AUradar

i've been looking for it again and can't find it.

PensacolaEd

I did a Google search for "pistol stopping power" and got to this page:

http://www.chuckhawks.com/handgun_power_chart.htm

Ed

AUradar

there was one on here a while back that showed how many rounds it would take to stop a man. Trying to find it again. problem is I can't even remember a good key word to search for it.

Telum Pisces

Very subjective to say the least. A .22 to a vital organ will stop a man while a .45 to some flesh is going to piss a person off sometimes. I would be wary of any type of chart or data trying to show how many rounds it takes to stop a person. Where the shot is is going to be more important than how many rounds it takes.

7mmbrowningman

Although I do agree with most of your post...everyone knows that "one shot stops" is the means in which all is measured when one is considering a caliber gun or what type of ammo to use. We could all hunt with .22's if your statement was 100 % true. Ask any police officer if he wanted to stop someone who was threatening him/her, would he/she want to do itwith a .22 or a .40 or .45 - bet you any amount of $$$ they are opting for the larger calibers! I personally still shoot a 135 gr cor bon .40 calbased on an article in Guns and Ammo from the mid 90's b/c they had the best overall 1 stop shot %'s over ALL OTHER GUNS...yes, more than .44 mag, .357 mag, .45 acp - just look at the above link and see for yourself folks. I hear a shit ton full of people claiming the .40 is over rated - I beg to differ! The proof is in the numbers...the .40 is a great mix of penetration as well as energy = knockdown power. Dont get me wrong, I am walking out the door right now w/ my P22...but I know if I am forced to use it againstsomeone in self defense - I will be pulling that triggertil he goes down, rather than 1 or 2 shots from the .40 JMHO- no offense intended! :usaflag

bigbulls

There aren't any reliable statistics on one shot stops. The chart linked above is skewed at best.









http://www.greent.com/40Page/general/oss.htm



The Myth of "One Shot Stop" Percentages

Many firearms enthusiasts, particularly those who are students of tactical handgun technique, are familiar with Evan Marshall and Ed Sanow's (M&S) "One Shot Stop" (OSS) statistics. However, for reasons I hope to explain here, I believe that the M&S OSS percentages are of very little use to anyone trying to choose a defensive handgun caliber or load.

What OSS Is Before I explain why OSS is inaccurate, it will be useful to understand what OSS is, or is supposed to be.



M&S study actual police shooting reports and autopsy reports and cull from these reports all cases where the person shot received only a single gunshot wound, that wound being to the upper torso (center of mass, or "COM"). All other shootings are discarded and are not part of the analysis. This is an important fact, and one that I?ll address at length later.



M&S then take all of these single-COM-hit cases and determine how many of them resulted in a "stop," which they define as a cessation of hostility within a certain time period. That number, represented as a percentage of all the single COM hit cases, is the official "one shot stop percentage" for that round. In cases where less than five shootings have occurred with a particular load, M&S have a statistical prediction model they use instead.

Why OSS Doesn't Mean Much The biggest problem with the OSS approach, as mentioned above, is that it automatically discounts every single instance in which it took more than one shot to stop an attacker.



The effect of this should be obvious to anyone who has even a passing familiarity with defensive handgun skills. When you shoot someone who is attacking you, you keep shooting until the person stops attacking you. So the odds are very high that if you only shoot someone once, it is because he stopped attacking you after one shot. In those cases where only one shot is fired and the attacker did not stop, that is likely due to some event which kept you from shooting more than one round (e.g., the Bad Guy took your gun away, or shot you).



Other variables involved like specific shot placement, firearm used, angle of shot, etc., are also ignored by M&S. However, it is these variables which are determining whether the round fired actually stops an attacker. Some folks have argued that, over a large enough data set, all of these variables will be self-correcting. The problem is that very few of the loads which M&S discuss have been in a significant number of "acceptable" shootings under the M&S criteria.

