Originally Posted by
okie
In actual tissue, they do. Of course that's highly dependent on which we're talking about. You're going to see different characteristics based on bullet design, but in terms of cavitation they will be identical. The entrance wounds will look different. The variables are going to be penetration depth, deflection, and fragmentation. But given good bullet design, both are fully capable of the same performance in those regards. So whichever one you have, as long as you're buying high quality bullets like gold dots or HSTs you're good to go. Ditto for .40, .357 sig, .45 GAP, etc. When it comes to the duty calibers they're all good, you just have some that are more efficient than others, with 9mm being the gold standard. It does the same job but it does it cheaper with less weight, recoil, and wear on the firearm.
It's not until you get into full house 10mm, full house .357 from a long barrel, .44, etc. that you're going to start seeing some significant wound profiles that are much different from the standard duty calibers like .45 and 9mm. But with that said, there's a report of a guy who was shot dozens of times with a mixture of .40 and 223 gold dots, and none of them were show stoppers. One 223 gold dot had passed within a fraction of an inch of his heart, and he still didn't go down. Just goes to show that anything short of maybe a .50 cal is dependent on shot placement in the real world. What you need is a bullet that's appropriate for the range, that's going to get to the target and penetrate deep enough and in a straight enough line that if you do your job with shot placement the bullet is going to do its job. Virtually any duty caliber fits that bill when it comes to pistols that are able to be carried for self defense.
Would also add that nobody is good enough to hit a heart sized moving target reliably the first time. It's a numbers game. It's about being able to put 10 rounds in the A zone faster than the other guy, and that's going to put statistics on your side. So recoil mitigation without sacrificing performance is a massive factor in winning gunfights.
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