[HTML1]
Gun guru john Farnham received an email from a friend who works at a commercial, indoor pistol range.
“Last Friday, we experienced an injury/accident at our range. It is not our first, but it is the most serious to date.
A father, and his sixteen-year-old, son were shooting in a booth. Upon finishing, the father placed his 45ACP 1911 pistol (brand unknown) into a hard, carrying case. Father claims that he manually ‘decocked’ the pistol (on a live round) prior to putting it away. He further claims that when he closed and case, the pistol discharged while still inside.
I was not an eye-witness, but I can’t imagine how that is possible! So, in my opinion, his “version” of events is dubious, but police are still investigating. In any event, here is the object-lesson:
The single, errant bullet struck the son in his pinky-finger, then went on to enter the kid’s abdomen. For a teenager, the kid was big and pudgy, in excess of two-hundred pounds. The round, a 45ACP Winchester Silvertip, is a good, high-performance, defensive pistol round. It penetrated a shirt, an undershirt, and then six inches of fatty abdomen before stopping. It did not exit.
Upon being thus struck, the kid was able to walk, without assistance, out of the range and into our lounge area, where he sat down and quietly waited. Police and EMS arrived within minutes, and the young man was transported to a local hospital. He is expected to make a full recovery, and the only apparent, permanent disability will result from trauma to his finger!
Here is the lesson for all of us:
This mild-mannered teenager, not belligerent nor under the influence of any drugs, absorbed a full-power, hollow-point 45ACP bullet, at point-blank range, and subsequently displayed scarcely more than moderate discomfort! He was able to walk under his own power, never lost consciousness, never collapsed, and reportedly joked with ambulance attendants on his way to the hospital!”
John Farnham comments:
The foregoing is, of course, anecdotal, but it emphasizes an important training axiom: A pistol, any pistol, is a poor fight-stopper! We carry pistols because they’re convenient, not because they’re effective.
In order to gain the most/best effect, we need to shoot with surgical precision, striking vital organs, and do it multiple times, in rapid succession. Even then, we dare not expect miracles, even with “high-performance” ammunition!
Goat leather? You mean like what they made old timey condoms out of?
Man, I thought the expensive knives made from Nazi battleship steel were weird. The two piece body condom is weirder…
Although the .45 ACP is an impressive round, I participated in an investigation, in 1977, that really changed my opinion.
In February, the hospital at Camp Pendleton had treated and hospitalized a US Marine, for injuries sustained during an auto accident.
What we didn’t know, is that the man had been smoking marijuana laced with PCP.
About 10 p.m., right after lights out, he got up and wandered the halls in the medical ward. He stopped at the nurse’s station and picked up a pair of 12 inch paper scissors.
He walked into two rooms. In the first room he stabbed an eightythree year old female patient to death with the scissors. Then he stabbed the television in her room.
He ran to the next room, and stabbed a retired Chief Warrant Officer, US Marine Corps, who was asleep in his hospital bed.
One of the Navy hospital corpsman on duty, saw him run out of the warrant officer’s room, dripping blood.
The young corpsman panicked and ran towards the nursing station, screaming.
The nursing staff scattered, some barricading themselves in patients rooms and the medication room.
The charge nurse called the office of the day. He immediately sent the master arms up the center stairway to that floor.
The master arms opened the door to that floor and was stabbed in both lungs by this Marine.
The perpetrator ran down the hall, and the charge nurse from the intensive care unit dragged the master at arms back inside the ICU and barricade the door.
But this time, two MP’s came up the back stairs and found the perpetrator standing in the hall, next to the elevator bank.
They both drew their service automatic M1911A1’s. With rounds chambered they order the perpetrator to get on his knees. The perpetrator ran towards them, screaming. They both shot him in the upper body, five rounds each, at ranges from 25 to 5 feet. Standard military ball, 230 grains.
Every one of those rounds penetrated his torso. He was literally spinning in a circle while on his feet. He was still standing up.
He did stop moving. The MPs literally knocked him down and handcuffed him.
I chased projectiles for 2 days. Through doors. In walls. Through plate glass and outside, ricocheted off of the landscaping.
The perpetrator died, thirty days later.
Every master at arms and military policeman on a West Coast knew about Lance Corporal Vasquez. 12 inch paper scissors were known as the Vasquez model, for years, in the Navy, after that.
Ok, first off, why would anyone place a pistol in a hard case with a live round in the chamber ? That’s just stupid.
