoints from a 4″ barrel, penetrated average of 10% DEEPER after passing through bone, than they did in bare gel.

9mm FMJs from a 4″ barrel penetrated 20% LESS after passing through bone (23.075″) than they did through bare gel (29.1″)

.40 S&W hollowpoints from a 4″ barrel penetrated an average of 4% LESS after passing through bone, than they did in bare gel.

.40 S&W FMJs from a 4″ barrel penetrated 3% DEEPER (29.45″) after passing through bone, than they did in bare gel (28.575″)

So, what can we draw from this study?  Bone doesn’t make a whole heck of a lot of difference.  Sometimes it actually makes bullets penetrate deeper (attributable to the bone impairing the bullet’s expansion; in the 9mm rounds the bullets in bare gel expanded to an average of .614″, the bullets that hit bone expanded to .593″).  And sometimes, the bone slows the bullet down a little (the .40 S&W’s penetrated about 4% less).  But in both cases, it amounts to a whole lot of not much, wouldn’t you agree?  It’s certainly not the impenetrable Great Wall Of Bone that seems to be a common misconception.  And while we can’t take this Canadian study as gospel (because, again, living human bone is not the same as dead pork ribs), it at least gives us another data point, and all the data points we can find all seem to be pointing to the same conclusion: bones don’t affect bullets all that much.

So that’s my conclusion.  Hitting a bone does rob the bullet of some potential penetrating energy, but not nearly so much as people seem to think.  And if you’re using bullets that have been tested and proven to exceed the minimum 12″ penetration depth, it should still have more than adequate penetrating capability to reach the vital organs and shut down your attacker.  And, now you can see and better understand why the minimum required penetration depth is 12″ as recommended by the Wound Ballistic Conferences of 1987 and 1993 — because, frankly, to get to the vital organs of any attacker, it’s almost certain that your bullet is going to have to go through bone (ribcage or skull) to get there.

Now, I know that people would rather see this demonstrated, than read a 4,000-word discussion of it, and I agree — I think it would be an interesting test to run and I’d gladly do it, but — how do you come up with several dozen embalmed human ribcages to test on?  I’ll supply the bullets and the ballistic gel, if someone wants to set me up with a couple dozen embalmed human cadaver ribcages!

 

 

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