Quote:
Originally Posted by speeder
There was a police shooting incident covered in another spoon thread here a few years back w a case study of a shoot-out between the cops and some dude who drew them into a trap and ambushed them. He was fully expecting to die, he just wanted to kill as many cops as possible.
I remember that the FBI did a report on it for the purpose of evaluating various types of ammo. The short version is that the cops shot the guy multiple times w hollow point/expanding rounds and nothing was dropping the guy until SWAT shot him w some high-powered rifle that finally ventilated the guy and dropped him. Really interesting, I might have some details wrong but not the jist of it.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill Douglas
I use .38 Spl wadcutters to kill paper. they are good because the hole is nice and clean and big, so as much chance as possible to be touching a higher scoring ring on the target.
I've heard they are an OK self defense round. a solid round node can enter and exit with the would closing up behind, whereas a wadcutter makes a hole no less than the bullet diameter.
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Hmm... I could bore you guys to tears with my experiences with and impressions of various handgun bullet designs. I've hunted on and off for 40 years with handguns, shooting everything from small game to some rather large critters. I've tried pretty much every general type of handgun bullet, including jacketed hollow points, jacketed soft points, and hard cast lead bullets. Granted, hunting is not defensive shooting, but I have certainly formed some opinions.
First and foremost, the jacketed hollow point is the most utterly worthless bullet design ever used in a handgun. I've had them completely disintegrate on something as light as a rib bone on a mule deer. Even if they don't hit a bone, they seldom penetrate enough to reach vital organs and put the critter down. I've followed deer hit with these things for miles, sometimes having to leave them overnight and start again the next day. If found, they just have nasty surface wounds, and died a lingering death.
Jacketed soft points are not much better. Their cores are too soft (so they expand), so they come apart as well, just not as readily. They still lack the penetration required to put game down quickly.
The best bullets I have ever used are hard cast lead bullets, which behave like solids - they do not expand or deform in any way. The shape is important - round noses just don't cut it. As Bill says, wounds close up behind them, and the wound stops bleeding. Semi-wadcutters are the preferred shape. They cut a neat hole, just like a wadcutter through a paper target, and that hole does not close up again. The animal bleeds out very quickly, especially with an exit wound. These things penetrate well enough that there will always be that exit wound. That is how a handgun kills - deep penetration, with an exit wound, cutting tissue as it goes.
Even "the most powerful handgun in the world" - Harry's .44 mag - is woefully lacking in power compared to typical centerfire rifles. Rifles have enough power to achieve the required penetration even with expanding bullets. Handguns don't. We have to choose one or the other - expansion or penetration. My hunting experiences have taught me that the latter works where the former fails.
Here is a semi wadcutter bullet as loaded in the .45 Colt. Noticed the flat front, with the sharp edge around it. Notice the sharp secondary shoulder, right in front of where it gets crimped in the case. These sharp shoulders are what do the cutting, and the killing.
I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that in this police shooting, their hollow points failed to penetrate adequately to damage the perp's vital organs. This happens all too often with this kind of bullet. They would find a truncated cone FMJ bullet to be far more effective out of their autoloaders.