Policemag: Stopping Power: Myths, Legends, and Realities

General Firearms Terminal Ballistic Information
1

Somewhat interesting article in Policemag:
http://www.policemag.com/channel/weapons/articles/2013/01/stopping-power-myths-legends-and-realities.aspx

The really interesting part is what Sydney Vail, MD, the article’s author, has to say in the comments section (all the doctor’s misspellings included but bolding for emphasis is mine):

“Mr Haggard,
You are quite misinformed: the association of gel to the human body has beed discredited multiple times; they simply do not corrolate. Gel simulates human muscle tissue, end of story and proven fact. The body has a few more components to it trhat gel can not replicater. I have lectured nationally on this and everytime I am able to prove that statement to be factual. Do more research and speak to coroners, trauma surgeons and then decide if gel can predict performance in the human body.
Respectfully
sjv”

I suppose Dr. Vail has the “real scoop,” and LAIR, FBI-BRF, RCMP et al are discredited.

2

Sydney Vail, the author of that article, has long been a pied piper and I believe is afiliated with the discredited LeMas ammo:

https://www.m4carbine.net/showthread.php?t=19888

3

Just what Penn State needs. Another douche-nozzle making us look bad.

4

Interesting…you write that as only one douche-nozzle was responsible before…

Dr. Vail = Sandusky?

5

It’s a shame that someone affiliated with such a fine research institution is involved with shysters trying to make a buck peddling garbage backed by pseudoscience.

6

Stay on track.

Yes, Dr. Vail did champion the wonderful magical properties of LeMas ammunition.

Interestingly, "“Mr Haggard” is one of the most experienced LE officers I know regarding real world terminal effects; perhaps Dr. Vail should pay a bit more attention to what he has to say…

7

That was an interesting article and gives another point of view. I don’t know anything about the author, so I would not offer a comment about him one way or the other.

I read as much as I can about ballistic testing and expert opinions on terminal ballistics, but that is not all I rely on when selecting defensive pistol ammunition. On two occasions I saw a suspect shot with ammunition that performs beautifully when shot into ballistic gelatin, but the projectiles did not expand when shot into human tissue. Shot placement won the day.

I base my ammunition selection on what I have seen at autopsies and accounts of what happened during shooting incidents. Sometimes the ammunition that performed well in ballistic gelatin did not have the same results in the field and sometimes it did perform as expected.

I like reading ammunition test results, such as posts made by DocGKR to learn how ammunition performs in test media. He has more experience with testing that I do, but I have observed that what testing I did participate in yielded the same findings as his. I also kept the test results in the back of my mind when investigating shooting incidents and attending autopsies. It is amazing what the human body can endure and the learning process never stops.

Keep the articles and data coming gentlemen, you have my attention.

8

Not that it would be decisive or even necessarily relevant, but do you know the ranges for these incidents? Were there any discernible similarities in the two, such as amount (or lack of) clothing worn, angle of entry or body location that you can recall?

9

Both incidents involved a high speed 9mm cartridge.

  1. The subject was shot at a distance of less than 6 feet. There was a lot of movement during the incident. The subject was heavy set and was wearing a long sleeve shirt and thick cotton jacket. One shot was from the front, one cross chest and the last shot was fired into his back. All three rounds penetrated all the way through the subject with the exit wounds being the same diameter as the entrance wounds. I was unable to attend the autopsy and was told that the projectiles were never recovered.

  2. The subect was medium to thin build, being 5’10" in height and weighing approximately 160 lbs. He was wearing a t-shirt and the engagement distance was 47 feet. He was exchanging shots with a LEO and he was struck twice. One round penetrated his forearm at an angle, passed through approximately 7" of tissue and exited the other side of the forearm. No bone was hit. The exit wound and entrance wound were elongated due to the angle of the hit and the same size. The second shot that hit him entered the chest to the left of his sternum, passed through the heart, then exited his back on the opposite side of the spine between two ribs. Both the entrance wound and exit wound were the same size. The projectiles were not recovered.

In both incidents the entrance and exit wounds were close to the same size as an unexpanded projectile. The ammunition was the same in both incidents, but it is unknown if it was from the same production lot. A range officer involved in testing advised me that expansion in gelatin was massive with 10"-12" of penetration.

10

Well that was informative and all could have hoped for, thank-you. Even more interesting due to the very different circumstances with apparently similar outcomes.

I say apparently because without having recovered any of the fired rounds it’s hard to say what if any expansion occurred, this despite the small exit wounds. Still the fact that they continued on so far as to not even be recovered seems to indicate poor expansion at the very least.

11

Did a little digging on Dr. Vail: wow, what a snake oil salesman! He would insult Dr. Roberts and “call him out” like some sort of sandbox bully; while Dr. Roberts always responded with nothing but research and findings of multiple, reputable sources and agencies.

I’m sure Dr. Vail has his devoted “groupies,” but the guy has credibility measured in negative units, as far as I’m concerned.

It begs the question: why are somewhat reputable information sources publishing Vail’s rubbish?

