This came over a mailing list I subscribe to. The poster, Jeff Mau, is an instructor at a respected training school, in addition to being a police officer and SWAT member, amongst his other credentials.
Shooting someone with a pistol in soft tissue is like sticking them under a drill press and drilling holes, or as Dr. Shertz states it is like poking them with a #2 pencil. It is simply not impressive to a motivated attacker.
For FMJ
- A 9mm will make a 9mm hole with around 50 inches of penetration
- A .40 S&W will make a 10mm hole (I don’t have depth of penetration info on hand, but it will be a lot)
- A .45 ACP will make a 11.5mm hole with with around 65 inches of penetration
For quality JHP
- A 9mm will make a 15.5mm hole with around 13 inches of penetration
- A .40 S&W will make a 17mm hole with around 13 inches of penetration
- A .45 ACP will make a 19mm hole with around 13 inches of penetration
50 plus inches of penetration is suboptimal. For defensive purposes, a quality JHP round is necessary.
The moral of the story is that all pistol rounds suck. Your skill to shoot a reliable weapon system fast and accurate is far more important than bullet size. That being said we all shoot 9mm.
And the reason they (the instructors at that school) all shoot 9mm is because they can shoot it faster and more accurately than the other 2 calibers. I’ve previously expressed my preference for 9mm.
Updated: Let me add some clarification.
There’s a long and seemingly endless caliber war on 9mm Parabellum vs. .45 ACP, and these days .40 S&W can get thrown into the war as well. Why is there a war, because the issue of “terminal ability” between these rounds is about the same. If one was distinctly superior in the area of “terminal ability”, there’d be no war/argument/discussion. Sure .45 ACP makes a bigger hole than a 9mm, but does a bigger hole necessarily equate to better terminal ability? In the laboratory, probably so. In a real life self-defense encounter? There’s far too many other factors involved. While caliber is important (.22 LR is not ideal for defensive work, but is arguably better than nothing at all), there are many other factors to take into account when choosing a handgun for self-defense. When talking about “all pistol rounds suck”, it is generally alluding to the terminal ability of the round, and in the end, all of the “major self-defense handgun calibers” are about the same in terminal ability.
Thus, if the 3 calibers are essentially the same in that area, what can differentiate them? Recoil for one. The recoil of .40 S&W is greater than the recoil of .45 ACP is greater than the recoil of 9mm Parabellum. If all things were equal other than the gun’s chambering, I’m sure first shots of guns in those calibers would all get off just as fast. But how about follow-up shots? The more the recoil, the slower follow-up shots will be. If you have more recoil to manage, it’s more effort to keep the sights in your field of vision and reacquire them before peeling off the next shot. To me, why exert all this extra effort and have to fight my weapon system more than is really required? Maybe it’s the engineer in me that likes efficiency, but if I can exert less yet get the same or better results, why wouldn’t I do that?
For me, shooting 9mm allows me to be a more effective handgunner. 9mm provides less recoil, so I can shoot it faster and ensure greater accuracy when I shoot it. This isn’t to say .45 or .40 are less accurate rounds, just one’s ability to shoot them. Sure I can shoot .45 and .40 fairly quickly and accurately (tho I admit I don’t care for the snappiness of .40’s recoil), but I can shoot 9mm better. Then you add in the increased capacity, less cost per round, and other such factors, and that’s why I prefer to shoot 9mm.
I’m not against .45 ACP. I think it’s a fine round. If you determine that .45 ACP works best for you, by all means use that. In the end, the key thing is to have something as that’s better than nothing. Then get training, practice, get more training, more practice, and become proficient with it. In the end, that “software” is going to take you further than any hardware.
Stuff From Hsoi 
That would be great if we all were comprised solely of soft tissue.
Look at it another way. (Comparing diameter is misleading)
.305in^2 x pi x 13 inches is 3.80 cubic inches of hole.
.374in^2 x pi x 13 inches is 5.71 cubic inches of hole.
It takes 4 rounds of 9mm to make roughly the same volume that it takes 3 rounds of .45 Auto, 15.2 cu in and 17.13 cu in respectively.
It’s a good thing 9mm is more controllable because you need to shoot more to do the same thing. :)-~
Yes I know how you love .45 ACP. 🙂
Your math doesn’t negate the fact that all handgun rounds — including .45 ACP — suck.
