[Dane Burns]

Here is another one. If getting the bullet to the target through the body is an issue why not ball ammo.

Coopper till claims 90% OSS to ball.
IIRC

I am not adverse to ball for carry ammo for a number of reasons which I will restate after I get railed on a bit :grin:

What do you all think?

One of the guys, who has seem the most shootings with ball I suspect, can't post what he knows, which is a shame.

I would like more data.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Dane Burns on 2001-04-13 15:14 ]</font>

 

[Tom Givens]

I have two concerns about .45 ball in an urban setting. The first is overpenetration. The second is ricochet. It bounces around all over like a billiard ball in a concrete environment.
On the plus side, it goes through car doors and other light barriers very well.

 

[Stephen A. Camp]

Hello. As the other fellow noted, I, too, have some concerns on overpenetration and richochette, but this could be an overrated worry. Of course, you only have wrong one time to have a real problem!

I am 1st-hand aware of two failures of .45 ball to stop.....women! I've also talked to fellows who swear by it.

I reckon that if one's gun is reliable on with ball, it would obviously be the way to go if the gun could not be made to work.

Were I to have to use ball, it would be in a .45 as I cannot accept that 9mm ball is as effective, despite the "stats." I could be wrong, but I just don't see it...and I LIKE 9mm.

Best.

 

[Rosco Benson]

One of the cool things about .45ACP is that even ball ammo is pretty formidable (at least within the context of the admittedly-whimpy pistol).

Rosco

 

[Jim Higginbotham]

Before I gave up trying to make sense out of anecdotal data I had some 32 or 33 cases of shootings with .45 Ball. Every one of them worked - at least every user won their fight. I don't think many people can say just how fast someone was incapacitated since they are sort of distracted at the moment. One friend did shoot a guy who was pointing a 30-06 at him and he dropped before he could pull the trigger, I'd say that was pretty quick (and the spine was not struck on that one).

Does that mean I think it is going to work 100%, or even 90% of the time - absolutely not!

Am I impressed by it, not really. But it is a reliable penetrator (as Tom points out that can be a problem as well as a blessing).

Not many people realize that when Jeff Cooper used to say that ball worked 19 times in 20 that he was not using a general statistic but was reporting the exact figures from a municipality which carried the 1911 with ball ammo in the 1960s (I cannot recall the name of the town right now) who actually had accumulated exactly 20 shootings and one actually took two shots to quell the disturbance :smile: Does that mean it will work with one shot 1900 times out of 2,000.... who knows? I probably will never find out since I do not intend to shoot anyone just once :grin:

Carry on!
Jim H.

 

[Guest]

I suspect Dane is correctly following the ball tradition as JMB originally designed the model 1909 and 1911 for 200 grain ball not 230 grain ball. 230 grain ball was introduced to increase the penetration of the round against heavily drugged natives that often required shooting through jungle and brush that covered the targets. One consideration to keep in mind is that all Military shooting data that has been tracked be it official stats or anecdotal is based on ball at 850 fps from a 5" gun.
In 1994 the US Army reported an average shots fired per engagement to incapacitation rate of:
1. 7.62x51mm M80 as 2 rounds
2. 7.62x51mm M118 as 1 round
3. 5.56x45mm SS109 as 4 rounds
4. 9mm Nato ball as 6 rounds
5. .45ACP ball as 3 rounds
These statistics are available as a matter of public record and were in fact presented in the justification hearings for the Offensive Weapon Project in front of the Senate AFSC it was this and other infromation and testimony that convinced the senate to authorize the funding of the project and conversion from .9mm NATO to .45ACP.
I believe it is further important to point out that in 1968 NATO stated officailly that FMJ Ball ammo was designed with the intended effect being to cause wounding not fatalities.

 

[EchoFiveMike]

In 1994 the US Army reported an average shots fired per engagement to incapacitation rate of:
1. 7.62x51mm M80 as 2 rounds
2. 7.62x51mm M118 as 1 round
3. 5.56x45mm SS109 as 4 rounds
4. 9mm Nato ball as 6 rounds
5. .45ACP ball as 3 rounds <<<<

That HAS to be hits per incapacitation, because you fire a hell of a lot of ammo per engagement(especially M80 ball from the MG's). Well, except for M118, which averages about 1.8rds per kill last time I checked. But that's hardly fair comparison. Semper Fidelis..Ken M

 

[Guest]

Correct, the statistics only count the "hits" and they were very careful not to detail, list, indicate, or report on any statistics that represent fatalities or "confirmed kills". It is almost humorous to think that the Department of the Army is afraid to be associated with killing people.
It is almost as bad as seeing the "time out" cards given out to recruits at MCRD Paris Island as explained to me by our tour guide during my trip to the Island on the Corps 200th anniversary.

 

[bradford]

Ball ammo was designed with the intended effect being to cause wounding not fatalities. I am glad to see someone bring this up. There are better rounds out there to stop someone. I will use what my local PD uses.

 

[Dane Burns]

No doubt ball will wound. If was actually designd to function in the guns first. Long before any one thought up "wounding" as a tactical use of a firearm. Let's not get carried away with the idea of the intent on the design.

45 just makes a bigger wound than 9mm ball. 9mm ball was infact incorporated at a much later date (30 or 40 so years later I suspect) to "wound" as a secondary function of the original design which was based on reliability as JOB ONE to kill, job #2.