12

I have seen a number if handgun exits wounds where the bullets were recovered. Most of these wounds looked similar in size to the entrance wounds to the casual observer, even though the bullet expanded well. Exit wounds can be very deceiving since the skin tends pull away from the fat/muscle with the bullet and tends to tear a hole instead of punching a hole. Most of the time it has a slight keyhole shape as the expanded bullet flips around.

13

I would have liked to been able to see the projectiles or at least photographs of them. Both shootings were outdoors in urban areas. Without a backstop near either of the subjects, crime scene personnel were unable to recover the projectiles.

14

T2C–what type of projectile and loading? Were the bullets tested in bare gel or in 4LD or heavy clothing?

Shots into bare gel only tell us the maximum expansion that is possible.

A more realistic assessment is the IWBA 4 layer denim test or the FBI heavy clothing test. The four layer denim test is NOT designed to simulate any type of clothing–it is simply an engineering test to assess the ability of a handgun projectile to resist plugging and robustly expand. FWIW, one of the senior engineers at a very respected ammunition manufacturer has commented that handgun bullets that do well in 4 layer denim testing have invariably worked well in actual officer involved shooting incidents. It has been my experience that most handgun bullets recovered from human tissue in surgery or at autopsy tend to look like those same type of projectiles after 4LD testing.

As many folks know, in the wake of the 1986 FBI incident in Miami, LE began to investigate what criteria should be used to optimize handgun ammunition terminal performance. To help guide that development, the FBI held a series of wound ballistic workshops in 1987 through 1993, inviting leading experts to address the topic. These FBI workshops lead to the establishment of the FBI ammunition testing guidelines—this was good for the public, LE, and ammunition vendors, as it articulated a clear set of performance criteria resulting in more effective and safer ammunition. Ammunition engineers were able to use the new test protocol as a metric to guide bullet design. The first generation of handgun ammunition designed to meet the new FBI terminal performance guidelines included the Federal Hydrashok, Hornady XTP, Remington Golden Saber, first generation Speer Gold Dot, and Winchester Black Talon. These bullets all offered improved penetration to reach the desired 12-18” guidelines and somewhat better intermediate barrier performance, however, they still demonstrated inconsistent terminal performance under some conditions, particularly with heavy clothing and through automobile windshields. As a result, the IWBA began a series of tests to determine what needed to be done—this data, along with suggested engineering changes and test protocols, particularly the 4 layer denim test, was shared with industry. By 1997, many munitions engineers began incorporating these updates into LE handgun ammunition, eventually leading to improved loads like the current Barnes Tac-XP, Federal HST and Tactical, Remington bonded Golden Saber, current generation Speer Gold Dot, Winchester Ranger Talon, and Winchester Bonded. The results of the IWBA experiments, corrective recommendations, and engineering test protocls were published by the IWBA in an article by Duncan MacPherson (MacPherson D: “Improved Handgun Ammunition”. Wound Ballistics Review. 3 (3):12-21, 1998). This, along with Duncan’s book (MacPherson D: Bullet Penetration: Modeling the Dynamics and the Incapacitation Resulting from Wound Trauma. Ballistic Publications, El Segundo, CA, 1994. ISBN 0-9643577-0-4), remain the best sources of information on this subject.

15

Having seen a number of OISs with various generations of 9mm ammo since we went to semi auto pistols in 1989, my observation is that the 4 layer denim test is the most “street” realistic for discovering the potential of a bullet in an unobstructed shot to a bad guy.
Every one of the 124gr +P Gold Dot bullets we have recovered in our OISs has looked exactly like what you see on the Speer bullet poster when you look at the heavy clothing and four layer denim tests.

The one year we used the 124gr +P Ranger-T this also held true.

Street shootings are most often with ball ammo, but sometimes I get to see various JHPs used. We had several locally where 147gr HST was used after a vendor sold a bunch of that load at a local gun show, just as an example.

16

It was a 115g JHP at 1340 fps. I did not witness testing and was told it was tested in bare gelatin.

Your comment about the older Hydra-Shok is on point when speaking about the 147g load. I have no experience with the older 124g cartridge.

Thanks for the study references Doc.

17

How did the HSTs hold up? It’s our current duty round.

And thanks for your observations on the OIS/4LD consistency. Always nice to have real world data to back up a position.

18 
 Good firsthand information.  When the same ammo continues to produce the same results over and over in both proper testing and street results ,it's not just a clue but an established fact.
Anything that does not correlate with these results is not just suspect,but pure garbage info to be cast aside and forgotten.
19

Thanks for the great reference material names. Going to add to the reading list.

20

T2C–With the exception of the all copper Barnes Tac-XP style bullets, I don’t ever recall a 9 mm 115 gr JHP that consistently robustly expanded when fired through 4LD or heavy clothing…

wilco423–The Fed 147 gr HST has been used as a duty load here for over 5 years; it works very well in OIS incidents and the projectiles recovered from human tissue look almost exactly like ones from a 4LD test.