Honey, I Fragged the Hummer
May 29th, 201010mm Looking Better All the Time
Here is some possibly useless news.
1. Midway USA has all sorts of pistol primers. I just got a cascade of product-arrival emails. Stock up, I guess.
2. Charlie Crist has suspended the fishing license requirement for the State of Florida, through the long weekend. Hooray for all concerned.
I may run by the gun shop today to talk about 10mm and an AK47 pistol. My big concern about the AK is that it may be impossible to find a place where I can shoot it. Trail Glades doesn’t allow people to shoot rifles with the stocks folded, and this is essentially the same thing. I better call.
A 10mm Glock looks like a really good defense choice. You can get ammunition that expands to about 1″ in diameter. That’s not bad for a pistol round. And it penetrates way better than a 9mm.
I keep reading up on this stuff. It’s very confusing. Back when I chose my first Glock, in .40 S&W, my understanding was that heavy rounds could work against you, because of conservation of momentum. I won’t go into the physics, but it works like this: the heavier a bullet is, the farther it can penetrate. There is more to it than that, and I am not going to publish distracting wise-guy comments about sectional density. Type them if you want, just for the finger exercise. Comments like that lead to boring comment threads that annoy everyone and don’t shed any light on anything. People who are interested in splitting hairs can always go to Stoppingpower.net.
Anyway, the theory was this: a round that penetrates too far before expanding won’t achieve much. You get a tunnel about the same diameter as the bullet, plus two small entry and exit wounds.
Now I’m reading stuff claiming that you want the deepest penetration possible, because handgun bullets don’t expand reliably, and that tunnel is all you can count on. If the bullet doesn’t expand, you want it to go all the way through the perp, to do as much harm as possible.
I’m also reading that there are 10mm rounds out there that reliably expand to about 1″ in diameter.
Putting all the BS together in a bag and shaking it, I tentatively conclude that 10mm is a very good choice, when you are limited to a sad little pistol instead of a long gun. If it doesn’t expand, you get good penetration, and if it does, you get lots of damage from the expansion. And it should do a nice job penetrating car doors and such.
I know I can shoot this round very well, because I shoot the .50 AE very well. I am not going to faint because of a little recoil. I shot the .50 AE well while the shells were coming back and hitting me in the middle of the forehead hard enough to cause bleeding, so I think I can deal with a gun that has half as much muzzle energy.
If you think you’ve done things at the range that made you feel stupid, wait until you find out you’ve been shooting yourself in the head over and over with spent cartridges. You don’t feel it until you quit shooting, and by then, you’re already bleeding.
I am convinced that worries about bullets exiting perps and hitting babies and Boy Scouts and visiting Popes and so on are the stuff of Internet-forum hysteria, and the FBI, in an internal document, has taken pretty much the same position. The odds of hitting an innocent person with a spent round are incredibly slim, while the odds of being killed by someone who wasn’t hurt badly enough by your wimpy pistol ammunition are very high. And if you shoot at a criminal and kill someone else, guess who gets charged with the crime? The criminal. It’s called felony murder. Look it up. I got confused and called it “capital murder” the other day. Hey, I’m not a criminal lawyer, plus I’m old. I’m sure there are exceptions for negligence and so on, but the solution is simple: don’t be negligent.
Felony murder is wonderful. Criminals can be charged with the murders of the accomplices the cops shoot. I think.
The idea that there is a wonderful bullet out there, which goes into a perp exactly the right distance, does exactly the right things, and stops without hitting your kids seems facially farcical to me. It’s a lot to ask from a mindless piece of metal. I say power up, shoot to kill, and use common sense. One of the cardinal rules of shooting is, “Be sure of your backstop.” I don’t care how nerve-wracking a shooting situation is; you ought to be able to make some minimal effort not to shoot toward a crowded playground or a session of Congress. If you can’t, then the perp has taken that option away, and he, not you, bears the legal responsibility.