Much of the rest of the issue is gun writer hand jive I suspect.

 

[EchoFiveMike]

Ball ammo is designed around several considerations. Reliability being one of the top ones. Legality(Geneva Convention, Hague Accords) is also considered, as is cost and durability(shelf life, resistance to moisture, etc) The effectiveness of the round is also considered, which is how we got the 45ACP in the first place. The US Army wanted something as good as the old 45Colt. That meant large bullets. The 38 Long Colt was not good enough. It was not a good stopper. This nonsense about wounding being better than killing was thought up by REMF assholes and bean counters. At the theater and higher levels I guess it might matter to the BG's logistics, but the guys in combat just want the other guy to stop doing anything. Whether he dies or not isn't really important. I'd prefer it if they die, since they are out of the equasion totally, but as long as they stop doing anything aggressive against me, I'm happy. Semper Fidelis...Ken M

 

[die]

Hi: i don't know if i can do well in company of such experts. So first mi question. I read a lot about the question of stopping power. Here in mi country, Argentina, hollow point bullets are forbbiden for personal defense. Even the police use 9mm FMJ. The reason is the Geneva Convension. As you know, Argentina was, with United States and Mexico, a long and old supporter of the 45 acp. Anyway, as i know, the FMJ produced more problems than solutions because the over penetration implicit with the caliber (there was a famous case where a female cop commit suicide in a bank, and the bullet that pass throw his head ricochet and killed another woman who happened to be there). Also, this type of bullet, and this is the question, appear to be more letally at the long term, because of the penetration in the human body and the type of the wound it create, than the JHP, besides the poor ability to stop a fight in the moment. Do you have any research about it?. If so, what brand of FMJ to do think is the best?. I carry only JHP, regardless of the law, because i am more concerned about the overpenetration and how it can affect to third innocent person and because the bann over JHP is only administrative and you don't have any penal problems. Excuse if you can't understand mi english, but remember that is not mi born language.

 

[Shane1911]

die,

You speak better English than most people born and raised here!!! Thanks for joining our little group.

You raise an interesting question - have any formal studies been done as the the effectiveness of various manufacturers' FMJ?

Or has it already been determined that such a study would be meritless ? (Sort of like studying which is the better car, a Yugo or a Lada )

 

[shootingbuff]

Geneva Convention, Hague Accords - It was during the Hague Accords that the U.S did not attend that this came out if memory serves.

Yes the military wanted a large caliber, hollowpoints were not the trend in the early 1900s.

sb

 

[die]

Shane: thanks. I tried to improve mi english every day. Mi problem is that here you need certain terms that i don't know yet. I remember a recent article in the Handguns magazine about the change made by the New York Police to jhp ammo, after that famous shooting in wich n.y. cops shoot a person more than 20 times. I don't remember if in this article, they speak about this subject. I think that it do, but i can´t remember (i will loock about it). Yes i know, and don't have any document about it, because of conversations i have with one doctor, that the worst wounds for medical care, in his opinion, are the ones produced by lesser calibers (22 and the same), because of the trajectory that the bullets follows in the human body. Of course this is only one opinion, for one person who really have personal experience in the subject. On another topic, is thrue that FMJ is military ammo. But i remember that this have a lot to do with reliability, ease of manufacture and cost, and the posibility to defeat certain barriers, more than with the stopping power topic. Remember that the ones who made the law, specially at ONU levels or goverment levels, generally don't know nothing about the subject and have a lot of preconcepts. For example, in mi country, a goverment representative wanted to ban hollowpoint design because she tought that it can defeat body armour??????

 

[Shane1911]

die,

Hollowpoint ammo is illegal in Canada too (except for law enforcement).

You are exactly correct about FMJ being designed for reliabilty. The 1911 platform was invented ONLY to use FMJ.

Another point to note (and I do not have documentation to back this up) is that round nose bullets tend to "move" vital organs out of the way, instead of tearing thru them as a hollowpoint or flatpoint would do. There MAY be less internal damage if shot with a round nose design.

 

[Mute]

die,

I don't know about the statistics, but if you're forced to use 9mm ball, I think the new Expanding FMJ rounds might be the answer. It might not expand as advertised, but it won't be any worse than using ball to begin with.

 

[jcork]

I relative is a pathologist and we discussed wound ballistics at one point I believe. Torn tissue heals more quickly than cut tissue (for reasons I don't know) and I suspect that a RN bullet tears it's way through, while an expanded HP has sharper edges which cause a difference wound channel.

Whether slower healing equates to more damage or higher stopping power is not something I can attest to directly.

 

[Shane1911]

On 2001-04-16 20:13, jcork wrote:
Torn tissue heals more quickly than cut tissue (for reasons I don't know) and I suspect that a RN bullet tears it's way through, while an expanded HP has sharper edges which cause a difference wound channel.

Are you sure??? I always thought that is why round nose are NOT as effective - because RN does NOT tear. It simply moves organs and tissue out of the way. A flat point or better yet, hollowpoint, will tear, or at least create a bigger shock displacement of tissue.

Any pathologists out there ???????

 

[Dane Burns]

Cuts and breaks heal faster than a bruise or sprain. How we heal has little to do with bullet effectiveness during the fight.

I'll get back ot you on the invention of ball ammo. But trust me, it was function, not "accords", that began our involvement in ball ammo..or "full patch" as it was known then.