What's the real reason 9mm is so popular?

[inbox485]

i never figured out how people equate more recoil as more fun. if i want recoil, i load up the shotgun... that is as good as an amusement park ride for skinny ol' me.

It's a scaled back version of Friday fight night...

And yeah, since I'm all but numb to handgun recoil, it takes a wee bit more than a measly .45 to rattle my cage. 3" magnums in my wife's feather light shotgun are quite the experience. The five rounds of .500 S&W were about right as well.

[elSquid]

No. Average side to side penetration of a porcine model later confirmed to correspond to human gun shot recipients. No single tissue was singled out to match BG and as ZT pointed out, BG doesn't emulate any single tissue well at all.

I grabbed my copy of "Bullet penetration" ( MacPherson ). Ch 5, "Tissue Simulation" references the tests that Fackler ran to calibrate gelatin with freshly killed pig leg muscle. This is why 10% @ 4C was selected. The chapter highlights that gel penetration is highly sensitive to concentration and temperature, and this was the driver for Fackler to come up with a reasonable standard.

I googled a bit, and came up with:

http://rkba.org/research/fackler/wrong.html

Where Fackler talks about...

Fundamental to the use of tissue simulants, in lieu of animals, in wound ballistics is the establishment of their equivalence to animal tissue. For validity the simulant must reproduce the physical effects of the projectile-tissue interaction on the projectile (deformation, fragmentation), and in the simulant the projectile must stop at the same penetration depth as it does in living animal tissue. This requirement is frequently ignored by wound ballistics investigators (2, 28-30, 38) thus compromising, if not eliminating, the applicability of data so obtained to better understand the wounding process.

Duct-sealing compound (73), clay (2,74), soap (66, 72), gelatin (28-30, 38), and water-soaked phone books or newspapers (74) are commonly used tissue simulants. Information from each has been presented in the literature with the implication that it yields valid predictive information about wounding effects in living animals. Contrary to the assumptions that these materials are equivalent to animal tissue, bullet deformation caused by impact with them can vary widely. Recently, for example, we tested a 9-mm soft point pistol bullet that showed no deformation at all when shot into fresh swine cadaver leg muscle or into our 10% gelatin (shot at 4 degrees C), but expanded to a diameter of 15 mm when shot into duct-sealing compound (75).

-- Michael

[inbox485]

Interesting. I've never read that. I watched a documentary that stated that the approximation was side to side. I'll have to read through that later.

[elSquid]

Interesting. I've never read that. I watched a documentary that stated that the approximation was side to side. I'll have to read through that later.

I'll toss one more item out there. Eugene Wolberg was at one point the Senior Firearms Criminologist at the San Diego Police Department Crime Laboratory.

From: http://www.firearmstactical.com/afte.htm

This reinforces that there appears to be some value in using calibrated ballistic gel for predicting wound penetration. Obviously, this is only part of the story when it comes to "stopping power", which is dependent upon many other variables.

-- Michael

[Freq18Hz]

Questions like this are often asked in the context of "the Great Caliber Debate" based upon assumptions that - unfortunately - don't have anything to do with reality.

The first incorrect assumption is usually that police & military regularly engage in handgun battles, and as such are experts on the subject. The fact is that very few police ever even have cause to draw their weapon, much less engage in some kind of combat on a regular basis. Handguns are a secondary weapon for the military, and see relatively little use compared to rifles. Very, very few people have what could reasonably called "extensive gunfighting experience" with hand guns.

The second incorrect assumption is the idea that first-hand reports are even close to accurate accounts ... they aren't, not by a long shot. This is a byproduct of the psychological and physiological effects of adrenaline and combat stress. Cops and soldiers don't (and really can't) remember anything accurately from violent encounters. They can't remember number of shots fired, the order of events, whether or not they reloaded ... sometimes not even the time of day. It's exceedingly common for police to report something like "I shot him 12 times in the chest" only to have the ER surgeon recover only a single round from the perp's leg. This phenomenon has been repeatedly verified in cases where videotape footage can be compared against written reports.

This correlates closely to the third incorrect assumption: the "proximity error" of thinking that the last shot fired is the "the one that worked". In fact, it's often the case that the effective wound is caused by one of the very first hits, and it just takes time for enough bleeding to happen to drop blood pressure. So, reports of "my partner hit him 9 times with 9mm and he didn't drop until I hit him with my .45" don't really mean anything.

