Originally posted by Captain Virgil Hilts
You have no idea who Fackler is, do you?
I have a passing knowledge of the man, and while I don’t doubt his expertise as a military doctor I must question his knowledge on nannying European legislation and the intricacies of the French cheese industry. However since Dr. Fackler isn’t European that is not surprising. Now, some might think that statement is a bit weird so I will explain it in more detail: Let’s review Dr. Fackler’s criticisms of the Strasbourg Tests:
CHAPTER 4 -- "Strasbourg Goat Tests." Here Marshall and Sanow reproduced the aforementioned anonymous "Strasbourg Tests." In analyzing these purported test results, Marshall and Sanow found an "extremely high rank correlation" with their very own "actual street results." Interestingly, if we compare the shot trajectories in the purported "Strasbourg Tests" with that of the most common shots in humans, we find:
A bullet fired into a goat from side to side, above the heart and behind the shoulder, will pass through or very near the major pulmonary vessels at a penetration depth of three to five inches, and must pass through the mediastinum, either near or through other very large blood vessels.
Conversely, with a shot passing front to back in the human torso, most bullets do not pass near or through the aorta or vena cava until more than six inches of penetration depth in a small slender person and at greater penetration depth in a larger person, or if penetrating at a significant angle.
Due to human anatomy, most shots from the front do not come near major blood vessels. Most go through perforating just lungs near their periphery or just loops of bowel.
Given these facts, the near perfect correlation of Marshall's random torso "one-shot stops" with the purported goat shot results is strong evidence that the anonymous "Strasbourg Test" results have been fabricated or doctored; or the "one-shot stop" results have, or both have.
Some might argue that the "Strasbourg Test" results could be from a real experiment; but one planned with incredible incompetence.
Dr. Fackler seems to be criticizing that the goats were shot from the side and trough both lungs, and also that the bullet would pass through or near major pulmonary vessels. According to the test document one of the main purposes of the test was to observe the effect of systemic shock to the cardiac/vascular system obviously requiring the bullet to pass through or near major blood vessels.
Secondly, he seems to be ignorant of European nannying laws regulating how animals may be killed with firearms. Shooting through both lungs is in fact the only legal way to shoot medium and large sized animals in Europe, requiring a side or front quarter shot. This is of course to minimize the risk of having wounded game animals wandering around the wilderness for hours or days before succumbing to their wounds. Unless the testing company got special legal dispensations (unlikely), the test was done in the only way it could have been done legally.
Thirdly the tests were not done to find the
absolute stopping power of a cartridge, but the
relative stopping power. In other words the test result for one cartridge is meaningless by itself. The result is only relevant relative to the results of the other cartridges. In this context it is really irrelevant how the animal is shot as long as all shots are made in a scientifically consistent way. The bullet that does more tissue damage to the goat’s lungs will cause the animal to drown in its own blood faster. No correlation to human targets were done in the tests except for the choice of animal (goats are popular as human analogues in military testing).
A few things, however, do not ring true: for example, they mention great difficulty in finding enough goats for the study. Yet, strangely, each of the more than 600 goats found purportedly weighed within four pounds of 160 pounds. Anybody familiar with large animal experimentation realizes that here Marshall and Sanow apparently fell into another "too good to be true" trap.
Here I suspect Dr. Fackler is deliberately being obtuse or misleading. France is the world’s biggest cheese producer and has hundreds of thousands of registered dairy goats in milk production; the total goat population may very well be in the millions. The testing body set a number of strict parameters on the acceptable attributes of the test animals (size, weight, deceases etc.) to ensure minimal variances in test results from different animals. They did apparently have difficulty in finding 600 goats that
fit the parameters. However, Dr. Fackler turns this around and wants us to believe that the testing body had problems finding 600 goats in all of France (lol), and that it is “strange” that they all weighed within four pounds of 160 pounds.
Authors are often very competitive, and sometimes takes great offence when a rival author publishes data that conflicts with theirs. Unfortunately this seems to be the case with Dr. Fackler as well since he goes to great lengths to insinuate that his rivals are liars and frauds. Dr. Fackler is rude and unprofessional in his comments and criticisms…
The only people who think the "Strasbourg Tests" are real are the usual crowd of crackpot "magic bullet" believers and the pathetically incompetent editors of consumer gun magazines like Guns & Ammo. I suppose we'll soon see anonomous{sic} reports "proving: that Elvis is alive and conducting one shot stop experiments on unicorns. And, of course, someone will believe that too.”
- Dr. Fackler
… and obviously cannot refute the Strasbourg tests without resorting to irrelevancies and insults.
Dr. Martin Fackler immediately started crying "Fraud!" and issuing encyclicals about "bullet salesmen." He and his IWBA minions had been heaping scorn and derision upon Evan Marshall and Edwin Sanow since they had had the temerity to publish the first of three successful volumes about Handgun Stopping Power.
What was especially ironic was that Dr. Fackler, with a high level of access, never once allowed as how goat testing was popular in the military community, nor mentioned that this was the type of thing which might have been done at the Institut Saint Louis near Strasbourg, France. He preferred, it seems, to huff and puff, posture and rattle sabers.”
- Dean Speir, author of over 600 articles in periodicals such as Guns Magazine, Combat Handguns, Petersen's Handguns, American Handgunner, The New Gun Week, Gun & Shooter, Guns & Weapons for Law Enforcement, Shooting Industry, American Firearms Industry, Machine Gun News, Practical Shooting International, Law Enforcement Technology, Police Product News, the late lamented The American Guardian, The Shotgun News, Germany's Visier, various DBI Books, and, in a misguided moment, even Women & Guns.
