I see this all the time

[wrinkles]

The performance of a bullet in ballistics gel has little to do with real life performance.

Don't you just love running into a post like this. I see it just about everytime someone posts a question about a rounds performance.

The OP always backs this up with:

Jello doesn't have bones and muscle.

[PlatoCATM]

I will not support a guy shooting at jello, regardless of whether or not he molds chicken bones or something in it for simulation. But if you would like to refute a claim that using gelatin is not real world, you'll need support as well. Aren't barrier tests and clothing tests enough to tell you that maybe terminal ballistics are not so cut and dried?

[John_Wayne777]

Don't you just love running into a post like this. I see it just about everytime someone posts a question about a rounds performance.

The OP always backs this up with:

People make statements like this out of extreme ignorance. I am by no means an expert in ballistics or ballistics research. You can fit what I know about the topic into a thimble.

I have spent some time actually learning about the topic, why the testing standards we have were developed, how they have been correlated to performance on the street, and how often what is predicted in the lab in properly calibrated gel blocks comes true on the street.

The controversy here (and on practically every other topic in the gun world) boils down to four types of people:

1. The uninformed -- guys who have no clue but who know they have no clue and who are willing to learn. The problem with these guys is that they don't know enough to figure out who is a source of good information and who is a bad source of information. Often they are pursuaded by the loudest and most persistent individuals who, on the internet anyway, are generally the LEAST qualified people to be rendering an opinion.

2. The informed -- guys who have done their research and who have found good sources of information by seeking them out.

3. The experts -- guys who have done the actual research that informs everyone else

4. The willfully ignorant -- The guys who like to pretend that the number 3 people deliberately waste their time by conducting various experiments (like examining actual gunshot wounds and trying to come up with tissue simulants to measure bullet performance...like ballistics gel) because they apparently benefit somehow from galloping at windmills. Meanwhile the number 4 guys have it all figured out despite the fact that they generally have done no serious research or experimentation on their own. Certain ideas appeal to them and those ideas are the correct information no matter what some guy in a lab coat with 12 peer reviewed studies says about it.

Genuine experts who have legitimate claims to expertise are often VERY reluctant to stray outside of their area of expertise...and when they do, they do so with an abundance of qualifications about their fitness to comment on the issue at hand.

...so when you see somebody passing off information as gospel with A. No apparent qualifications B. No readily apparent base of experience C. No capability to rationally articulate the merits of his argument D. No capacity to thoughtfully analyze the merits of an opposing argument, E. No reluctance to offer an unqualified opinion on damn near any topic, what does that tell you?

When you see that guys from elite military and LE units are pretty humble and in general nice guys, and then you come across some guy on a podunk SWAT team who walks around with a SWAT tattoo telling people "You're either SWAT or you're not!!", what does that tell you?

Unfortunately there's nothing you or I or anyone else can to to help the uninformed become informed beyond pointing to the good information that the genuine experts come up with and occasionally countering particularly outrageous bits of stupidity foisted upon us by people in category 4. The choice will have to rest with the uninformed.

It's a bit like sharing the gospel. It's good stuff, but people have to find it within themselves to accept it and pursue it. There's nothing anyone can do to make them live by it.

[DocGKR]

John_Wayne777, well said Sir!

[wrinkles]

Here's another good one. This guy was shooting a chicken wrapped in duct tape and 4 layers of denim to get a more realistic result.

Actually, I was just interested in seeing how the bullet might perform against a somewhat more realistic medium than " calibrated ballistic gelatin", which sounds really scientific, but lacks such real life attributes such as bones, muscle fascia, tendons and ligaments, and often fails to be wearing clothes when the latest wonder bullet is tested agianst it

[Marcus L.]

Here's another good one. This guy was shooting a chicken wrapped in duct tape and 4 layers of denim to get a more realistic result.

What forum are you getting this crap from? Glocktalk?

[John_Wayne777]

Here's another good one. This guy was shooting a chicken wrapped in duct tape and 4 layers of denim to get a more realistic result.