So basically, given your lack of direct experience/your ability to recount it properly, you have no better understanding of the subject than anyone else? Moreover, since you've logically covered and disproved any scenario upon which anyone could draw any cold hard facts, you argument is nihilistic in nature...? Basically the truth isn't known, can't be known, by you, or anyone else. The answer is there is no answer?

If this is the case, which I am taking your word for, why did anyone bother creating and manufacturing other rounds once 9mm was in service? Since that time, why haven't they just abandoned it and used 9mm exclusively for all new production handguns that aren't marketed towards aficionados?

I'm pretty confused.

-Freq

[JTROKS]

Shooting big bores sure is fun. Who would you rather watch shooting at the range? A guy with a 38 special revolver that is putting all his rounds in the black, or a guy with a .500 S&W putting holes all over the place including the target holders and steel support beam.

[DannyZRC]

Shooting big bores sure is fun. Who would you rather watch shooting at the range? A guy with a 38 special revolver that is putting all his rounds in the black, or a guy with a .500 S&W putting holes all over the place including the target holders and steel support beam.

How many inches of lexan between me and the guy I'm watching?

[cali_armz]

There's just something about a big blast from a gun that's fun. I wouldn't want to continually shoot only hot rounds, but I do think they are fun to shoot, especially if you are accurate with them and see their effects on the target you're shooting (not a paper target).

Lots of good replies and reasons for why you all like 9mm. I should have started a "9mm ARGUMENT DEBATE" thread for the argument posts here.

i agree. i get more of a kick out of shooting .44 mag rounds than 9mm

no pun intended

lol

[Target19]

Same thing with 22lr.It's cheap!!! It also works good enough.

[cali_armz]

Same thing with 22lr.It's cheap!!! It also works good enough.

very true man, 22 lr is incredibly cheap. though i dont have any pistols chambered in that round, i do have an s&w m&p15-22 thats alot of fun to shoot, it just doesnt have the range that other calibers have.

[Fishslayer]

I should have started a "9mm ARGUMENT DEBATE" thread for the argument posts here.

Yup. Too bad there aren't any caliber debate threads we could look up....

[bussda]

So basically, given your lack of direct experience/your ability to recount it properly, you have no better understanding of the subject than anyone else? Moreover, since you've logically covered and disproved any scenario upon which anyone could draw any cold hard facts, you argument is nihilistic in nature...? Basically the truth isn't known, can't be known, by you, or anyone else. The answer is there is no answer?

If this is the case, which I am taking your word for, why did anyone bother creating and manufacturing other rounds once 9mm was in service? Since that time, why haven't they just abandoned it and used 9mm exclusively for all new production handguns that aren't marketed towards aficionados?

I'm pretty confused.

-Freq

Yes, it is confusing. A suggested read http://www.thegunzone.com/buzzwords.html . But it basically boils down to his conclusion, which is:

Those that knew, smiled to themselves, stayed with whatever rounds were reliable in their sidearms and kept right on with their time-honored "Front Sight… Trigger… P-R-E-S-S" regimen; others rushed out and purchased the new "subsonic" rounds as if they were wire-guided not-fully-depleted uranium projectiles or hand-held particle-ionization beams.

[Noobert]

For me it's the best balance between price, availability, magazine capacity, power, and has a proven track record

[ZombieTactics]

So basically, given your lack of direct experience/your ability to recount it properly, you have no better understanding of the subject than anyone else?

No, I simply laid out what is well known to the respect that the testimony of those who have experienced a violent encounter is almost always very inaccurate.

Moreover, since you've logically covered and disproved any scenario upon which anyone could draw any cold hard facts, you argument is nihilistic in nature...? Basically the truth isn't known, can't be known, by you, or anyone else. The answer is there is no answer?

No, see above.

If this is the case, ...

It's not. There are other, better ways of determining real-world effectiveness of various rounds/calibers. If you have the time to read the rest of what I have written in this thread, you'll be less confused.

I'm a proponent of the notion that - in the 9/40/45 range - there isn't a significant difference. I am of the mind that people should be far more concerned about mindset, tactics & skills than chasing some marginal (and mostly imaginary) superiority of one caliber over another. We'd all be better served by taking a training course or 2 every year and more dry-press and/or range time.

[Bongos]

One word! "mililtary"