Sorry, but I have to disagree. It's so difficult to compare apples to apples with shootings, and I don't think the data Captain Marshall and Sgt. Sanow have collected are really any more relevant than if they'd collated data on the weather or lotto number on the day of the shooting.
I've worked on quite a number (over 150) of handgun killings, and the only thing that I can tell you is that a person generally appears to discontinue aggressive action when he is hit in either the brain or heart/aorta. Other areas may kill, but hits to those areas are what seem to be required to effectively
stop a person.
To hit the brain or heart/aorta you need 1) precise shot placement (or luck), and 2) adequate penetration. Some calibers seem markedly more effective in the adequate penetration department than others, even in the relatively low number of shootings I've seen. I've seen people killed and stopped with .22s, .25s, .32s and .380s - but I can tell you that these often looked like "Hail Mary" stops, with the lucky bullet only getting to "the good stuff" after a whole number of them did not. Then again, I've seen people
instantly stopped with one shot from these calibers - but the inadequate penetration that I see often from these makes me think that they are not something upon which I would care to depend.
Bigger calibers seem to work more effectively, because they are more capable of penetrating to the vital structures that must be damaged in order to effect a stop. (Interestingly, the 9mm Mak (in the limited number of shootings I've seen with it) seems to perform more with "the big boys" than with the other blowback-type rounds.)
The idea, though, that Messrs. Marshall and Sanow can tell whether a Silvertip is better than a Gold Dot or Hydra-Shok or whether a 9mm is better than a .40 by merely comparing what happened in shootings using those bullets
without reference to precisely how and where the person was hit, which structures were damaged, and what external (drugs?) factors influenced the victim, is laughable. Their work simply does not isolate other vitally important factors that matter in the shootings, and attributing the stop solely to "bullet performance" is unbelievably unscientific and silly. I have no doubt that Marshall and Sanow have the best of all possible intentions, but I would no more base my carry decisions on their "real world performance data" than I would those preposterous "Nytrillium" ads cluttering up the gun rags.
