Naw, it was some sort of Russian sheepdog breed. Get this, the dog's name was Einstein! The owner of the dog ended up getting thirty days in jail for harboring a vicious animal.

Hey Smitty!, That'd be a Caucasian Ovtcharka. Nasty piece of business. That dog can kill an alpha wolf (that was its original job), and has been known to fight bears. Taking a man apart wouldn't be at all dificult for an animal like that. Glad to hear you came out on top, it must've been scary as hell. Out here, rock houses, and homes in the hood are guarded, by and large, by ill bred, and maltreated pitbulls. They are frightening animals, but it is a tragic misuse of a great dog breed nonetheless. Thanks, Cato

Keep in mind two things. One, a dog's brain is not that large. A tennis ball is a generous estimate in even the larger dogs. And in general the dog's head is quite sleek, susceptible to a grazing wound. If you break his jaw you've offended him greatly but just like a human, a dog can be shot in the face and not die. I think you did right to save it for the coup de grace. Two, in mhumans, the skull's toughness is legendary. Not just .22s but .38s and 9mms have been known to bounce around inside without killing. Suicides by handgun are specifically advised to go to a .4x or magnum caliber, and a rifle or shotgun is preferred, even when putting the barrel in one's mouth instead of the picturesque, but highly imprudent, shot to the temple (which among other things is easy to mis-aim, yielding a graze or worse, nonlethal brain damage). As a matter of fact, plenty of people have been shot in the brain with a rifle and lived; more have dragged on a while but some in fact recover. It's not so damned easy to kill a man, after all.

I'm referring to the myth that Cato mentioned, concerning "knockdown power". The idea that "if a bullet had enough power to knock a man down, the recoil would knock the shooter down" seems to have had its genesis in Col. Jeff Cooper's work, specifically "Cooper on Handguns" (Los Angeles; Petersen Publishing, 1974); I have my copy here as I type this. Cooper cites Newton's Third Law of Motion as the justification for this belief. Unfortunately, Col. Cooper, as brilliant as he is, is not a physicist. He neglected to read >all< of the Third Law, as well as the First and Second Laws. In fact, the Laws state that the effects of force on mass are >proportionate<, not necessarily "equal", except in the mathematical sense. The purest example of this is, in fact, a gun. Recoil operates according to the Third Law, but conditioned by the fact that the gun has a >much greater mass< than the projectile. As such, while the recoil definitely will move the gun, it will move it neither as far nor as fast as the bullet. The actual equation for recoil force may be found on P. 154 of "Handguns Of The World" by Edward Clinton Ezell (New York; Barnes & Noble, 1993; reprint of 1981 Stackpole Books edition). The formula is; (projectile weight + 1.5 x propellant weight) x projectile velocity/(that means "divided by") weight of weapon = recoil velocity of weapon. (Yes, all units must be the same; KMS comes in handy here.) The example given by Ezell was for the 1898 Schwarzlose "Standart" automatic pistol in 7.63 x 25mm; basically the same cartridge case as the 7.63 Mauser/ 7.62 Tokarev, but with a different powder charge. The results for the "Standart" are (5.5 + 1.5 x 0.5) x 450 / 785 = 2 m/s (all units of mass in grams). This formula holds for all firearms, no matter what type, however, the final recoil force value given assumes a stationary (i.e., non- moving) breech. Thus, it is valid as given for manually-operated weapons, and such repeaters as revolvers; it must be modified to allow for the recoil-dampening effects of moving breechblocks in self-loading actions. But the simple fact is that recoil cannot "knock the shooter down" unless the weapon is of such puissant nature that firing it >offhand< is a questionable endeavor. At age 13, I fired a Westley Richards 8-gauge double-barrel "elephant gun" belonging to my uncle (a WW2 USAAF veteran, world traveler, and gun collector). The recoil of the (IIRC)4-dram charge pushing the 945-grain round ball pushed me backward about two steps, but it did >not< "knock me down". The ball, by comparison, certainly possessed enough kinetic energy (on the order of 3500 foot/pounds) to throw any normal person at least flat on their back at impact, in the same sense that the impact force of a football player hitting you with his shoulder will in fact push you off your feet very quickly. It won't "knock down" an elephant, of course, but then most adult elephants are much larger and heavier than most adult humans. Generally speaking, a typical rifle bullet of .30 caliber or thereabouts should have enough power to "destabilize" the footing of a target, as energies involved are roughly 10-15x the mass of the target. Pistols, OTOH, rarely have energy figures much above 2x typical adult mass, hence the effect, if any, would theoretically be much less. But it still exists- mathematically. IMHO, this simply provides another proof of Keith's First And Second Laws; 1. Never Bring A Knife To A Gunfight. 2. Never Bring A Pistol To A Rifle Fight. Cheers. eon

