“I have spoken with a little old lady who severed the aorta of a home invader with a FMJ .32 while, at the same time, talking to a police officer that could not stop a knife-wielding assailant with five rounds of .45 ACP hollow-point.”
A former police officer speculates on some of the more interesting details of pistol gunplay between various human beings. It’s written from the perspective of a police officer dealing with your standard urban human foibles.
What’s really interesting is that in his list of effective ammo and calibers, he lists the .223 55 grain FMJ and hollow point ammo. For anyone reading this who isn’t a shooter, a .223 is a small caliber, high velocity round. It’s basically the round used by the U.S. military to wound and not kill the enemy – at least that was the mantra that we got in boot camp. Why do we wound and not kill? Because it takes nine personnel to care for every wounded troop, while the dead require no immediate care whatsoever.
Most civilian shooters I’ve encountered over the years claim the .223 is better suited for hunting priarie dogs and other small rodents than anything else, but not according to this guy.
All I know is that it’s really fun to shoot my Bushmaster Varminter. I also know I would probably not choose the Varminter for urban self-defense situations. At $900, the Bushmaster Carbon 15 Type 97 Pistol is also probably not going to be my first choice. It does look like something I could enjoy shooting though.
There is also some discussion of the legal aspects of shooting another human in self-defense. I’ll get into my feelings about the legal ramifications some other time, but I encourage you to read the article.