Sangre,

Kudos to you for the diligence to practice marksmanship so much. I've not had that kind of capacity since the military. Your experimentation should reveal some very interesting techniques most of us won't even think about. I have little doubt that, with your skills, dispatching a thug in short order with a minimal number or rounds is quite practical. I would counsel most folks to shoot center mass primarily because they don't practice enough to really call their shots, and aiming for the middle of the target, they are more likely to at least hit some part of it. Just a practical consideration for the gen pop.

I've carried a firearm since I was 18, which is well over twenty years, most of the time. I've only had to draw my sidearm once, and fortunately drawing it was sufficient to positively control that situation. I, too hope I never have to resort to self defense, and so far I've been lucky (knock wood).

Of course you're correct about the physics. I exaggerated the scale of the comparison only to prove a point, which is that size (or applied force more appropriately) does matter when trying to stop an assailant with non-lethal hits. I can agree that caliber is not what kills. A bb shot from an air gun can penetrate to the heart of an unarmored human and result in certain death. I don't imagine one round of 45 will necessarily knock an armored man down, but it should dramatically alter his impetus, and I am fairly confident 2 or three in quick succession center mass will take him off his feet, body armor or not. I don't know about how much power that has, but it is adequate force. I have seen a guy wearing body armor get shot with a 12 gauge load, and yes, he did get taken off his feet and thrown backwards a ways, about like when my daughter gets the jump on a defensive tackle off the line and explodes into his chest (ah, the exquisite satisfaction of watching her pound defensive linemen is truly a sight to behold). He was sucking wind for a while afterwards too.

Ballistics is a complex analysis. There's just no one equation to answer how a projectile will perform or what the terminal effect will be on an organism, most of the time, for small arms anyways. Energy equations only go so far, and that 243 is a most potent round on javelina, and generates much more power than my little 44 mag with max loads ever could. Still, I've seen what that 44 will do to a 200 lb black bear in a tree, and I don't think the 243 will duplicate that effect. I don't think there's anything wrong with your 243, if it shoots standard 243 loads accurately, it is a definite game getter at longer ranges than I care to hunt. I guess it depends on whether your objective is to kill or to stop the intended target.

Let me put this yet another way. The 25-06 is an excellent north american big game cartridge, capable of dispatching all but the biggest, most dangerous animals on this continent. You could use this to hunt moose, and compared to a 54 cal muzzleloader shooting 400 grain maxies, the 25-06 load I would use to hunt moose with has a lot more energy and range. However, I know that the 54 cal load is far more effective on moose at ranges inside of 100 yards. I've seen bull moose hit with this round get taken off their feet. He got up again, and he stumbled off a hundred or so yards, but he was definitely stunned by the hit.

So when it comes to killing, I tend to lean more towards energy calculations, and the 9mm definitely has what it takes to kill a man, nqa. When it comes to stopping an attack, or anchoring the target, I will lean more towards force calcs.

I guess the caveat is that a dead man isn't going to be moving anymore either. <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />