pistol caliber and wound question

reddirtwriter

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Two questions

What would be a common caliber for something slightly larger than a .22?

Would a person with a small caliber bullet wound (through the thigh muscle, didn't hit bone or arteries) be up and hobbling around a week later? I'm assuming it would have went through the leg.

Thanks!
 

Drachen Jager

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Two questions

What would be a common caliber for something slightly larger than a .22?

.25, .38, 7mm, 7.65mm, 9mm are all at least somewhat common (though 7mm is pretty out of fashion and 7.65 is old Soviet bloc ammo)

Would a person with a small caliber bullet wound (through the thigh muscle, didn't hit bone or arteries) be up and hobbling around a week later? I'm assuming it would have went through the leg.

Yeah, that sounds reasonable, especially if non-expanding ammo was used.

Thanks!

Have a read through the Firearms thread in this forum. Lots of good info there.
 
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Trebor1415

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Two questions

What would be a common caliber for something slightly larger than a .22?

Would a person with a small caliber bullet wound (through the thigh muscle, didn't hit bone or arteries) be up and hobbling around a week later? I'm assuming it would have went through the leg.

Thanks!

Who is the shooter?

If he's a police officer he's likely going to shoot a .40 S&W, 9mm or possibly a .38 Special (from a revolver). Police issue ammo would be Jacketed Hollow Point (JHP).

If the shooter is a regular guy, or a bad guy, you have more options. Going up from .22 some more or less popular choices are .32 ACP or .380 ACP. These are both common in smaller handguns often used as back up guns or small concealed carry guns.

While JHP is still recommended for defense, it's possible for teh shooter to have picked cheaper FMJ ("ball") ammo. This is typically supposed to be used for practice but does find it's way into guns used for defense or crime if the shooter doesn't know any better or if they go for the cheapest ammo they can find, or just use the ammo they found when they stole the gun (etc).

The point being that the kind of wound you want would be more likely with a FMJ round than a JHP round.
 

Drachen Jager

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For some size comparison. (resized smaller, Sorry Cath!)

Complete-Rifle-Ammunition-Guide-Comparison_sm.jpg

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The next caliber in a small pistol round would be a 380 or a 9mm short. I've been shot with a 22 through the lower leg. I heard the shot at the same time I felt the hit. There was no sensation of the entry wound but the exit wound felt just like someone hit me very hard with a hammer.

Being a paramedic I knew it didn't hit a bone and was a clean through and through wound as they call it. The exit wound was the size of a dime. I cleaned it, applied antiseptic, dressed it and went back to mowing the lawn which was where I got shot in the first place.

My wife raised hell but I told her "Davy Crockett wouldn't have even stopped splitting wood."
 

Tazlima

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People are remarkably tough.

Case in point. My father was once in a car wreck so nasty that the junkyard staff refused to believe the vehicle's driver had survived. He got the once-over at the hospital and they sent him home, where he proceeded to go about his normal business. He worked his usual hours and went for walks every evening, despite the fact that he felt terrible.

At his follow-up visit three days later, they discovered he had been doing all this with a collapsed lung.

This landed him in the hospital with a tube sticking out of his chest...a tube he pulled out a couple of hours later because he needed to use the restroom and didn't realize that he was supposed to ask the nurse for help (my mother, who is a nurse herself, was ready to strangle him for that little stunt).

Anyway, they reinserted the tube and he left it alone, but during the course of his hospitalization he got increasingly frustrated. He wanted to be up and about and felt like a wimp for staying bed-bound once his lung was re-inflated. I was the one who finally put his condition into perspective in a way he could accept.

"What caliber bullet would make a hole that size?" I asked, indicating the spot where the tube vanished into his chest.

"Oh, probably about a 9mm."

"Well if you got shot with a 9mm, would you think you were a wimp for resting afterwards?"

"I suppose not."

It's funny, but once he thought of the hole as a fresh injury rather than "just" a medical procedure, he was way more OK with letting himself rest.
 
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Once in our small town a man and his stepfather had been drinking beer and arguing all day. The step dad took a revolver and shot him point blank in the center of his forehead. When I got to the ambulance, he was sitting up breathing as a large blood clot oozed out from under the dressing, then sucked back up under it. Obviously the sinus cavities were intruded causing suction back into the entry wound.

He is alive today, the bullet traveled down the valley between the hemispheres of the brain taking out short term memory. Other than that, he is fine.
 

espresso5

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As the previous posts indicate, there are plenty of different types of small calibers, but if you want a common caliber, as in something you could go down to the local Wal-Mart and buy ammunition for, .380 ACP would probably be the best choice. .22 magnum has a bit more oomph than a .22, but is the same caliber, obviously. A .380 is essentially a 9 mm (9x17), but when most people think of a 9 mm, they think of the 9 mm Parabellum (9x19), which has more energy, depending on the cartridge.
If something slightly less common is okay (local gun store vs. local Wal-Mart), you could go for a .32 ACP.
 

WeaselFire

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What would be a common caliber for something slightly larger than a .22?

Current US, you're looking at .380 ACP, 9mm, .38 Special, .357 Magnum, .40 S&W and .45 ACP. .25 caliber is less common, as would be a .32 but would be appropriate for an older (20 years or more) firearm or a woman shooter (many are sold these small guns by gun shops so the "little woman" will be able to put it in her purse...). For law enforcement, usually .40 S&W or 10mm, sometimes 9mm or .45 ACP.

Most commonly sold everyday carry gun for concealed carry is now a .380 with 9mm close behind.

Would a person with a small caliber bullet wound (through the thigh muscle, didn't hit bone or arteries) be up and hobbling around a week later? I'm assuming it would have went through the leg.

Absolutely. A 9mm jacketed round (FMJ or Full Metal Jacket) from most current handguns would penetrate an upper thigh outside the femur (thigh bone) without major damage (no femoral artery at issue, just muscle). The wound would likely be very clean, often not even needing a stitch to close, and bleeding would be minimal.

FWIW, I've got my main character suffering this exact wound in the final part of my current work in progress and have done a lot of research on making it accurate. Feel free to PM me for suggestions or help.

Jeff
 
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