I am not giving legal advice here; I’m just blathering on a blog. If it turns out the laws in your state are different, it’s your problem, not mine. I don’t see the “I read it on a blog” defense as highly viable. Even Tim Geithner had a better excuse than that.
The idea that all calibers are equally effective is also silly. Some do more damage than others, and more damage means a better chance of your survival, especially if your shot placement isn’t perfect. If a 10mm is 10% better than a 9mm, it seems like a smart move to me.
You could say that the extra bullet you get by staying at 9mm gives you at least a 10% advantage. But how likely are you to get to the point where you use that bullet? Besides, extra Glock magazines are small and light.
The stuff about expansion and penetration makes me wonder if I’ve underestimated the .50 AE as a defensive round. The big problems with it are the high likelihood of misfeeds, the low magazine capacity, and the distinct possibility that a stray round will enter your garage and kill one of your vehicles. And then there’s that bleeding-forehead thing.
There is no perfect solution, but trying to work it out is too much fun to quit.
May 29th, 2010 at 2:27 PM
You know, with sectional density you get
And that’s all I’m going to say about that.
May 29th, 2010 at 4:33 PM
My memory may be wrong, if so one of your other readers will correct me. Wasn’t it the FBI shoot out in Sunniland (South Miami) that led to the FBI developing the 10mm?
What is the name of the gun shop you use?
May 29th, 2010 at 5:38 PM
10mm is an excellent cartridge, far better than the toned down .40 S&W and much more reloader friendly if you can find enough of your brass.
I dream of the day Glock introduces a factory 6″ longslide Model 20 and Illinois allows semi auto handguns for deer hunting. I’ll retire my .44 Magnum.
May 29th, 2010 at 7:26 PM
I carry a .45 cal. A 9mm bullet might expand as designed but a .45 cal bullet will never shrink.
Your mileage may vary.
Gerry N.
May 29th, 2010 at 7:48 PM
Felony murder is killing someone while in the course of committing another felony – an armed robbery where the victim is killed is a common example. A felony murder charge relieves the prosecution of having to prove malice. It originally applied only to a death caused by the felon. However some states, and I don’t know if Florida is one, have expanded the statute to include any death that occurs during the course of the felony – someone shot by the intended victim, the cops, an armorbearer at the nearby church, etc.
May 29th, 2010 at 9:40 PM
I use the Hydro-shok .40 in my Glock.. Bigger expansion and if it does come out, it will not go far.. just my .02 worth..
May 30th, 2010 at 1:01 PM
The biggest problem with the .50 AE is, you can’t reasonably carry the gun. And if you want a gun to stash in your car or bedroom, you can do a lot better than a hyper-pistol.
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I’m an EMT, and my father was a combat medic. I’ve studied everything I can find on terminal ballistics, and followed all the debates. And I’ve been open-minded about it: just about everyone, including the cranks and fraudsters, has something valid to say. But there is a lot of magical thinking out there. There are also some true authorities and excellent empirical data. Anyway, when I tell you what bullets actually do to the body, there’s no shame in saying, “wow, I did not know that”.
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You seem to have this idea that pistol rounds can do tissue damage by “shock”, destroying tissues they don’t actually touch. This is not true. If you miss the aorta by a millimeter with, say, a .45, you won’t make a hole in it. The temporary cavity can fracture the liver or destroy the brain; all other tissues, including major blood vessels, bounce back without significant injury. This is pistols we’re talking about.
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All pistols are not equally effective in a gunfight. Not by a long way. But they really are about equally likely to kill: not very. Something like 90% of handgun chest wounds are survivable. More energy and expanding bullets make a bigger wound channel, and that can be very important, but only if you hit a vital organ. And the bigger wound channel doesn’t much improve your odds of hitting that vital organ. Assuming through penetration, a 1-inch projectile would give about a sevenfold increase in tissue destruction over a .38 projectile. But it only increases your aiming leeway by the difference in radius: 0.31 inches. You still have to hit something in order to destroy it, and even a massive 1-inch wound channel is much less than 1 percent of the perp’s body.
