From: gmk@falstaff.MAE.CWRU.EDU (Geoff Kotzar)
Subject: Re: Stopping power
Organization: Case Western Reserve University

In article <50721@mimsy.umd.edu> kdlin@edison.SEAS.UCLA.EDU ( Desperado ) writes:
#
#In article <50701@mimsy.umd.edu> rsl@well.sf.ca.us (Roy Stuart Levin) writes:
##...  I believe a recent magazine
##which maintained that great self defense loads when correlated with Evans
##and Ayoobs newest published stopping stats all had 13" penetration in
##Feckler's ordinance gelatin, this implied that the 155gr .40SW was best but
##more experimentation is in order.  See Ed Sanow's article
##"Bullet Penetration When Does `Enough' Become `Too Much'?" page 52
##in HandGuns For Sport & Defense April 1992
#
#In my opinion, this article from Ed Sanow is a controversial one.
#His result seems ok to me but the way he presents is questionable.
#He lists some popular police loads in three categories: best, average,
#and poor. He then concludes from this list that best loads should
#penetrate between 10 to 15 inches.
#
#If you look at these loads that are listed as the poor loads, almost
#all of them have non-expanding bullets. The only exception is the
#Winchester 147-grain JHP, which is virtually a non-expanding bullet
#according to the same article. My criticism for this article stems
#from here. Ed Sansow didn't really control his "experiment" in a
            ^^ ^^^^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^ ^
#scientific fashion. His testing only shows a HP bullet with a short
#penetration depth is perhaps better than a FMJ bullet with long penetration
#depth. He cannot conclude that the optimum penetration depth is between
#10 to 15 inches from this list. This is because he didn't consider
#the knock-down power produced by the expending bullets. Can he deduce
#that a FMJ load with a 13" penetration depth is also a best load?

I completely agree. Ed Sanow apparently never heard about latent variables.
There are a number of ways to limit the penetration of a projectile in
ballistic gelatin to 13-15". One way is to simply load the round to a pedes-
trian velocity of only a few hundred feet per second but I would not like to
rely on it for any purpose except paper punching and I will bet neither would
Ed Sanow, even he is not that foolish. His work in general is very shoddy; I
would not pay too much attention to his conclusions.

#
geoff kotzar           gmk@falstaff.mae.cwru.edu