If this was real life, the police officer in question (an attractive single early thirty-ish police officer, would leave with the Minister of Propaganda. I’m not sure how he does it, but he does have the mojo, nimrod or not.

At any rate, although our resident rocket scientist has remained mum, I did get some responses to my query about stopping power/knock him on his ass power.

Polymath writes:

The story about the .45 during the Phillipine Insurrection is the reason I prefer it for a handgun. I am no Rocket Scientist, but I belive the many accounts of crazed fillipinos being knocked down by the .45.

In a standard round, the charge is more than a smaller caliber round would have, but the .45 is more massive, and so travels slower. I think it has more to do with energy dispersal into the target (why I like Glaser Safety Slugs for self-defense).

The Minister of Propaganda e-mailed me a link where my query was discussed (There is much more at the link):

The scenes in the movie where people are lifted off their feet and
knocked head-over-heels across the room when Clint Eastwood shoots them with his Colt .45 are entertaining concepts to some people, but in general they are purely theatrical and totally unrealistic. In my personal experience, if you shoot a man in the chest he will go into shock and fall down no matter what you shoot him with. If you shoot him with something big enough, he will fall down and die. Either way, they normally FALL down rather than get KNOCKED down.

The argument might be that a 200 lb. deer gets knocked down, so a human being should be knocked down too. The explanation there is three fold: First, a deer normally gets shot with a high powered rifle, which can certainly knock him or a person for a loop on impact, but that’s not what we’re discussing here. Second, a deer’s center of gravity and reaction to the impact is different from that of a human, and finally, while a deer has four legs rather than two, only a square inch or so of his hooves are on the ground at any given time, making him much easier to imbalance.

The safety officer at my school says that she was trained that people tend to fall down rather than get knocked down - and sometimes they don’t even fall down. Evidently, it is somewhat of a problem that policemen in a gunfight tend to relax after scoring a hit, assuming that the assailant is out of the fight. Police officers have gotten killed because the guy keeps going. She also noted that high velocity rounds that go through and through don’t have the time to effectively transfer their kinetic energy to the body. They just zip on through and keep going.

The Maximum Leader points out that recoil is less because of the weight of the weapon as balanced against the weight of the round.

The Browning M1911 was designed as a response to the army’s need for more stopping power, but the description here doesn’t explain what exactly is meant by stopping power: Hurt him so bad he falls down or knocks him on his ass.

Any other knowledgeable folks out there?

UPDATE FROM YOUR MAXIMUM LEADER: Here are some links about stopping power and recoil for your consideration:

Ballistics from the Florida State University Medical Center. (This is a great link that your Maximum Leader is going to have to study further. Even if the first “chapter” has a decidedly anti-gun slant. The science appears to be quite sound.)
Stopping power from Wikipedia.
Recoil from Wikipedia.
The physics of firearms from Wikipedia.
A beginners guide to stopping power by Chuck Hawks.
Gun recoil by Sam Hokin.