"Stopping power" and "Handguns"....do they even belong in the same sentence ??

I carry a handgun because I can't / won't carry a long gun.....no delusions about "stopping" power with a handgun. It's just wishful thinking....

Everything is relative. So the question is what is better at stopping people? A 12-gauge Shotgun? yes, if you can live with it's negatives A rifle/carbine? Probably, depending on caliber. I have to wonder how a 5.56 round compares to a .45, or even a 10mm. The 5.56 might be better, but it has a pretty lousy reputation in military use (solders have been complaining about it from Vietnam clear through to Iraq/Afghanistan.)

And then compare it to anything you can carry on your person either concealed or openly. What else in this category would be better in both the stand off range and a incapacitation capability than a handgun? Tazer? Pepper Spray? I don't think so.

quote:

Originally posted by jljones:
To simplify, pistols suck for shooting people. If you are going to do it, do it a lot. Switches and Timers.

quote:

Originally posted by CQB60:
Can’t debate the effectiveness of the magnum calibers. 357 Magnum > making fast dirt sandwiches for over 83 years...

And yet the statistics don’t always line up with our biases. Years ago there was a guy local here shot with a .357 Magnum in the chest and walked into the hospital. We had a county deputy ND his duty .357SIG into his leg artery and he’s still alive. Another guy blew his entire face off with a 12 gauge and lived for hours.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: striker1,

I actually very much liked this article (and also the Marshall and Sanow orignal research from decades ago).
Though I always highly favored Federal BPLE's, and now variants of HST's, in fact what I like about these stopping power articles is that they consistently showed there is not much difference in what load you use. A friend used to say (only half facetiously) that in fact it was an argument that we should all be using 22's and practicing enough to achieve CNS hits. But since 22's are notoriously unreliable, we should step up to 32 ACP's.

quote:

Originally posted by BBMW:
Everything is relative. So the question is what is better at stopping people? A 12-gauge Shotgun? yes, if you can live with it's negatives A rifle/carbine? Probably, depending on caliber. I have to wonder how a 5.56 round compares to a .45, or even a 10mm. The 5.56 might be better, but it has a pretty lousy reputation in military use (solders have been complaining about it from Vietnam clear through to Iraq/Afghanistan.)

And then compare it to anything you can carry on your person either concealed or openly. What else in this category would be better in both the stand off range and a incapacitation capability than a handgun? Tazer? Pepper Spray? I don't think so.

quote:

Originally posted by jljones:
To simplify, pistols suck for shooting people. If you are going to do it, do it a lot. Switches and Timers.

Cute analogy. However, your ramblings seem to not live up with the Golden hour. If shot with a handgun, if you get to a trauma center within that golden hour, you have about a 90 percent chance of survival. Sorry, that’s just real world experience and backed straight out of any TEMS manual. People shot with rifles dont make it but about 20-30 percent of the time. Active shooters with rifles kill more victims than ones with pistols. The media loves to report about the 90 shots a second fired by an AR but it is actually the round that drives the body count up. Parkland has a high body count. The shooter only fired about 10 more rounds than the shooter at Marshall County, where two people were killed. By percentage the body count should have been higher than what it was but thankfully it was a handgun.

Switches and timers.