For all the .45 ACP fanbois

Who think that the .45 ACP will put down ANYTHING with one shot. I direct you to CTone's blog Legions Fate.

He has a video showing that the 1911A1 in .45 ACP DID NOT live up to it's hype. And it is very telling.

Click HERE to go see the post and it's embedded video.


Granted it was a wild boar, which takes a lot of killing in the first place. However a person hopped up on drugs can and have acted in the same way. During my time in LE in St. Louis, I've seen training videos of actual shootings, where officers pumped full magazines into perps and they DID NOT GO DOWN. Until loss of blood and total damage finally caused the loss of consciousness/death. After the perp had injured several officers.

A pistol bullet by itself cannot cause significant damage to stop a person/animal UNLESS it causes a critical hit to the Central Nervous System (CNS) Even with a critical hit someone who is hopped up on drugs or an animal that is furious, there will be several seconds before the body gets the message and shuts down. In those several seconds YOU can still be hurt, bystanders can still be hurt.

So you need to understand something. It does not matter if the caliber you are shooting starts with a 4 or a 3 or even a 2. What matters is 'where' you hit your target. To get a CNS hit your best bet on a human is to aim center mass. It has the benefit of #1 being the largest area of your target and #2 if you hit a human center mass you can hit the cardiovascular system and if you get enough penetration you can hit the spine/CNS. on an animal however center mass is not always your best target for a incapacitating hit. For an animal such as a wild boar, your best bet with a handgun is actually to shoot it in the head. Preferrably from the rear as the frontal density of a boar skull can defeat quite a few calibers. So you would need to try to get a boar behind the ear to take it out quickly. Farmers the world over put down several hundred pound pigs with a .22 by shooting it behind the ear straight into the brain/medulla oblongata which shuts down the autonomous nervous system which controls breathing and the shock effect of the bullet will cause enough trauma to the remainder of the brain/CNS to shut the animal down.

But saying all that. Any handgun cartridge really isn't the best to try to take someone/thing down. However it's better than carrying a rifle or a shotgun everywhere.