What is better in a handgun battle; caliber, or that a bullet can always perform the same task when it strikes something that needs it Handgun “stopping power” cannot be proven in the areas of most importance the autopsy room and the operating theater. According to the training materials provided by the FBI, “an operating room surgeon or Medical Examiner cannot distinguish the difference between wounds caused by .35 to .45 caliber projectiles.” Read literally, that verse nullifies half a century of dinner-table grade certitude. It further justifies the reason the Bureau would eventually resume 9mm usage less on the side of fashion and more on the side of repeatability between individuals, pistols and real-life challenges.
A former FBI expert called “Scott” said that a change in sidearms as individual talismans took place at the Quantico Ballistic Research Facility. In his description, the present-day FBI considers handguns as a fleet equipment. That reframe is what makes the argument different: recoil management is now a throughput issue, reliability is now maintenance math, and “what works” is to now work with thousands of shooters with varying skill levels, not a few enthusiasts able to push more difficult recoil and personalized guns.
It was not that “9mm failed” in the abstract but a specific load. When Scott modernized the Bureau to the use of the 115-grain 9mm hollow point, which could not be used to perform two tasks simultaneously: to penetrate intervening material and then reach a vital depth. “It didn’t have the ability to penetrate intervening barriers and then to enter the human target and penetrate deep enough to disrupt a vital organ,” he said. Two special agents were buried on account of it. That teaching became process: specify minimum performance in quantifiable terms, then insist on its demonstration by ammunition in controlled conditions.
The current benchmark is the calibrated 10 percent ballistic gelatin work developed by the FBI regarding its use, and research done on bullets that are stressed by a barrier is the modern day street. The famous window –12-18 inches of penetration- does not endeavor to “measure stopping power.” It establishes a bed level that is high enough to hit important organs even when it has been damaged by some complications such as arms, clothing, or deficient angles, and a top that is aimed to minimize the probability of the bullets leaving the body with significant speed. It is not drama, but standardization. When the blocky stuff of clothes plugs up a hollow point, when the wallboard interferes with a jacket, when the glass on the windshield is angled and causes a nose outline to be missed, the test is arranged to indicate the failure as figures and not as folklore.
Price pursuit into penetration margin drove the FBI into 10mm Auto, a “paper solution” that met fleet reality. We had had tremendous problems with 10 millimeters, Scott remembered, recoil and reliability problems which added up in a mass shooter force. The 10mm Model 1076 of Smith & Wesson was put into service, and Scott indicated that half of them had to be returned to the custom-shop, those who worked, and those who did not.
40 S&W came later as a smaller, more duty-friendly version of the same idea, and until recently it has characterized American policing. But the identical systems issue presented itself again as compact .40 pistols were loaded to full. Scott summed up the foreseeable reflex, the first reaction with everybody being, “Hey, what wrong with the ammo?”, which was then preceded by the interacting variables of recoil impulse, gun size, springs, magazines, and shooter variability all adding together until the entire system started no longer behaving predictably.
In the late 2000s, the FBI tests indicated that modern 9mm projectiles would run to almost the same speed in the same barrier-and-gelatin protocol as.40 S&W. Scott attributed the lessening of the advantage to engineering headroom to the work of Hornady Dave Emery: Because you give us velocity. An expanded velocity window provided designers with a greater ability to manufacture bullets that spread consistent and continue to penetrate targeting obstacles. The conclusion of the 9mm vs. the .40 in testing in the style of the FBI, as determined by Emery, was just as harsh: “There’s not a nickel’s worth of difference between the two.”
The last feature was practical rather than theoretical. In controlled FBI shootings, Scott reported that 6 of ten shooters were quicker and much more successful in 9mm than in.40 S ammunition, with novices to elite shooters. When convergence occurs between terminal performance, the logic of decision adopted by the Bureau is nearly uninspired: increased controllability, reduced mechanical punishment, and a common bullet which passes eight test events without becoming a coin toss.
