Stopping Power by Caliber Part 2

[JASmith]

...IIRC, that's what gel tests are for, to compare terminal effects/lethality of different cartridges and bullets. It seems to me that (with ordnance gelatin) it's easy to model and test.

IMO, what's difficult is to take the resulting wound profiles and say "This one is XX% better than that one."

That's the whole point of specifying that the permanent cavity must be at least as wide on average as a specified dimension over a particular distance in the channel. This part is testable.

What is rather challenging is converting that data into percentages of incapacitations, kills, or what have you.

The Ellifritz data set, even if as shaky as you suggest, gives us the opportunity to look at this subject and develop a bit more insight. My take-away from the summary is that wounds from almost any caliber 9mm or larger fired at pistol-caliber distances will produce incapacitations on a regular basis (meaning around 50% of the time).

Shotguns produce about as large a wound channel as we can readily expect. Indeed the 12 gauge ball is very close to what was used during the war of independence and that caliber was developed by some interesting, if indirect, trial and error. Even this large a caliber does not produce 100% incapacitation.

So, his data summary really does give me some comfort in asking for a 500 meter threshold similar to what we could expect from 9mm or M-1 carbine rounds near the muzzle. Similarly, the 7.62 M80 bullet doesn't always incapacitate at any range, but few complain about its lethality, so equaling or bettering its non-fragmenting permanent cavity at any range seems to make a reasonable objective lethality statement.