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Of course, if you do hit a vital organ, the bigger wound channel won’t kill the perp any deader, but it may save your life by killing him quicker.
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The size of entry and exit wounds is all but irrelevant. Suppose you fracture a burglar’s pelvis with a baseball bat. Have you poked a hole in him? No. Will he bleed to death? Yes. There’s plenty of room in the thoracic, abdominal or retroperitoneal cavities to allow for fatal blood loss. This argument should be qualified, but the qualifications are abstruse and not all that consequential.
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As I said before, the vast majority of stops are “psychological”, and bigger guns work better at producing psychological stops. This is the only way to reconcile the after-action reports with what we know about wound ballistics. The FBI agrees with this: http://www.firearmstactical.com/hwfe.htm
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The FBI agrees with you, too, that overpenetration concerns aren’t worth being concerned about.
May 30th, 2010 at 5:28 PM
“The biggest problem with the .50 AE is, you can’t reasonably carry the gun.”
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No, not really. That’s a big problem, but the biggest problem is the likelihood of misfeeds. If you were familiar with the gun, you would understand what I’m talking about. The weight and size are horrible, but the misfeed problem is so bad, it’s even worse. Magnum Research blames shooters for the weird way this gun ejects cartridges, but I think most people who own one are aware that the gun itself is the problem. That’s just its nature.
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In any case, I thought it was obvious that I wasn’t seriously suggesting using a Desert Eagle for self-defense. They’re for shooting watermelons and scaring people at the range. I bought mine to offend anti-Semites. It does that just fine without firing a shot. I wish I had a Galil, too, plus a couple of Uzis. Just for the purpose of supporting Israel and God’s chosen people.
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“I’m an EMT, and my father was a combat medic.”
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In other words, you’re not an expert on terminal ballistics, and neither was your dad. You’re right down here on my level. I’m sure EMTs know more about gunshot wounds than most people, but you would surely admit “EMT” does not equal “firearms-performance guru.” I don’t mean to denigrate your knowledge, which must surely exceed that of a random individual, but let’s not confuse “buff” with “expert.”
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“The temporary cavity can fracture the liver or destroy the brain”
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That’s great news. Livers are really big. Pretty likely thing to hit. And I’m starting to think the widespread phobia of head shots is something that ought to be questioned, at least for capable shooters who train.
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“If you miss the aorta by a millimeter with, say, a .45, you won’t make a hole in it.”
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That’s interesting, if it’s true. But you will understand why I want better evidence than a paramedic’s word. I can break blood vessels in a man’s face with my fist merely by punching him near them, so you can see why it’s hard to believe that the much-greater tension applied by a passing bullet one millimeter away would have less effect. Point us to a good reference. If you had said “inch,” I would have seen no reason to doubt, but “millimeter”? Are you positive? Anyone who has shot a jug full of water with a gun knows what liquid-filled objects (like people) do in response to gunfire, so I would like to see some sort of credible source before I believe a one-millimeter miss is a total failure.
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I would also point out that the aorta isn’t the only thing you might affect with a near-miss or a graze. Things like eyeballs, testicles, and brains come to mind. I have to wonder if there aren’t sensitive areas in the body that can produce great pain in response to the shock of a near-miss.
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“Assuming through penetration, a 1-inch projectile would give about a sevenfold increase in tissue destruction over a .38 projectile.”
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That’s all you need to say. More great news. It means your chances of hitting something important go up by a factor of seven. That’s good, no matter how you look at it. If missing an aorta by a millimeter means doing no significant harm, adding .31 inches (nearly 8 millimeters) to the radius of the wound has to be a big improvement. I hadn’t really considered the mathematics of it before, but now that you bring it up, the 10mm looks even better. You say it only improves the situation a little, but you have to understand, the additional reach is in every direction, so it brings you .31″ closer to everything you want to hit. It could conceivably cause you to hit several things at once, which the smaller round would have missed.
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“The size of entry and exit wounds is all but irrelevant.”