Which demonstrates several issues with his thinking:

1. He doesn't seem to believe that properly calibrated ballistics gel accurately represents human tissue. Studies have been done on *ACTUAL HUMAN BODIES* that have proven a sufficient correlation between properly calibrated ballistics gel and actual human flesh. Doc R. is the guy to ask about those studies as I'm sure he knows them by heart.

2. The FBI has a heavy clothing standard which is.....4 layers of heavy denim. They also have tests for a number of different intermediate barriers. Now where, I ask you, would this guy get the idea to wrap a chicken in *FOUR* layers of denim? ...and yet he claims that the testing protocols don't take heavy clothing into account?

3. "more realistic".....because we all know that a butchered chicken you can purchase from wal-mart is exactly the same as a 200 pound human being, right? Again, it falls back to my earlier point: People have ideas they are comfortable with and are seeking out justification for their opinions...they are not looking to form their opinions based on real research. I'm not smart enough to do my own ballistics research, but I *am* smart enough to figure out who to listen to in a debate about terminal ballistics.

"Hmmm....should I listen to the IWBA/FBI/US DOD guys who have spent years studying this issue including detailed analysis of literally thousands of GSW's, or do I listen to the guy shooting at a chicken on the internet?"

I'm sure he firmly believes that he's got a better feel for things than actual experts, and I'm sure that he was begun on the path to perdition by reading some knucklehead in a gun magazine who complained about people shooting at jell-o. The fact remains, however, that if we dropped him in a room full of people who have spent their CAREER studying GSW's I guarantee he wouldn't be able to defend his testing methodologies. He wanted to use duct tape to simulate muscle fascia and tendons....great. What study has he done to demonstrate that the characteristics offered by duct tape are similar enough to the characteristics of muscle fascia and tendons to qualify as a sufficient analog? I'm betting "none".

Where I come from we call that a "clue".

There's an old saying: He knows just enough to be really dangerous. This is an example of the basis for that phrase. It's extremely easy to come into a subject area, learn a little bit, and then believe you've got it figured out. The wise man resists this temptation, constantly keeps himself aware of the limitations of his knowledge and always seeks to learn more.

I'm not a scientist. I do not have the training or experience to disagree with the current state of ballistics knowledge. The topic of whether or not certain test procedures are valid is over my head. I'm willing to bet that our friend on the XD forum is no better qualified than I am.

[wrinkles]

What forum are you getting this crap from? Glocktalk?

http://www.xdtalk.com/forums/ammo-ca...d-chicken.html

[wrinkles]

Which demonstrates several issues with his thinking:

1. He doesn't seem to believe that properly calibrated ballistics gel accurately represents human tissue. Studies have been done on *ACTUAL HUMAN BODIES* that have proven a sufficient correlation between properly calibrated ballistics gel and actual human flesh.

2. The FBI has a heavy clothing standard which is.....4 layers of heavy denim. They also have tests for a number of different intermediate barriers. Now where, I ask you, would this guy get the idea to wrap a chicken in *FOUR* layers of denim?

3. "more realistic".....because we all know that a butchered chicken you can purchase from wal-mart is exactly the same as a 200 pound human being, right? Again, it falls back to my earlier point: People have ideas they are comfortable with and are seeking out justification for their opinions...they are not looking to form their opinions based on real research. I'm not smart enough to do my own ballistics research, but I *am* smart enough to figure out who to listen to in a debate about terminal ballistics.

"Hmmm....should I listen to the IWBA/FBI/US DOD guys who have spent years studying this issue including detailed analysis of literally thousands of GSW's, or do I listen to the guy shooting at a chicken with a .22?"

I totally agree with you. It's frustrating that some newbies asking for help are actually falling for this stuff.

[hatt]

I'm pretty sure many people do it because they know people out there are going to argue with them for 20 pages and start numerous other threads talking about how ridiculous of a view it is and then they can argue even more.