История про человека, которого не смогли застрелить из .357 особо понравилась.
"Your observations are yours and I’m not saying you didn’t see what you saw. Here is my experience. I’ve worked in Law Enforcement since 1974 and am still active duty. I’ve been a firearms instructor since 1989.
I was a patrol sergeant, on duty, at 0200 hrs of July 4, 1992. I was shot in the chest under my right nipple. Accorde to my surgeon, Dr. Joel Hendrix, the bullet traveled an oblique angle and stopped in the top of my liver, an inch from my spine. It entered my lung cavity and passed between two lobes of the lung, doing no damage to the lungs. It passed through the diaphragm and came to rest in the top of the liver near my spine. The Doctor told me, after the surgery, that the bullet did Little damage and there wasn’t much internal bleeding. The bullet had entered between my ribs..
Dr. Hendrix told me that had he known for certain how little damage the bullet had done he could have put two stitches in the bullet hole, put a Bandaid on it and sent me home. He said his surgery did more damage to me than the bullet. The bullet is still in my liver because the Doc could feel it but observed so little bleeding from the wound path in the liver that he decided to leave it in—the liver is a Ph neutral organ and the scar tissue has insulated it so that no lead leaches out. Blood tests over the years have confirmed this.
I was shot by one of my officers. He was armed with a 5” barreled Colt 1911 Government model in .45 ACP. His ammunition was Federal Hydra-Shok, 230 grain. My officer missed the bad guy and hit me. I, was using the same ammo, the same lot number and all. My shot hit the bad guy in the chest, passing through his 5th rib, destroying the right atrium of his heart, and exited his body through the 8th rib in back. He was armed with a Savage 12 gauge pump. He died at the scene.
There you are, two folks, at similar distances, shot by the same ammo—.45 ACP, 230 grain. According to statistics at that time, folks shot in the chest cavity with .45ACP Federal 230 grain Hydra Shok are stopped 92.78% of the time. It didn’t stop me. As soon as I felt the bullet hit, I covered it with my palm in case it was a sucking lung wound (it wasn’t but I had no way of knowing at the time). It never knocked me off my feet. I backed out of my position and remained in control of the officers at the scene. I called for an ambulance and directed the officers with specific assignments. I then asked one of the officers who had come from an assisting agency to take me to the hospital and passed command to one of the senior officers at the scene. I walked in to the ER on my own.
My observation: I like 45 caliber ammo but there is NO magic bullet that is 100% effective. None. I’ve seen one man die from a leg wound from a 9mm ball round—his artery severed. I was surprised when I found a guy still alive from an execution style gunshot wound to the back of the head from a .357 magnum where the muzzle was placed at the back of his head—the skull was never penetrated! Imagine his headache the next day.
These day I carry 9mm instead of .45, not because of anything superior about the caliber. I was involved in five deadly force incidents as a patrol sergeant and am convinced shot placement is far, far more critical than the caliber. I can qualify, and have qualified with full .44 Mag loads, so recoil isn’t an issue for me. The truth I had to face is that my shot to shot recovery is faster with 9mm and I am more accurate in a shorter time frame with it than I am with the .45 ACP. I am glad we are all free to choose our own platforms and calibers but I caution against thinking any caliber or bullet design is the One and Only."
"The .25 has killed a lot of people. But, in my experience, as a retired ER nurse (I am 69), it was usually the person who was using it for self-protection who got killed. I cannot begin to count how many shootings I have worked, but it is well into the triple digits. And there is one case comes immediately to mind. I believe it was in 1978 or ’79, I was working in an inner city ER in Oklahoma City when AmCare, the then local EMS, brought in a guy who had been shot 5 times in the chest with a .25. There were three slugs that were stopped by the man’s sternum (One of the slugs fell out on the table as we were cutting his clothes off. The other two slugs missed the sternum and penetrated the left side of his chest between the ribs, where they ricocheted of ribs all around the inside of his chest. We discovered that fact when we cracked his chest. In the course of all that ricochet, the slugs punched holes in his aorta and his pulmonary arteries, right and left. He bled out and died, but OCPD informed us that after being shot, he beat the shooter to death with his bare hands. (He was a big dude.)
OCPD was pleased with the outcome. Both of the decedents were know to them and had rap sheets as long as I am tall. The reason for the entire incident was a drug deal gone bad. The officer told us that this left them with two fewer former felons walking the streets of Oklahoma City, and from his perspective, it was all good.
In the course of a 30 plus year career as an ER RN, this was not the only case where I saw first-hand that the .25 caliber (not to mention .32, .380, even some 9 mm) are about as dangerous to the shooter as they are to the intended target. I have seen multiple victims, shot with each of those calibers, who even though mortally wounded, went on to kill the shooter before they succumbed to their wounds. The 9 mm has been known to kill the attacker, but, I have taken care of more than one person who, after being shot with a 9, went on to do major damage to the shooter. About 25 years or so, ago, a man killed an OCPD officer AFTER being shot multiple times with the department issued 9 mm service weapon before being stopped by another officer at the scene.
I have heard people talking about studies that show the ballistics of these calibers are more than adequate to kill or at least slow down the attacker. I have yet to talk to anyone who actually participated in a shooting with these calibers who said anything good about them, because most of them were in the next trauma room being treated beside the shooter. And the M.E. never told us what these guys thought about their choice for a self-defense round… because they were dead.
I have said before, and I will say it again, I carried a 1911 when I was overseas way back in the early 70’s and I never saw anyone hit with a .45 that was able to discuss anything beyond that hit. I cannot say that for any caliber that does not start with a 4. I have owned .38’s, 9 mm’s , .357’s, and I let them all go. I now own handguns in .22 (for plinking, and varmints, such as raccoons that get into my deer corn feeders), .44, and .45, several, in fact, more than one of them bears the designation of 1911.
In my experience, as a shooter, a hunter, a retired ER nurse, and a former Army medic on a SAR/ Recon team overseas, I have seen too many GSW’s to trust my life or the lives of my family to something that has a high probability of failing to stop an attack at the time it is needed most. I realize that I haven’t seen every gun-shot victim, but I have seen enough to get a good idea of what works and what doesn’t. Remember, the time to realize the weapon you are carrying is inadequate is days before you draw it and not after you pull the trigger. It is too late then."