actually your comparing apples to oranges. muzzle energy is not momentum energy is given in J momentum is in Kg/m/s if a handgun is recoiling at 2m/s then it posseses ,say ,2Kg/m/s momentum - which the shooter will easily absorb. the momentum is absorbed into his much greater mass, same momentum but divided by say 80kg. so total movement for the shooter+ gun is 0.024m/s not a whole lot. the bullet possesses 2.475 kg/m/s momentum, if it was to be utterly stopped and all momentum transfered to the target, say the shooters identical twin < they had an argument about interceptor vests> total mass, victim +bullet 80.0055 kg total movement 0.0309m/s still not a lot if the bullet does not stop instantly then all that energy goes into making things go splat . this is why the hollywood myth is bunkum. for a round to throw someone down it would have to have so much recoil it would need to be mounted, and it would have to be stopped by the target. ive read that the main reason for the falling backwards thing is that people have seen films, and they think that thats what happens

As I understand it, the Hollywood method consists of (A) a harness on the stuntman, (B) a cable or piece of WCN rope attached to the harness, and (C) two or more husky stagehands yankig on the rope when they get a signal from the AD. The thing of it is, no one seems to know when or how this "convention" got started. The first time I saw it was on "Star Trek" back in the '60s; you know, Incredibly Powerful Alien gestures (cue sound like Klingon disruptor), and Kirk or whoever goes flying across the set. But how and when it leaked over into Westerns, cop shows, etc., I can't tell you. Normally, I'd expect somebody shot to behave about like a deer; try to move, fall down, that's it. The one time I saw actual "knockback" was when I shot a rather large boar raccoon that had tried to savage my cat with a 6" .38 Special firing .38 High Speed 158gr. RNLs- the W-W version of the old ".38/44" load. It did indeed "roll" said critter- in the direction he was already >moving<. (Hmmmm.) Cheers. eon

>>Correction, he actually did better than that. He got two hits each on three different robbers, two of which were partially hidden behind the clerk for the first two shots, and running for the door for the second two. The time was estimated to be three to four seconds total. One robber was DRT, the other two were picked up later seeking treatment at a hospital ER. The old round nose .38 slugs hadn't dropped them even though Cirillo had two good hits on each man.<< actually from the book i belive he was using hollowpoints, and he mentions that his collegues were wondering what he shot the badguys with becuase the holes were the "size of quarters", and the one dead robber was shot twice in the head (the first his skipped off his skull!). One thing i am wondering though is the knockdown ability of rounds, even though they may not incapacitate instantly, if an assilant is knocked to the ground it could be a big advantage

my bad i didn't read the previous posts on knockdown power, but what if you were to shoot someone in the pelvis? could that make them collapse more effectively even though its not technically knocking them down?

If you shatter someone's hip joint, that leg cannot support his weight any more than if you had amputated it. Absent a dextrous shift in balance, difficult under such conditions (esp. the pain), I would imagine he is pretty good odds to drop straight down as if slipping on ice. Never having shot or been shot in the pelvis, of course, I cannot be sure of it ;>.

i wonder if that was why in the musket era the soldiers were told to aim for the belly?