M-1 Garand vs. Mauser K98

[tommy303]

Very often though, pain does not immediately register on the victim of a bullet, unlike a TASER. There are numerous anecdotal accounts of soldiers or felons carrying on for a while before pain even began to become a factor, particularly in cases where the wound itself is not a fatal one in the long or short run. The main incapacitating feature of the bullet is a combination of KE and structural adequacy which together allow in a proper design the ability to penetrate to a vital organ, open a permanent wound channel, and allow the victim to bleed out. This can be very quick, but by no means instantaneous unless the central nervous system is destroyed or completely disrupted.

As an example, Baron von Richthofen was fatally struck by a single .303 bullet which entered his chest, breaking a rib, and exited on the opposite frontal side. In all probability, although the autopsy was by no means thorough, the bullet may have passed either through the heart or through the aorta. Unlike in movies, in which such a wound is normally shown as instantly fatal, the Baron retained conciousness long enough to, remove his goggles to improve visibility, reach down and switch off his plane's magetos and open the pressure valve to the fuel tank to reduce danger of fire on touching down, and still make a more or less controlled crash landing before passing out expiring from blood loss.

As far as I know, one of the motivating factors in police departments adopting bullets which expand very rapidly on impact was not to improve lethality, but to prevent bullets fired in urban settings from carrying on with lethal effects after passing through someone or in case of a bullet missing its intended target--ie the reason was to minimize or prevent collateral damage or injury to bystanders, particularly by ricochet.