Return to “Carry Ammo for .45”
With this said..would low and slow hardball ammo be just as effective as a non-working hollowpoint?G.C.Montgomery wrote:I'm going to muddy the waters a bit and tell you that every .45 caliber, hollow-point bullet out there is nothing but a third to a half ounce of lead. Some get exotic and may even be made of solid copper but they generally all work the same way. All the bullets are designed to travel down a spiral tube at speeds ranging from 750 to 1200 feet per second. All are designed to poke a hole in soft-tissue and expand to cause rapid blood loss. And all generally do this pretty well. Ideally, the bullets are designed to expand after penetrating minor but common barriers such as clothing. I'm telling you this to reinforce the point that it does not matter what bullet you use so long as it functions reliably in your gun and you have properly placed that bullet into a vital area on the threat.
There are three bullets/brands I typically carry but I’m not going to tell you what they are because I don’t want you to use them and then say I’m the reason you chose them. All I will tell you is that I’ve tested those bullets thoroughly in the guns in which I carry them and know they will function reliably. I’m not terribly worried about how well one expands over the other. I don’t worry about the terminal performance of the various bullets because in my limited experience, none has been shown to be vastly superior to another. They will all expand and cause rapid blood loss after perforating vital organs such as the heart and lungs. Well placed bullets may also break vertebrae or other bones that protect the central nervous system.
I could easily rip your favorite bullet and tell you circumstances under which it will fail and show you well known firearms in which I have seen it fail to reliably function. As a result, you might go so far as to decide to stick with “ball� and that would not be the point I’m trying to get across. What I am trying to drive home is that nearly everything on the market is of equal quality. However, your choice in ammunition is yet another piece of equipment and like all your other equipment YOU need to test it thoroughly.
My personal recommendation is to charge every magazine you own for your gun with the candidate ammunition and verify that the gun, ammunition and magazine combination runs with ZERO stoppages or failures. Now if that means you fire 50 rounds or less, you might need to repeat the test several times. The standard test cycle many of us have been told to fit within most of our budgets is to run 200 rounds of the ammunition based on the assumption that mass-produced ammunition is reasonably consistent and not likely to change even if we expand the sample to a more statistically significant 1000 -1500 rounds. With the gun itself, I don’t make a compromise and will not carry a gun until it has run 1000 – 1500 rounds, including at least 500 rounds of my chosen “carry� ammunition, with zero stoppages.
It is essential to bear in mind that the single most critical factor remains penetration. While penetration up to 18 inches is preferable, a handgun bullet MUST reliably penetrate 12 inches of soft body tissue at a minimum, regardless of whether it expands or not. If the bullet does not reliably penetrate to these depths, it is not an effective bullet for law enforcement use
Conclusions
Physiologically, no caliber or bullet is certain to incapacitate any individual unless the brain is hit. Psychologically, some individuals can be incapacitated by minor or small caliber wounds. Those individuals who are stimulated by fear, adrenaline, drugs, alcohol, and/or sheer will and survival determination may not be incapacitated even if mortally wounded.
The will to survive and to fight despite horrific damage to the body is commonplace on the battlefield, and on the street. Barring a hit to the brain, the only way to force incapacitation is to cause sufficient blood loss that the subject can no longer function, and that takes time. Even if the heart is instantly destroyed, there is sufficient oxygen in the brain to support full and complete voluntary action for 10-15 seconds.
Kinetic energy does not wound. Temporary cavity does not wound. The much discussed "shock" of bullet impact is a fable and "knock down" power is a myth. The critical element is penetration. The bullet must pass through the large, blood bearing organs and be of sufficient diameter to promote rapid bleeding. Penetration less than 12 inches is too little, and, in the words of two of the participants in the 1987 Wound Ballistics Workshop, "too little penetration will get you killed." 42,43 Given desirable and reliable penetration, the only way to increase bullet effectiveness is to increase the severity of the wound by increasing the size of hole made by the bullet. Any bullet which will not penetrate through vital organs from less than optimal angles is not acceptable. Of those that will penetrate, the edge is always with the bigger bullet.