The Ammo Factor, Ammo-f

In most studies of handgun ammunition stopping power, the results discuss only the ammunition. The handgun and the ammunition are a partnership and the specific handgun’s capacity can also play an important role in the stopping power discussion.

The Ammo Factor, Ammo-f, is designed to combine the discussions of ammunition stopping power and handgun capacity.

Ammo-f is an indicator of a specific handgun’s stopping power. Ammo-f is specific scenario dependent and is an indicator of a specific handgun's ability to stop an adversary or multiple adversaries with single or multiple hits.

Ammo-f is dependent on:

The beginning of understanding Ammo-f, is to understand how I apply One-Shot-Stop Percentage for a specific Handgun Caliber:

Lets assume a specific Handgun Caliber has a One-Shot-Stop Percentage of 75%.

If 16 targets are hit with a One-Shot-Stop Hit, 12 targets (75%) would be stopped and 4 targets (25%) would not be stopped.

If the 16 targets are hit with a second One-Shot-Stop Hit, the 12 stopped targets would obviously remain stopped.

Of the 4 previously un-stopped targets, 3 (75%) would now be stopped and 1 target (25%) would still remain un-stopped.

Two One-Shot-Stop Hits with a One-Shot-Stop Percentage of 75%, would stop 15 out of 16 targets for an Ammo Factor, Ammo-f, of 94%.

If the Percentage of One-Shot-Stop Hits is 33%, than a total of 6 shots would have to be fired to yield the two One-Shot-Stop Hits.

If Handgun Capacity was less than 6 shots, the Ammo Factor, Ammo-f, would be reduced below the 94% level because the gun ran out of ammo!

Finally, if the Number of Targets is two, the Total Number of Shots Fired is 12, and the Percentage of One-Shot-Stop Hits is 33%, then the result would be two One-Shot-Stop Hits per target. If still assuming a One-Shot-Stop Percentage of 75%, the scenario would yield an Ammo-f of 94%. And in this case, if the Handgun Capacity was less than 12, Ammo-f would again be reduced below 94% because the gun ran out of ammo.

Note: It could easily be argued that if a first hit had a One-Shot-Stop Percentage of 75%, that the second hit could have a One-Shot-Stop Percentage different than 75%. The difficulty in the argument would be determining whether the One-Shot-Stop Percentage increased or decreased. To minimize the discussion, for this study all “hits” have the same One-Shot-Stop Percentage. Any Comments?