Furthermore, accuracy is more important. A 3.80 cubic inch hole in the vitals is better than a 5.71 cubic inch hole in the foot or just cutting through the air. Yes I’m exaggerating the target placement a bit, but the point is accuracy matters more. Yes a bigger hole in the vitals is better than a smaller hole in the vitals, but with handgun rounds like this while on paper there’s a difference, in the field there isn’t a heck of a lot of difference between the damage done by 9mm vs. .40 S&W vs. .45 ACP.
If you want to talk damage, let’s talk about those .30-caliber Barnes Triple Shock X rifle rounds. 😈
Without question, .40 S&W has the worst recoil of the 3 and is going to be the hardest to shoot quickly and accurately. .45 ACP recoil isn’t that bad, but certainly it’s more than a 9mm. Even you can shoot a 9mm faster and better than a .45 ACP (all other things being equal). Then you throw in greater capacity in a 9mm, cheaper ammo (you can train/shoot more) and well… it’s just tough to beat 9mm in my opinion.
But people should pick what works best for them and not settle on something because of vanity or machismo. One wants the best tool for the job, so one must ensure that he/she ends up with that. Of course, how we define best can vary from person to person.
I do like the .45 Auto, but I am carrying a 9mm at this very moment, so it’s not like I have anything against the 9mm.
Why do you think a .45 is less accurate? I agree follow up shots are slower, but the round is not less accurate. Hell, I think most bullseye guns are .45 Auto 1911s.
When I get my hands on a double stack 9mm that works for me (possibly a Hi-Power or 2011), I could see myself carrying it, but I don’t feel like that’s the only valid choice.
When it comes to accuracy, I’m not talking about the round itself. I’m talking about the abillity of the shooter.
I kinda think what you are getting at is for timed courses of fire with specific round counts.
I might have to sacrifice more accuracy with a .45 to meet the course requirements, but that’s not real life.
No, I never said that nor intended to imply it. But since you brought it up, it sounds like it demonstrates the point… that .45 ACP is a bit harder to control and make accurate shots with. That isn’t to say you can’t, but getting as apples to apples as we can get, 9mm is going to be more controllable.
Hey, if you can guarantee a one-shot-stop, great. But if you’re going to have to make a follow-up shot, shift and strike multiple targets, having something that’s as controllable as possible I think is a good thing.
I think the real point is that small, slow moving, projectiles produce low velocity wounds. A larger caliber makes a bigger hole, but it’s not ‘bigger’ enough. Humans as a system are pretty darn resilient and a low velocity wound channel is just not that impressive.
I’m not denying the premise that they all suck.
It really comes down to Hsoi thinks the 9mm sucks less, and I think the .45 Auto sucks less.
There are people with impressive bona fides on both sides of that argument.
Well, if you’d just volunteer to let me shoot you with a round of each caliber, you can tell me which one sucks less. If it truly is .45 ACP, then I’ll shut up. 😉
I didn’t want this to turn into a caliber war, but since it did….
Notice there’s no real caliber war between things like oh, .25 ACP and .32 ACP? Why? Because they both suck and there’s no question of it. So why do we have a 9mm vs. .45 ACP war? Because they’re both equally effective, both equally crappy… in the end they really are “6 of 1, half dozen of the other”. If there was enough compelling evidence one way or the other, there’d be no war! But we have a war, and the fact it’s a war that’s gone on for ages with no resolve in sight well… it just shows that in the end, the rounds are more or less the same in effectiveness and suckage.
Note however, that mostly what this “war” is about is “terminal effectiveness”. There’s no question that you can fit more 9mm rounds into the same space (i.e. guns chambered for 9mm will always have greater capacity). There’s no question that 9mm rounds are less expensive than .45 ACP rounds. There’s no question that 9mm rounds have less recoil than .45 ACP rounds. There’s no debate on these matters because that’s factually how things are. The only thing to debate is “terminal effectiveness” and like I said, they both come out about equal.
So that’s why I don’t really debate the merits of 9mm in terms of terminal effectiveness, because any of “the big 3” calibers all come out about the same in that area. The differences primarily come in other areas: affordability, pervasiveness/availability, recoil management and how that affects fast and accurate shooting, etc..
So hey, if you can shoot a .40 S&W faster and more accurate than anything else, then use that! Use what works best for you.
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