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Gunshot Wounds The handgun is the primary weapon in law enforcement. It is the one weapon any officer or agent can be expected to have available whenever needed. Its purpose is to apply deadly force to not only protect the life of the officer and the lives of others, but to prevent serious physical harm to them as well. When an officer shoots a subject, it is done with the explicit intention of immediately incapacitating that subject in order to stop the subject poses. Immediate incapacitation is defined as the sudden physical or mental inability to pose any further risk or injury to others. The concept of immediate incapacitation is the only goal of any law enforcement shooting and is the underlying rationale for decisions regarding weapons, ammunition, calibers and training.
While this concept is subject to conflicting theories, widely held misconceptions, and varied opinions generally distorted by personal experiences, it is critical to the analysis and selection of weapons, ammunition and calibers for use by law enforcement officers. All handgun wounds will combine the components of penetration, permanent cavity, and temporary cavity to a greater or lesser degree. Fragmentation, on the other hand, does not reliably occur in handgun wounds due to the relatively low velocities of handgun bullets. Fragmentation occurs reliably in high velocity projectile wounds (impact velocity in excess of 2000 feet per second) inflicted by soft or hollow point bullets. In such a case, the permanent cavity is stretched so far, and so fast, that tearing and rupturing can occur in tissues surrounding the wound channel, which were weakened by fragmentation damage. It can significantly increase damage in rifle bullet wounds.
Since the highest handgun velocities generally do not exceed 1400 - 1500 feet per second (fps) at the muzzle, reliable fragmentation could only be achieved by constructing a bullet so frangible as to eliminate any reasonable penetration. Unfortunately, such a bullet will break up too fast to penetrate to vital organs. The best example is the Glaser Safety Slug, a projectile designed to break up on impact and generate a large but shallow temporary cavity. Fackler, when asked to estimate the survival time of someone shot in the front mid-abdomen with a Glaser slug, responded, About three days, and the cause of death would be peritonitis. In cases where some fragmentation has occurred in handgun wounds, the bullet fragments are generally found within one centimeter of the permanent cavity. The velocity of pistol bullets, even of the new high-velocity loadings, is insufficient to cause the shedding of lead fragments seen with rifle bullets.
It is obvious that any additional wounding effect caused by such fragmentation in a handgun wound is inconsequential. Of the remaining factors, temporary cavity is frequently, and grossly, overrated as a wounding factor when analyzing wounds. Nevertheless, historically it has been used in some cases as the primary means of assessing the wounding effectiveness of bullets. The most notable example is the Relative Incapacitation Index (RII) which resulted from a study of handgun effectiveness sponsored by the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA). In this study, the assumption was made that the greater the temporary cavity, the greater the wounding effect of the round. This assumption was based on a prior assumption that the tissue bounded by the temporary cavity was damaged or destroyed.
In the LEAA study, virtually every handgun round available to law enforcement was tested. The temporary cavity was measured, and the rounds were ranked based on the results. The depth of penetration and the permanent cavity were ignored. The result according to the RII is that a bullet, which causes a large but shallow temporary cavity is a better incapacitated than a bullet, which causes a smaller temporary cavity with deep penetration. Such conclusions ignore the factors of penetration and permanent cavity. Since vital organs are located deep within the body, it should be obvious that to ignore penetration and permanent cavity is to ignore the only proven means of damaging or disrupting vital organs.
Further, the temporary cavity is caused by the tissue being stretched away from the permanent cavity, not being destroyed. By definition, a cavity is a space in which nothing exists. A temporary cavity is only a temporary space caused by tissue being pushed aside. That same space then disappears when the tissue returns to its original configuration.
The reason is that most tissue in the human target is elastic in nature. Muscle, blood vessels, lung, bowels, all are capable of substantial stretching with minimal damage. Studies have shown that the outward velocity of the tissues in which the temporary cavity forms is no more than one tenth of the velocity of the projectile. This is well within the elasticity limits of tissue such as muscle, blood vessels, and lungs.
Only inelastic tissue like liver, or the extremely fragile tissues of the brain, would show significant damage due to temporary cavitation's. The tissue disruption caused by a handgun bullet is limited to two mechanisms. The first, or crush mechanism is the hole, the bullet makes passing through the tissue. The second, or stretch mechanism is the temporary cavity formed by the tissues being driven outward in a radial direction away from the path of the bullet. Of the two, the crush mechanism, the result of penetration and permanent cavity, is the only handgun wounding mechanism, which damages tissue. To cause significant injuries to a structure within the body using a handgun, the bullet must penetrate the structure.
Temporary cavity has no reliable wounding effect in elastic body tissues. Temporary cavitation's is nothing more than a stretch of the tissues, generally no larger than 10 times the bullet diameter (in handgun calibers), and elastic tissues sustain little, if any, residual damage. Works used: Fackler, M. L. , "Bullet Performance Misconceptions", International Defense Review 3; 369 - 370, 1987.
Wound Ballistic Workshop: " 9 mm vs... 45 Auto", FBI Academy, Quantico, VA, September, 1987. Conclusion of the Workshop. Di Maio, V. J.
M. : Gunshot Wounds, Elsevier Science Publishing Company, New York, NY, 1987: Chapter 3, Wound Ballistics: 41 - 49.
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