American Handgunner Jul/Aug 1981 - Jeffersonian

ise, and found himselflooking down the
barrel of a 9 mm Luger P-08. He drew his
issue Smith 19 4", and fired one shot
through the passenger window.
The bullet, a 158-grain Remington semijacketed
soft point .357, pulverized the
glass. The core of the bullet struck the
subject in the upper right chest, and
coursed through right lung, heart, and left
lung, stopping in the ribcage on the left
side. From the autopsy photos I saw, it
appears that the separated jacket of the
bullet struck the gunman an inch above
where the rest of the slug went in, creating
a large flesh wound near the right nipple.
ALIVE & DANGEROUS
The gunman's own door was open, and
either the impact of the bullet or his convulsive
muscular reaction to taking the hit
threw him out the door and onto the
ground. He rolled or scuttled toward the
left rear ofthe car, belly down. The trooper
moved cautiously around the front. The
whole time, the gunman was trying to pull
the trigger of his Luger; either it was
defective, or he had not remembered to
release the thumb safety. Desperately, the
would-be cop killer reached up with his
left hand and jacked the toggle action,
ejecting the live round from the chamber
and seating a fresh one. He aimed again at
the trooper, then lowered his head and
died. He had run out of blood, fully ten
seconds after a .357 slug had pierced his
heart and lungs at point blank range.
You can make a case in any direction
from this documented incident, depending
on what you want to prove. Those who feel
as I do that the JSP .357 round has excessive
penetration and minimal shock power
can certainly point to it; had it not been
slowed by the sheet ofsafety glass, the slug
would almost certainly have penetrated
the felon's body with enough retained
force to inflict a fatal wound on any innocent
standing behind him. Advocates of
monstrously destructive police loads like
the Glaser Safety Slug would announce
flatly that a man hit in the same place with
one would have been instantly neutralized.
They're probably right, but the Safety
Slug's plastic capsule of # 12 shot floating
in liquid Teflon wouldn't have entered this
particular gunman's body at all. On hitting
the window, it would have disintegrated
along with the glass, and the punk with the
Luger would have been harmlessly showered
with neutered birdshot.
9mm PENETRATION
Take the 9 mm used by Illinois State
Poliq::, and by such metropolitan agencies
as Salt Lake City PD. Penetration of body
armor or auto bodies actually exceeds that
of most equivalent .357 loads. Yet, the
Illinois troopers, who for many years carried
them with full-jacketed hardball, bemoaned
the fact that the bullets would
penetrate a felon completely, with little
shock effect. In once case, the bullet exited
even after coursing through the thorax and
AMERICAN HANDGUNNER· JULYIAUGUST 1981
The obsolete cross-draw flap holster
is still in use by some departments.
through the thick, hard center of the gunman's
spinal column. After ISP went to the
softnosed Winchester IOO-grain power
point in 1976, there was an incident at 52
yards in which a suspect was shot through
the chest; the bullet exited without deforming,
and the gunman ran over a hundred
yards before dropping dead. Had he
been otherwise inclined, he might have
killed the trooper who shot him.
Thepoliceman's sidearm is not there for
shooting cars; it's there for shooting "the
most dangerous game," which happens to
be a soft-skinned mammal that is often
supercharged with narcotics and virtually
immune to pain or fear, immune to psychological
and, to some extent, even physiological
shock. The two targets demand
opposite performance. The high penetration
ofa "car gun" makes it ineffective as a
manstopper, and dangerous to bystanders.
Light expanding-bullets at high velocity
are very effective in flesh, but penetrate
sheet metal rather poorly.
The A5 ACP hardball is a definite contender
for the title of all-around police
cartridge. It's hampered by the fact that
most police departments consider the
Army automatic too "tricky" to issue. It
does offer excellent penetration with a
straight-on shot on a car, and its stopping
power against armed assailants is legendary.
The bullet tends to course through
muscle and bone, expend its energy, and
stop in the elastic skin on the opposite side.
However, the nature of the round-nose
jacketed bullet is that it cuts a narrow
wound channel, and there are several cases
on record where it decidedly failed to drop
an assailant who hadn't been hit on a large
bone or vital organ. Also, this slug will
ricochet dangerously off pavement, or off
tough sheet metal at acute angles.
The seldom seen Al Magnum (in the
low velocity lead Police load) does combine
good metal penetration with very
good stopping power and minimal overpenetration
of flesh. However, the gun is
violent to control, and is not considered
(Continued on page 32)
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