Handgun Stopping Power: The Definitive Study [Paperback]

Evan Marshall (Author), Edwin J. Sanow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1992

Dramatic first-hand accounts of the results of handgun rounds fired into criminals by cops, storeowners, cabbies and others are the heart and soul of this long-awaited book. This is the definitive methodology for predicting the stopping power of handgun loads, the first to take into account what really happens when a bullet meets a man.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Evan Marshall is a Special Weapons and Tactics trainer for a federal agency with counterterrorist responsibilities. He retired from the Detroit Police Department after 20 years of service. His assignments included Tactical Unit, Crime Scene Investigation, Homicide and the Special Response Team. He has trained groups as diverse as the Federal Air Marshals and the U.S. Army Special Reaction Team. His articles on ammunition, ballistics and tactics have appeared in the law enforcement and firearms press over the past 25 years.

Cpl. Ed Sanow is the senior reserve deputy and a 14-year veteran with the Benton County, Indiana, Sheriff's Department. He is a Team Leader with the Benton County Multiagency Response Team and the field training officer for the reserve force. Sanow is the author of more than 1,000 articles on ammunition and stopping power. In October 2000, he became the editor of Law and Order magazine

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Paladin Press (January 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0873646533
• ISBN-13: 978-0873646536
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #355,952 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great reading, March 15, 2007

By 

M.P.M. (Virginia, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Handgun Stopping Power: The Definitive Study (Paperback)

I am a big fan of the 3 Marshall and Sanow books. I must say that as an economist I have a good deal of training in statistics, and I'm not sold on the soundness of the math behind the one-stop shot percentages. Marshall seems to be very upfront that these numbers only be used as a relative comparison tool, and I think that this is important to keep in mind. Some might disagree with Marshall and Sanow on method, but I don't believe their work is anything but an honest (and at times successful) effort to save the lives of Americans by providing them with the tools to choose proper defensive ammunition. All three books are excellent. In my opinion the third book is the best and most up to date. While I don't agree with everything in this book it is fairly well written, includes a lot of interesting chapters, and is very enjoyable to read. Keep in mind that even the newest book is nearly 6 years old, and that there are better current ammunition choices in some cases now.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting reading, but lacks detailed substance, January 26, 2000

By 

M. Schneider "TXP" (Texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Handgun Stopping Power: The Definitive Study (Paperback)

I really enjoyed reading this book and would recommend it to anyone who is seeking information on handgun stopping power. It has valuable information for choosing handgun ammo. The information contained in the book was good, but it lacks details. There was too much summation in the book for me.

25 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Unscientific study, April 21, 2003

By 

Seppo Vesala (Helsinki, - Finland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Handgun Stopping Power: The Definitive Study (Paperback)

The main purpose of this book is to determine which handgun calibers are the most effective, and which cartridges are the best in a given caliber, and to determine how this stopping power can be prediceted. There is also some related information, created as a by-product of the study.

Let's begin by examining the main issue: defining the stopping power of given cartridges. The authors have reasoned that to really be able to define the effectiveness of a bullet, one has to examine the real shooting cases. That is sound reasoning, and I believe that the authors are absolutely right about that. Unfortunately, that creates a problem that is very hard to overcome: The problem of adequate reference material.

In a shooting case, there are numerous variables, which all contribute to effectiveness of a bullet, and most of the variables are not dependent of the bullet itself (like the size of the subject, physical condition of the subject, mental state of the subject, the beliefs of the suspect, whether the subject is under the influence of durgs or alcohol, what kind of clothes the subject is wearing, and so on). You can safely say that there are dozens of such variables, and some variables have more profound effect than the others.

The authors have tried to overcome this problem by limiting the shooting cases eligible for the study by stating that only torso hits have been counted, and those cases have been omitted where there have been more than one bullet hit to the subject. But this is hardly a solution at all, because the authors have stated themselves that "it's not important that you hit something, it's important that you hit something important". In this book they have counted only torso hits, but in reality there are no "torso hits", because it has a tremendous difference, if a bullet hits heart or spine, or if the bullet goes just into abdomen not hitting anything vital. But still these variables are not taken into consideration in this book.

As I stated, there are dozens of variables in a shooting concerning "stopping power". When one considers that most of the one-shot stop -percentages are calculated based on just couple of dozen shootings, how can these values be considered statistically reliable? You can determine the unreliabliness of this data yourself by comparing this data from 1992 to a newer data, with more shootings. In some cases there is substantial difference between old and new street results. And the one-shot stop percentages are calculated to an accuracy of 0,01 %. This is ridiculous considering the fact that in some cases there are more variables than there are shootings! The biggest number of shootings for a given round is 462, which might just be big enough of a sample, but in majority of cases there has been less than 100 shootings, which is a way too little database to achieve reliable results consirering the vast amount of variables. And in some cases the calculations are based on just eleven shootings!

So it's clear that these one-shot stop calculations are not statictically reliable. A fact that is emphasized by the fact that there is no reference material in this book. A surprising feature in a book that is supposed to be a "study".

However, there is also some useful information, and this is where we get to the by-product part of the book. The authors have collected information about exotic handgun ammo, like exploding bullets or sabot rounds. And there is also some important considerations about tactical penetration.

There is also some information that is not so useful, but can be of interest to the reader, like presentation of different ways to determine the effectiveness of a bullet used in the past. Also, the authors have included some shooting cases, arranged by the caliber of the gun used. These stories are interenting to read, but they are just anecdotes, and they can't be used to proof anything.

The authors have also created a way to predict the effectiveness of a given bullet before there are any street results available for that round. This formula ís created by comparing known bullet performance on the street to tests conducted in ballistic gelatin. This is a very interesting way to predict the effectiveness of bullets, but the reliability of these formulas suffer from the same thing than the "street results": There is not sufficient data available.

In conclusion I would say that paradoxally, the portion of the book that handles the main issue (stopping power) is of questionable value, and the support material is the most valuable part of this book. I believe however that this will change as the authors get more data from new shooting cases.