Second, how could a 1911 style pistol discharge itself without the grip safety being depressed and the trigger pulled whilst in a gun case ? It can’t.
The guy says that he manually [read criminally negligent] decocked a loaded 1911 so, how could the hammer have fallen on the base of the firing pin whilst in the case ?
This whole “incident” is pretty light on details, yet they all swear that the kid was shot by a Winchester silvertip round in .45 ACP. Yet, nobody remembers the make of the gun.
Are we sure it was a .45 and not another caliber ?
How stout was the gun case and what was it constructed of ?
What was the angle of impact and did the round have to penetrate any other barriers besides fatty’s finger and blubber ? Any hollow point bullet is a very poor penetrator, especially through barriers.
Apparently the kid was unfazed by the wound and may have been able to perform an Irish gig if required.
This bit of fantasy hardly qualifies as an indictment of the .45 ACP cartridge and, if any of it is true, serves as a reminder of why there are rules for safe gun handling, especially on a public range.
I call BS on this story.
Cops also shoot people who “reach for a weapon” that turns out to be a wallet or phone on a daily basis. Does this mean that I can request he unload his weapon during the duration of the stop?
I thought the entire point was that they are there for public safety? If there safety is my concern, what do I need them for?
Nothing is guaranteed. In 1990 an LAPD (off duty) officer was carjacked and shot in the heart with a .357 magnum (it fragmented and hit lots of organs, to be fair). Although she went into cardiac arrest multiple times she was able to survive. More notable is the fact that, after being shot with the ‘manstopper’ of common pistol rounds she was able to chase the bad guy around the other side of the car and shoot him three times, killing him.
Then you have the case of officers Steve Chaney and Linda Lawrence. They were called to a suspected burglary that turned out to be a domestic. BG was on PCP and managed to grab hold of Chaney’s gun first. The two fought over it and the gun was fired twice before Ofc. Chaney managed to get control of it. Lawrence had, by this point, already shot BG once in the wrist with her revolver (38spl).Then the BG grabbed her gun (yes, he managed to grab both officers’ guns at different times) and fired it once into her chest, killing her immediately. The living officer, Chaney, then fought over both his and Lawrence’s gun with the BG and eventually pulled away with both and began firing with a revolver in each hand. Chaney hit the BG four times, emptying the weapons. One of his shots was a contact shot to the ribs of the BG who then threw proceeded to throw Chaney across the room.
Chaney tried beating the BG in the head with an empty gun to no effect. He then reloaded with a speedloader while the BG beat and stabbed him in the back (he had turned to protect the gun he was reloading). Now reloaded, Chaney began firing again, first hitting BG center mass and then with a contact shot down through the skull, revealing gray matter. BG collapsed… and then got back up and attacked again. This is a horror movie.
Chaney emptied his gun again. Two shots to the chest, one to the belly, BG still coming. One more to the pelvis and the BG went down to the ground again. When Chaney tried to carry his partner out of the apartment he found that BG had crawled to block the exit. One person hit with a .38spl dropped immediately and was DRT. The other took 10 of the same rounds in the chest, abdomen, pelvis, wrist and one through the brain and was still trying to fight.
Wow. I had heard of this. So taking this at face value, before the 9mm fanboys yell “.45 IS a dog next to the wondernine”, let’s consider:
-.45 JHP are meant not to over penetrate like 9s can, so no collateral hits that can happen with a 9. Kid is likely alive because of this.
-The Silvertip is and old design that is not as good as other HP, does not expand reliably and is not considered high velocity. I had 185 Sivertips when they were a great round…in the 70s.
-the silvertip first hit a hard case, so lost some velocity and started to open up. It then hit a finger and lost a bit more velocity. By the time it hit fatty flesh, it was wider, slower (500 Fps perhaps?) and no longer a straight, flat trajectory.
The kid is lucky to be alive, but this in now way proves the .45 is not deadly.
some sources state .45 FMJ is slightly better at stopping power than 9mm FMJ, but hollow points are a wash.
With low powered projectiles such as pistol bullets, lethality is related more to shot placement than caliber. As the anecdote stated, a .22 in the jugular is more lethal than multiple .45 shots to the abdomen. Gators are instantly killed by a single .22 precisely in the brain stem at the base of the skull, at least according to videos of a reality TV show.
That being said, i would choose a .45 pistol over a .22 pistol if a fight only provided those two options.
I would chose a .45 ACP hit center of mass over a 7.62 x 51 hit in an exremity.