Handgun Stopping Power for Dummies*

Ever since the Virginia Tech shootings I have been looking for information on what kind of 9mm ammunition the killer used. A Google keyword search on "Cho, ammunition" reveals over 700,000 hits. Every one of them mentioned that Cho bought "ammunition clips" on eBay.

They are called MAGAZINES not CLIPS!!!!!!!

Then I found this piece on MSNBC which looked more promising:

NEW YORK - We're getting a better picture of just how heavily armed Seung-Hui Cho was — a further sign of how much he had done in advance of the shootings to prepare himself for his rampage.

Virginia State Police say they're nearly done with their on-scene investigation at Virginia Tech. But inside the classroom building, investigators say they found a surprising number of handgun magazines, or clips — 17. Some, officials say, were high-capacity magazines that hold 33 rounds. That means, investigators say, that Cho may have fired at least 200 times during his killing spree on Monday.

In the photos Cho sent to NBC, he showed some of his ammunition — hollow-point rounds, purchased, officials say, in the weeks before the shootings. Law enforcement officials say hollow-points are generally considered more lethal.

Joseph Vince, a retired ATF agent, agrees.

"It's not something that you would need for home protection, because what you are trying to do is eliminate an immediate threat," Vince says. "The idea of killing is what this ammunition portrays to me." . . .

Well at least he uses the word magazines and mentions hollow-point ammunition. But I don't have a clue how much faith to put into it because of all the bulls**t about hollow-points not being needed for home protection.

For the benefit of my readers who are not gun people I will explain:

Full metal jacket ammunition (that is non-hollow-point ammunition) has poor stopping power. That means that you have to shoot someone a whole bunch of times to make them stop trying to kill you. The more times someone is shot the more likely they are to die from their wounds.

You see a person can have a fatal wound, but not be immediately incapacitated. You can have your heart blown right out of your body and still remain on your feet and able to fight for around a minute. A minute is not long to live, but it is plenty of time to shoot someone or cut their throat or bash their brains out with a baseball bat.

This is why knowledgeable people who carry handguns for self defense do not care about the killing power of a bullet. It matters not if the ammunition you shoot the bad guy with kills him deader than a doorpost if he first has a chance to gut you like a fish with the butcher knife he picked up from your kitchen counter.

What knowledgeable people look for in ammunition is "stopping power". Stopping power is a measure of how quickly bullet can render someone unable to continue fighting. You want the person who is trying to kill you to drop like a stone with one solid hit on his torso. You do not care if he makes a complete recovery after spending some time in the hospital. All that matters is that he became combat ineffective as quickly as possible.

Of course you can never count on a one shot stop so you practice shooting rapidly, as rapidly as you can and still keep the shots clustered near the center of the target. This is why police are trained to keep shooting until the suspect goes down.

But if you are using a well designed hollow-point round like the Federal HST it will take many fewer hits to make the criminal go down than it will if you are using full metal jacket.

Another property of full metal jacket (FMJ) rounds is that while they have poor stopping power they have excellent penetration. Penetration means how much stuff the bullet can pass through before it loses so much energy that it comes to rest. A FMJ bullet fired from a 9mm handgun will often be able to penetrate a human body and emerge with enough energy to inflict a serious injury on another person.

A 9mm FMJ fired inside your home at an armed home invader can miss the crook and pass through the wall of your house, travel to your neighbor's house and penetrate his wall with enough energy left to kill his 6 month-old baby sleeping peacefully in its crib. That is unless you live in a brick or stone house. A 9mm FMJ can pass through several interior walls and doors. This means that the bullet that misses the bad guy in your apartment can leave your apartment and kill your neighbor in the next apartment.

Hollow-point ammunition penetrates less because it expands as it penetrates. This is also why it has better stopping power. As the round penetrates the hollow cavity in the tip of the bullet opens up causing the bullet to expand. The energy to make the metal of the bullet deform is taken from its forward momentum. As the bullet expands its surface area grows larger and it makes contact with more of the target body's tissue creating a larger wound channel and imparting more "shock" to the target's nervous system. Also blood loss is increased and rapid loss of blood pressure contributes to the incapacitation of the target.

In conclusion hollow-point ammunition is ideally suited for home defense (and any other kind of self defense) because its improved stopping power takes your attacker out of the fight with fewer shots fired (increasing his chances of survival) and its reduced penetration decreases the hazard to innocent bystanders.

Bottom Line: If you want to know anything about guns the last person to ask is an ATF agent.

*The dummies are the media and the cops.