From: James Rogers (jamesr@best.com)
Date: Mon Jun 14 1999 - 16:55:30 MDT
At 04:39 PM 6/14/99 -0400, Michael Lorrey wrote:
>> >If you're a good guy, the flechettes cause the least possible
>> >damage that will let you get away, shoot the deer that's kicking
>> >your kid, hunt, hit the 9 ring of the paper target, or whatever.
>
>Actually, interestingly enough, small projectiles don't shock the body
nearly as
>much, even when using equal or more energy. According to Massood Ayoob, your
>1911 .45 ACP with black talon rounds provides excellent stopping power, with
>LESS chance of killing a perp than with a smaller caliber like a .22, .32,
.38,
>.380, .40 or even 9 mm. The smaller the caliber, the less you shock the perp,
>but your chance of killing them is higher, because the projectile is going to
>fragment and bounce around inside the target more. Because the perp is not
>shocked by the impact of a small caliber, they are more likely to be able to
>continue coming after you. Large calibers will knock the guy over and keep
him
>down, but is less likely to kill him.
Its really much more complicated than this. Flechettes are generally more
lethal than slugs, but as Michael Lorrey points out, they do a less
effective job of stopping the person or animal quickly. Flechettes are
basically death by a hundred pin pricks. Excellent penetration, but the
damage is distributed over a much larger area and is highly localized.
With flechettes, you are basically waiting for a cumulative systemic
failure, whereas a slug tends to do severe and immediate damage to a single
sub-system. However, this *does* make flechettes more programmable in
terms of terminal results, something I will go into below.
Even in the realm of comparing slugs, it isn't so clear. For the record, I
do not consider Massad Ayoob to be a particularly reputable expert on
projectile lethality.
There are two components to lethality: penetration depth and damage volume.
Adequate penetration is the first requirement for any lethal projectile;
if you can't reach anything vital, it doesn't matter what the damage
potential is of the projectile. Due to inadequate penetration, low
velocity small caliber projectiles (e.g. .25 or .32) tend to be non-lethal.
In terms of pistol cartridges, 9mm is pretty much the minimum entry point
for reliable penetration on a human. .40 and .45 both have excellent
penetration. However, capacity to damage is dependent on more than just
size and weight. For example, in compact pistols (barrels < 4"), the .40
is a more lethal cartridge than the .45 because the .40 can develop an
optimal terminal velocity in about 3", whereas the .45 requires 4.5-5" to
develop its optimal velocity. Most lethal design features on projectiles
have an operational velocity range (it has been fairly well documented that
230gr .45 hollow-points can fail to expand when shot out of compact pistols
due to inadequate velocity). However, when both slugs are shot at their
optimally lethal velocities, the damage volume of the .45 will edge past
the smaller .40 slug.
Back to flechettes, it is conceivable to develop a weapon with highly
programmable terminal effects by controlling both the number of flechettes
per shot and the average spread on impact (i.e. the distribution of
damage). A large number of flechettes sent to a small region could be as
effective at stopping an aggressor as any slug. By reducing the number of
flechettes sent to a small area, you would probably stop a person since you
would still be inflicting significant damage to a single sub-system, but
the survival rate would increase because it would take longer for the
damage to aggregate. On the other hand, a large number of flechettes with
a large spread would probably be lethal, but there may not be enough damage
to any one sub-system to cause an immediate stop. A small number of
flechettes with a large spread would probably be only marginally lethal,
but it would send a person to the hospital, even if it didn't stop them.
It should be noted that human psychology with respect to being shot is
really odd and differs significantly from any other animal. In many cases,
whether or not a person is "stopped" by being shot is determined by whether
or not that person perceives themselves as being "stopped". Many people
will roll over with minor physiological wounds due to their *belief* in the
level of damage inflicted, which many times exceeds the actual damage.
Most animals and some people with impaired perceptions (such as psychotics
or people under the influence of heavy drug use), are much more resistant
to being stopped, since the level of damage inflicted must be
physiologically severe for them to be stopped; psychologically "severe"
damage is not applicable in these cases.
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
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