Unbalanced Numbers Because of the M&S methodology, it is very easy to get ridiculously high OSS numbers. Many different loads are rated as 93 to 96% "one shot stoppers." But everyone knows that handguns simply aren?t that powerful. If a 96% OSS meant that a round had a 96% chance of stopping an attacker, then shooting someone twice with that round should yield a 99.8% chance of stopping the attacker. That?s as close to 100% as you can get, and no one is suggesting that a double tap with any handgun ammo can guarantee a stop.

Speaking of Double Taps In their second book, M&S discuss the double tap and offer some shooting data for cases where two COM hits were scored rather than one. Many people were startled to learn that the "two shot stop" percentages and the OSS numbers were almost identical.



Of course, this shouldn?t surprise anyone. In fact, it demonstrates just how biased the numbers are. Once again, you see that people shoot until an attacker is stopped. The numbers are not significantly different because they don?t represent anything about the ammunition.

An Example of the Problem The M&S methodology vastly underreports instances of ammunition failure to stop. Imagine the following ten scenarios, all using the Zenwolf .40S&W Black Super Death Gold Shok-Talon Safety[tm] ammo:



1. One round fired, COM hit, target dies.

2. One round fired, COM hit, target incapacitated.

3. One round fired, COM hit, target doesn't stop and in fact kills his shooter, but then 2 seconds later hears his ex-wife yelling at him and so surrenders just to get away from her.

4. One round fired, head hit, target stops.

5. Two rounds fired in quick succession, target stops.

6. One round fired, left pinky shot off, target starts crying and surrenders.

7. One round fired, COM hit, target doesn't stop, two more rounds fired, COM hits, target stops.

8. Subject takes 14 rounds in the COM, head, and pelvis, doesn't stop, kills everyone within four square miles.

9. Six rounds fired, 3 COM hits, target doesn't stop.

10. Four rounds fired, 2 COM hits, 1 head hit, 1 pelvis hit, target doesn't stop.



According to the M&S criteria, only the first three (one round fired only, COM hit) meet their criteria and are part of the study. In this case, the Zenwolf round has a 100% OSS (the target surrendered within the M&S time limit in #3, and that's all that matters ? unless you?re the deceased person who wasn?t saved by your One Shot Stop). In actuality, only five out of the ten (50%) were stopped AT ALL by the ammo, and only three out of ten (30%) were stopped by the ammo in one shot.



Case #5 is a big question mark: there's no way to know whether the first round alone would have been enough.



Cases #3 and #6 obviously have nothing to do with ammo selection. Nevertheless, one counts towards the study and one doesn't.



Cases #7-10 are all cases where one shot DID NOT STOP the attacker, but these don't count toward the M&S study because more than one hit was taken by the subject.



In particular, cases #8-10 show that even after multiple good hits, this ammo did not stop this particular attacker.



Nevertheless, this round gets a 100% OSS rating.

Skill Level One suggestion that some critics of M&S have put forward is that the glaring differences in OSS numbers might reflect shooter skill more than ammunition effectiveness. For example, the .357Magnum is frequently touted as the "top round" in OSS. However, it was not uncommon (back when many police departments issued revolvers) to find only the more skilled shooters using .357Magnum ammunition, while the less skilled shooters used the softer-kicking .38Special loads. The same is true today for agencies which issue 9mm but allow officers to buy and carry their own .45?s.



So it is possible (though by no means certain) that the .357 owes some part of its OSS success to the fact that .357 shooters tend to be more skilled than, say, .32ACP shooters. This could also account for the unusually high OSS rates of many .22lr munitions, since many people who use twenty-twos are accomplished pistol shots.



It has also been suggested that revolver shooters (and therefore revolver calibers and loads) are by necessity more careful with their shot placement, which results in greater likelihood of good stopping hits. Compared to the spray-and-pray so common with high capacity 9mm semiautos, this may be one reason there is a disparity between these calibers.

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