tjhaile,
I'm well aware of Dr. Roberts and have read much of what he has published. I've also had access to Studies by the FBI and other major US Police Agencies that are not released to civilians.
Shooting gelatin and other barriers in the lab is fine and gives good useful data but does not tell the whole story.
The data I'm referring to is form a large Metropolitan Jurisdiction in North Carolina that has a very high number of Officer involved shootings. When they were issued 9mm's (mind you not in +P loadings) the shot subjects had a survivability rate in the 33 percentile. When change was made to .40 S&W the survivability rate of the bad guys being shot went down into the 15 - 20 percentile. Now that a change has been made to .357 Sig, the bad guy's survival rate in in the 3 - 5 percentile.
Now you may argue that the data may reflect that officers are being trained better or are better shots (shot placement is everything) but there have been no significant changes to the qualifying course of fire.
In short don't get too carried away with lab testing, actual shootings (although they are all different) also give useful (over time and numerous events) data that doesn't lie either.
Rich
Those numbers you quote for all calibres seem very low for handguns. I don't remember the exact number (I think it was around 80-90%), but I recall reading somewhere that the vast majority of people shot with handguns survive.
I'm not sure that measuring the percentage of those who survive being shot is necessarily a good measurement of effectiveness. Which of the following is a better outcome:
1. Bad guy is shot with a 9mm, ceases action immediately, and is taken to hospital and survives.
2. Bad guy is shot with a .357 SIG, but manages to kill a number of innocent bystanders before he expires.
Obviously, #1 would be a better outcome, but #2 would count in favour of the .357 on the lethality index. It all sounds suspiciously like Marshall & Sanow's discredited "one shot stops".
Actual shootings can certainly provide useful data in terms of expansion, penetration, and wound characteristics, but every shootee will react differently to being shot.
.357 SIG can certainly do the job, just like 9mm, .40, or .45, but I find it hard to believe that it is some kind of magic death ray that stands head and shoulders above the rest.
