Telling me how calibers and bullets work when they hit bone, muscle, intermediate barriers, etc., can be very helpful. And almost without exception, the bullet weight I see most often with the .44 is the commercially-available 240 grains so I can't speak to anything besides that.Barring shotguns, use a rifle. How fast, I don't know nor does anyone else since there's just no way of knowing how soon he died or how long he stayed in the fight after being hit. Yes, I could go back through the autopsy reports and give a description of the wound either simply, in complex fashion, or somewhere in between but I just don't have time to do it.
Skip a 9mm off the sternum (breastbone) and the fight continues; plow through the sternum with a .45 and, trust me, the fight is over. Still another touched the tusk and said it was like a pipe. In other words, I would like to hear more about what you have seen than how you feel. Not that I think a bullet that would penetrate these would be a bad idea by any means.The BG forced them both down a narrow hallway into the living room, screaming all the while. In their military configurations, both calibers are FMJs, and most authorities (of which I'm not one) believe that yaw, a major factor in wound dynamics, begins in a shorter distance with the .223 than the 7.62x39 and thus imparts more damage, all else being equal. "It's all conjecture. They're both big, slow-moving bullets. Yes, the 9mm and .380 are the rounds I most often see on the autopsy table, but they're also the rounds that usually require multiple hits to make the kill. Do you guys think we should continue the bullet end of things on the Ammunition forum?
What about shot placement? Just guessing here that if you randomly looked at 100 shootings with a 9mm and 100 shootings with a .40, both by average citizens or bad guys, you would find a higher percentage of old-style hollow points, fmj ammo and other less-than-ideal rounds in 9mm than you would in the newer .40. And I get to do just that every day in my job.The chief said they were first issued in January 2004, after years of urging by the police officers' union, which wants ammunition that will stop a threat but not so powerful that bullets plow through bodies and hurt other people.Now for rifles and shotguns. Maybe we'll have one on the autopsy table that has had a few holes poked in him with a 9mm or .45 and we can continue the discussion while prodding the innards. That means that much of the energy was lost because of overpenetration. The 45 is in no way vastly superior to the 9mm. The rounds do what they're intended to do, which is stop a threat."As a parting word let me say what I've said many times before--that what I've tried to do is provide food for thought based on what I've SEEN, nothing more. Sometimes simply breaking a leg of the BG will end the fight; sometimes not. I think not.Your points are well taken, Patton21, and I agree with you to a point. The lethality of buckshot wounds is discussed, four clinical cases are described, and the wounding mechanisms are briefly outlined.© Williams & Wilkins 1978. I got shot by a .25. it did little damage, but I did notice. There's also a comment that we don't get to see how long our BG remained in the fight after being hit or how long it took him to expire. The Officer fired several rounds of .40 through the windshield. The temporary cavity is extremely important in that it is largely responsible for producing injuries to arteries, veins, organs, and nerves that are not directly struck by the bullet or its fragments. Even worse, in the back of the orbit there's a small area where there's no bone at all and there's a direct path to the brain. He stands 6'8" tall, weighs 350 pounds and it's pure muscle.
Bone is in the body for basically two reasons--to give support as with the legs and spinal column and to protect major organs, such as the ribs protecting the heart or the skull protecting the brain.