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Big wounds and multiple wounds bleed more than small, single wounds. Is there any way that can fail to be true? Seems to me you’re letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
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“As I said before, the vast majority of stops are “psychological”
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I think that’s true, mainly because it includes stops made simply by displaying a gun. Does that mean you should pin your hopes on–and plan on obtaining–a psychological stop? Obviously not. Many, many people are killed every year by assailants who can’t be “psychologically stopped.” I can sit here and crank out links to actual videos of such shooters. You should do your best to physically incapacitate. That means using the best ammunition you can find.
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The more I learn about this, the more convinced I am that pistols are terrible choices for self-defense, except when there is no alternative, and that nice wide bullets that go real fast make the most of what pistols have to offer. And shooting for the head looks more and more logical.
May 30th, 2010 at 7:35 PM
“Point us to a good reference. I want better evidence than a paramedic’s word”
Oh, I’m no paramedic. Just an EMT-Basic. Certainly no expert on wound ballistics. But I did give you a link to the FBI training document, Handgun Wounding Factors and Effectiveness, and that document in turn cites all the research that went into it. And it says all the same things I say.
“I have to wonder if there aren’t sensitive areas in the body that can produce great pain in response to the shock of a near-miss.”
I’d say that all parts of the body possess this quality (some more than others, of course). To say the tissue adjacent to the temporary cavity will be uninjured isn’t exactly true. It must get badly bruised by the stretching. It must sting like a mother. It just doesn’t tear open and bleed a lot, at low pistol-caliber energies. My guess, based on various non-authoritative sources not directly addressed to this subjective question, is that a shot to the bladder is about as painful as it gets. Also, if the temporary cavity affects the diaphragm, it’s just like a very hard sucker-punch. The shootee will be unable to breathe for a while.
“It means your chances of hitting something important go up by a factor of seven.”
No. To do that, you’d need to increase the cross-section of “something important” seven times. But seven times the tissue damage probably does mean something like seven times the pain.
“Big wounds and multiple wounds bleed more than small, single wounds…”
Sure. My point is, most of the damage and most of the bleeding are internal, especially with handguns. It is common for a bullet to stop under the skin after going through the body; skin is tough. That only leaves the dinky entrance wound, which may not bleed at all. But the injury can be promptly fatal nonetheless.
“Psychological includes stops made simply by displaying a gun”
The word “psychological” is troublesome, because it suggests a purely mental process. But “jello junkies” don’t do research on deterrence. In their world, “psychological stop” always means the person was shot, and then they fell down or surrendered, even though they were physiologically capable of standing and/or fighting. That FBI document goes into detail about the concept.
“nice wide bullets that go real fast make the most of what pistols have to offer”
No debate there.
“shooting for the head looks more and more logical”
Cooper recommended the following drill for people who want to do learn how to fight with a .22: do vigorous calisthenics until you’re out of breath, and then shoot bottle caps from seven feet as fast as you can. If you get good at that drill, then you can shoot a bad guy in the eye.
May 30th, 2010 at 7:35 PM
Dang it! Forgot to put in the dots.
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Like this.
May 30th, 2010 at 7:40 PM
“No. To do that, you’d need to increase the cross-section of “something important” seven times.”
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What I said is actually correct, under the implicit simplifying assumptions we are observing.
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As for training, the head Armorbearer at my church has us doing Mozambique drills, which seem pretty useful. If I lived in a rural setting, I would have more options.
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I like Richard Marcinko’s idea, which was to train at point-shooting with lots of ammunition, until you outshoot the guys that aim.
May 31st, 2010 at 1:35 PM
FBI originally commissioned the 10mm because they decided the other stuff didn’t have enough penetration; then had it downloaded(which lead to the .40S&W) because a lot of agents had trouble with the recoil and it tended to batter frames and slides, from what I’ve read.
May 31st, 2010 at 4:19 PM
Shooting a 10mm Glock can become unpleasant after a few dozen rounds. Wears on you.