Dave Spaulding has spoken to a couple hundred gunfight survivors and asked about the effectiveness of various bullets:
I have spoken with a little old lady who severed the aorta of a home invader with a FMJ .32 while, at the same time, talking to a police officer that could not stop a knife-wielding assailant with five rounds of .45 ACP hollow-point. As a matter of fact, many of the people that I spoke with continued to fire until the threat was no longer in front of their gun. Think about the time it takes for gravity to pull a 200-pound male to the ground. As a matter of fact, time it for yourself.Lay a mattress on the floor and just collapse on it. It will take between one and two seconds to hit the floor. A lot of rounds can be fired in one to two seconds. Dr. Vincent DiMaio, a noted pathologist and author of the book Gunshot Wounds, has been quoted as saying the stopping power comes from, “Where you hit the person and how many times you can hit them.”
Interestingly, few people remember taking notice of any immediate effects of their bullet strikes. Some reported that they expected small chest explosions like they saw in the movies and were surprised when that did not happen. Some recall the suspect’s shirt puckering or moving, but most have no recollection of any bullet strikes. Most of the people I spoke with remember shooting and then their opponent “just not being there any more.” At the same time, gunfight survivors who are shot vary greatly in their recollection of what happened when they were shot. People, who are shot in the leg, unless a bone is hit, take less notice than other areas of the body that are hit. People who are shot in the chest remember being slammed or being punched at the time. How they handled the impact seems to fall totally on how much anger and resolve they felt at the time they were shot. Doctors and emergency medical technicians have told me over the years that if you are not killed instantly by a gun shot wound (a vital organ being hit) or bleed out in a few very short moments, you probably will not die from your wound.
There are a lot of crazy gunshot-wound stories out there:
The most dramatic wound that I ever personally saw involved a woman who was shot in the head by a .357 Magnum. I was a patrol deputy and responded to a public housing project on the report of a shooting. I arrived at the same time as the medic crew and found a white female sitting on the sofa with a dimpled hole in her forehead.There was a similar wound on the back of her head. As I spoke to her at the scene (to find out who shot her, not to further my personal research) I was told that she had been in an argument with her live-in boyfriend when he picked up a snub-nosed .357 revolver and shot her in the forehead. She advised that her head, “Slammed back and I fell back onto the sofa. I have been sitting here ever since. I have a big head ache.” It later turned out that the 158-grain jacketed semi-wadcutter bullet used in the shooting had spilt the lobes of her brain finer than any surgeon could have hoped to. The bullet left a hole in the rear of her skull, which was patched in some way. This victim was released from the hospital and then refused to testify against her boyfriend. (“I still love him.”) He was prosecuted anyway. This incident remains one of the strangest things that I have ever seen.