This is more to the point of what I want to convey:
The two most important factors in stopping a bad guy are: 1) where you place your bullets, and 2) what organs your bullets penetrate and damage.
How much penetration is adequate? According to the nation’s most prominent wound ballistics experts, your bullets should penetrate at least 12 inches of soft tissue. Penetration beyond 18 inches is considered too much, and a less penetrating design should be considered to optimize the cartridge’s wounding potential.
But with small caliber cartridges such as .22 LR, .25 ACP, and .32 ACP (and sometimes .380 ACP), you’re better off selecting a non-expanding bullet that might exceed 18 inches of penetration than to choose a bullet that expands and underpenetrates. When a bullet expands, the increased diameter and non-aerodynamic shape acts like a parachute to quickly slow and stop the bullet as it penetrates flesh. These tiny bullets lack the mass and momentum to achieve adequate penetration after they expand.
Bullets that meet the 12-18 inch penetration guidelines have proven to be very effective in police shooting incidents that have been investigated by reputable researchers who use the scientific method. These findings have been verified and validated by other distinguished wound ballistics researchers who’ve fully reviewed the data. These findings are far superior in validity to the Marshall/Sanow “one-shot stopping power” junk-science that is published in newsstand gun magazines.
There are a lot of people who’ve been deluded into believing that legitimate wound ballistics researchers simply shoot bullets into ordnance gelatin and ignore shooting results that show how effective these bullets are in stopping an attacker. This kind of faulty research would be incredibly absurd, wouldn’t it? Do you really believe these researchers are that incompetent or ignorant? Their work wouldn’t pass peer review or be accepted as valid by the scientific community. However, these scientists don’t publish their work in newsstand gun magazines for financial gain, and they really don’t care what the general population chooses to believe. These researchers publish their findings in professional journals, where it’s available to people who are truly interested in the data.
The concepts of placement and penetration are simple — too simple for some people to accept — but these factors are the most important in stopping a homicidal attack.
What bullet is best? It’s one you can shoot accurately under stress that’s capable of penetrating deeply enough to inflict fatal hemorrhage and reliably functions in your gun. There’s nothing mystical or complicated about handgun ammunition wounding effectiveness. It’s simple: placement and penetration
Tuck