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Originally Posted by Forte S+W
No argument there, Clear Ballistics isn't a very good tissue simulate for flesh because it's too soft and too elastic, so bullets end up penetrating deeper and wound channels shrinking back more than they would in Organic Gel.
Simulated Torsos consist of a simulated rib cage with simulated organs, filled with simulated blood, and encased in an Organic Gel torso. This combination presents the most realistic simulation of an actual human torso currently available.
And therein lies the issue with FBI Ballistics Gel Testing, it's too laser focused on consistency and repeatable results within the confines of a simplistic testing protocol based on dated information and theories crafted in the aftermath of the 1986 Miami-Dade Shootout.
The human body isn't a consistent medium, nor are streets a laboratory. Bullets may or may not strike bones, may or may not deviate after penetrating solid objects, ergo because combatants tend to be moving targets and gunfights occur in an environment without perfectly repeatable results, the best way to test something is through repetition, recording and documenting the results under a variety of conditions in order to better understand the nature of ballistics.
Indeed they are, in Ballistics Gel Testing, Rifle Bullets showcase the more devastating effects of cartridges with enough energy to result in remote damage which extends beyond the diameter of the projectile itself.
However, Bones don't require nearly as much energy to critically damage, and that's where simulated torsos better illustrate the differences between handgun cartridges.
It's important to note that incapacitation isn't necessarily lethal. For example, a shot to the pelvic girdle will cause a combatant to collapse because if that support structure becomes structurally compromised, the combatant can no longer regain upright.
In addition, if bones are shattered with enough energy, then it's possible for the bone fragments to result in additional damage, and there's the kicker.
Some pistol cartridges make bones shatter more dramatically than others, and furthermore, some won't shatter bones at all.
Don't get me wrong, Ballistics Gel Testing has its place, but at this point the the results are so well documented that the testing has reached the limitations ofwhat it can tell us about Terminal Ballistics.
We know how bullets perform in tissue, but what about how bones behave when struck within that tissue. That's where this new testing comes into play.
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I’m aware of what the torsos are. I wasn’t aware that the US military had officially adopted them for their testing protocols. I asked above, but where did you read that? I find a lot of things in this space are repeated as true because someone said it, but when you actually try to find if that’s true you just get directed from person to person.
I don’t know that I see the desire for consistency as a problem per se. If you’re going to compare bullets and cartridges you need consistency, at least to some extent. I’m pretty aware that the human body itself isn’t consistent, but again the point was for comparison purposes. Even with repetition in ballistic gel there is already variation in bullet performance. Add in some of the variation associated with some of the other testing methods and you have no idea if the differences observed are from the bullets themselves or random deflection in the medium. The “streets” may not be a laboratory, but if you’re going to approach an experiment with even a basic attempt at the scientific method then controlling variables matters. You can keep repeating experiments to try to minimize the outliers, but I don’t think people credit how much data you start to need at some point.
I don’t know that how bones react to getting shot by bullets within tissue is not understood. We have at this point decades of trauma medicine from military actions and domestic shootings. The cartridges in discussion here are in many cases older than anyone here. None of this is really new.
People often point to the limitations of ballistic gel testing. I find it’s next to impossible to find someone unbiased on this. The people that agree with the results support them, those that don’t suggest the testing protocol is deficient. Again, I myself admitted limitations with it. What I don’t understand is if it is so limited and if it is not indicative of actual real world results, as some here suggest, then why is it still used? Is it a function of a mass delusion, that we couldn’t come up with anything better, or that we are under the sway of the 9mm Illuminati who are hiding the truth from us? In all the decades it has been used, no one has been able to come up with something better than ballistic gel? Heck, even the ballistic gel torsos are a sort of extension of shooting pigs or meat carcasses as was done in the past and they still rely on using gel. Again, this isn’t new.
John has asked for people to show results definitively concluding differently at multiple times through this thread, and I haven’t seen one person address the request. Can someone point me to one documented example where the relative differences between ballistic performance of 2 or more cartridges in ballistic gel are shown to be largely false by another type of test? Where is the evidence that penetration of bullets to at least a certain extent in gel covered by layers of denim is “dated”? I’m not saying it’s unfathomable, I’m asking where is the document or organization putting in writing what the masses seemingly already know?