Define "powerful". Cause experts still have absolutely no idea about how actually bullets do damage, and theorise about "hydrostatic shocks" and the like. Yes, the rifle bullet travels faster. But shoot a thick piece of wood with a 5.56, 7.62 and a 9mm, and see what's left of it if you don't believe me.

Powerful: muzzle energy and penetration - both are primary to the effects of penetrating body armour and wounding. (I'm sure you can agree that bullets with higher muzzle energy can more easily break bones and penetrate the skull, for example)

Wood isn't flesh, and has no bearing on wounding. Use ballistic gel and I'll start taking you seriously.

Define "experts": Dr. Fackler at the WBL (someone who's opinion I respect) is very knowledgable on the subject and he disagrees with you.

Ask any member of a military or police unit that depends on their firearm to defeat the enemy on the field of battle, and every one of them will tell you always take a longarm (assault rifle) over a shortarm (pistol or SMG).

Incidentally, SMGs use pistol ammo - so if you think that pistols should have more stopping power than SMGS, you're dead in the water.

[ 09-24-2006, 10:47 PM: Message edited by: Sir Krustin ]

Yes, faster bullets more easily break bones and penetrate things, but wider bullets make bigger holes. Again, which is more powerful? The bullet with a bigger hole, or the bullet with a deeper hole?
I don't have access to ballistic gel, so unless you want me slaughtering pigs, I'll stick to wood.
Dr. Fackler disproved a whole lot of theories, and proved that the bigger the bullet, the more the damage. By "bigger bullet" I also mean expanding or fragmenting rounds. The weight of a pistol bullet alone is enough to cause some serious damage, and the surface of effect is larger too. Some rifle rounds fragment and turn inside the target, so do some pistol rounds. And what exactly did I say that Fackler would have a problem with?

That pistols are more powerful than rifles.

The difference between the diameter of an entry wound between a pistol and a rifle is negligible.

Hydrostatic shock, which is a direct result of the energy of the round, is the prime mover in ballistic wounding. Kinetic energy goes up with the square of the velocity, but only linearly with the mass of the projectile (which is far more important than the caliber of the round).

A couple of trivia facts:

1) The 10mm auto pistol round is far more effective than the colt .45 (12.7mm) at man-stopping.

2) The pistols main wounding effect is the bleed-out, not traumatic injury - if you survive the first 30 seconds, you're likely to live out your normal 4-score-and-ten. Rifles, otoh, are more likely to cause fatal injury with bleed-out being secondary.

3) A near miss from high-powered rifle can kill. This just doesn't happen with pistols.

[ 09-25-2006, 11:37 AM: Message edited by: Sir Krustin ]

And now Fackler would disagree with you, because he was one of the people who proved the theory of hydrostatic shock false.
1) The case of the 10mm auto round is larger than the case of the .45, so that explains that.
2) You forget pain [img]smile.gif[/img]
3) Pistol rounds are a bit of a wild card, since they possess greater disfigurement and maneuvering once inside the body. A near miss from a pistol loses some speed, changes form and gains "flaps", which turns it within the target and makes it travel in weird paths. A rifle's bullet will most likely just keep on trucking, with minimal turning.

I actually thought you were being sarcastic earlier, Bozos.

I can see your point about bullet disfigurement with un-jacketed or hollow point pistol rounds, but bare in mind it's velocity rather than bullet size, shape or design that does the damage. In reality, the most powerful handguns in the world fall into the same power bracket as the lowest of the high powered rifles. And that's at close range. Beyond 50m or so (assuming one can hit a target beyond 50 with a pistol without a whole lotta luck) the pistol rounds lose velocity fast whereas rifles are good for ten times that distance and more.

In video games, where balanced gameplay seems more important than any bearing on reality, assault rifles are often toned down so that pistols retain some of their effectiveness.

...and the case of the .223 is larger than any pistol round. What's your point?

Dr.Fackler didn't disprove anything of the sort. I'm familiar with everything he's wrote and he's doesn't so much disagree with hydrostatic shock as state that it's a very complex situation.


Not at all. Bleed-out, shock, and pain are all closely related.

A "near miss", by definition, does nothing - as it has not hit the target.

The shockwave of a nearby high-power rifle round (such as the .30-06 or a BMG .50 sniper rifle) has been proven to disrupt the body enough to cause serious injury, especially in the case of the head area.

In the case of the BMG .50, from a sniper rifle or an M2HB, when hitting anywhere in the body is often enough to kill the target outright.

In any case, you keep forgetting body armour. If the target wears any body armour a pistol shot is just going to annoy him (unless you have the tremendous presence of mind in a combat situation to do a headshot - not many civilians can do this) while a rifle round will go right through it - even trauma plates will just keep him alive, not keep him uninjured.

Ah well, you can keep arguing this if you want, I'm dealing with a funeral right now and my hearts not in it.

[ 09-26-2006, 07:51 AM: Message edited by: Sir Krustin ]

In a first-person shooter, none of those rules apply. The damage done by a bulled depends entirely on the size of the gun used to fire it.

...and the case of the .223 is larger than any pistol round. What's your point?

Dr.Fackler didn't disprove anything of the sort. I'm familiar with everything he's wrote and he's doesn't so much disagree with hydrostatic shock as state that it's a very complex situation.</font>[/QUOTE]A .223, as all rifle rounds, is pointy. The rifle does more of a ripping and less of a pushing, and the bullet does more of a pushing, and less of a ripping. The rifle round makes itself a neat hole by ripping the flesh and expanding the hole, whereas a pistol round pushes the tissue before itself. The human tissue can stretch alot, yes, but sudden stretching does a great deal of damage. The pistol round will stop within the tissue before the rifle round, and will not pierce armor, so you are right in the regard of penetration. The trick is in prividing a good area of effect on the bullet combined with the bullet mass and speed. A normal ballistic gel will only show you a pistol round having less penetration than a rifle round. A marked ballistig gel(another Fackler's invention, a ballistic gel with a darker marked line, about 2mm thick, every 8mm, throughout the gel) will show you how the tissue looks like after the penetration. A rifle bullet will leave a hole and little to no damage around it, whereas a pistol, with it's blunter profile, will displace a whole lot of tissue, and the overall damaged area of a pistol bullet is larger than the rifle's. And that is without taking fragmentation and turning into account.

Not at all. Bleed-out, shock, and pain are all closely related.</font>[/QUOTE]That was kind of a joke, but never you mind.
</font>[/QUOTE]Whoops. In my haste, I misunderstood the term near-miss. I thought it was "almost a miss", not a "miss, but came close".

To tell you the truth I never heard of a near miss actually killing anyone. I heard of dazings, even deafness, but not death. I'll have to go read up on that later. Yes, I'd have to be really dense and stupid to not agree with this. A rifle bullet will most likely penetrate body armor, whereas a pistol bullet most likely won't, both because of the speed and shape. And in the case of trauma plates, the pistol bullet's main advantage, the blunt shape, is, again, a downside, as only speed/energy matters while penetrating plates.
I'm sorry to hear that.

Agreed.

Case closed ;)