Contact Wound!

22 Aug 07

On contact wounds, from a student who is an ER/trauma surgeon:

"What timing! Your recent Quip discussed the impressive consequences of contact pistol shots into gelatin (w/denim layers). Earlier this week, I personally observed and treated, first hand, the results of such a contact pistol discharge into a living, human thigh.

The wound was accidental and self-inflicted. An unsupervised, clueless, thirteen-year-old boy was handling his uncle's G23 (loaded w/hardball ammunition). The magazine had been removed, and idiot, of course, assumed the pistol was thus unloaded. For reasons known only to him, the boy pressed the pistol' s muzzle into his upper, inner, left leg, and then pressed the trigger. The FMJ bullet entered four inches below the inner groin and exited on the opposite side of the thigh. The boy indicated that he was exceedingly surprised when pistol thus functioned normally!

After exiting, the bullet struck soft earth and was not recovered. No one else was hurt. As I worked on him, I advised that pointing guns as himself, loaded or unloaded, was probably a habit he needed to lose, if he planned on anything other than a short and unhappy rest of his life!

I work on many GSWs here in the ER, and it is my experience that non-contact, pistol wounds typically produce a small, symmetrical entry wound, and a larger, always asymmetrical, exit wound, when, as in this case, the bullet goes through-and-through.

However, as surgery proceeded for this case, I noted the entry wound was a gaping and cavernous, with six-inch, stellate spears radiating from the center. Extensive powder smudging and stippling, along with burned skin edges were also noted, along with copious disruption/destruction of underlying fat and muscle tissue. Indeed, tissue destruction was far in excess of what is typical for through-and-through, pistol wounds!

The bullet itself nicked the femur and missed the femoral artery! However, the boy (now older and hopefully, at least, slightly wiser), while he will suffer permanent disfigurement and maybe a limp due to abundant, and irrecoverable, destruction of his leg tissues, will live through this one."

Comment: While, I'm still not at all sure of the extent to which ordinance gelatin simulates living, human tissue, the differences we observe in gelatin tests, between contact and non-contact pistol wounds, is surely corroborated with this one example.

Pressing your pistol's muzzle into the body of an attacker prior to firing is a risky maneuver from the standpoint of weapon retention. In effect, you're handing him your gun! However, when you're literally wrestling with him anyway, arranging for a contact wound may indeed be a good idea, as I think it safe to say you're at least doubling the amount of tissue destruction inflicted by each round so fired, a particularly significant consideration when you're carrying a snubby revolver!

/John