Bullets: Overpenetration, Tumbling, Traveling

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Phoenix_Dragon

While a .22LR can be deadly, the idea that it's more deadly than more powerful rounds is laughable. The stories of a .22 bouncing around in the skull are much more myth than reality. You might luck out and have it deflect off part of the skull and travel in a different path, or scrape along the inside of the skull, but you're much more likely to leave a thin little .22-inch hole straight through to where the bullet stopped dead against the bone on the opposite side.

Meanwhile, a more powerful round will cause much more reliable damage. A simple 9mm travelling straight through will pass through a volume almost three times larger than the .22, without the concerns of being stopped by the skull, not to mention leaving a much larger hole (And possibly even two) exposing the inside of the cranium.

Do that with the .308 you mention, and the result will be not a .308 hole clean through the head, but instead a good portion of the brain and skull departing from the owner. Look up JFK if you really need a graphic visual of what a high-power rifle does to the human head.

.22LR's "advantage" wasn't that it was particularly lethal, but that it's so low-powered that it's easy to suppress, with a weapon that's very small.

Quite and you raise good point about skull exit wounds. An exit wound is not a positive thing were you say "whew look at where all the energy that didn't stay in the brain went, man it would have been really bad is that had stayed in the skull". It's more "and this is the new opening in this chaps skull where a chunk of his brain was pushed out onto the floor".

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Quite and you raise good point about skull exit wounds. An exit wound is not a positive thing were you say "whew look at all the energy that didn't stay in the brain went, man it would have been really bad is that had stayed in the the skull". It more "and this is new opening in this chaps skull where a chunk of his brain was pushed out onto the floor".

Eh, an exit wound may well be better than the same bullet at the same velocity failing to exit (presumably, the reason one exited and the other one didn't is that the first one hit less stuff on the way through, though "how much bone did it hit" isn't terribly indicative of wounding), but most of the time the reason one bullet would exit and another wouldn't is because the first bullet is more powerful...

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Eh, an exit wound may well be better than the same bullet at the same velocity failing to exit (presumably, the reason one exited and the other one didn't is that the first one hit less stuff on the way through, though "how much bone did it hit" isn't terribly indicative of wounding), but most of the time the reason one bullet would exit and another wouldn't is because the first bullet is more powerful...

Well yes quite. My point is when the paramedics arrive at the scene they don't look a chunks of skull only remaining attached to the head by flaps of scalp with a sense of relief that the intercrainial pressure has been released. I.e high velocity trepanning has yet to gain wide spread medical acceptance ;-0!

Ultimately we are of course really in general talking about different amounts of dead