A friend of mine, Aaron Cowan, of Sage Dynamics (a firearms training guy) recently had this to say (on instagram) about the RIP round.. I trust his judgement and knowledge on this.
"This round, the "RIP" round is visually stunning...seeing dozens of them punched into ballistic gel was impressive. Here's the problem though (besides the name). Handguns are poor man stoppers when compared to rifles, and a round such as this that is designed to fragment inside the body is not going to do so with sufficient energy to cause the temporary wound cavities you would see with a rifle caliber round...which leaves us with the fact that outside of a strike to the central nervous system, the only means of physiological incapacitation is through blood loss... As this round fragments, the largest source of blood loss is going to be the entry wound (the fragments, even if they were to exit the body which is unlikely, would leave such small exit wounds as to add very little to overall blood loss). Since the entry wound is literally handgun caliber yet the round does not retain all or most of its mass as it enters the body, it loses the advantage of a permanent wound cavity of a preferable diameter to aid in blood loss. Even traditional hollow points are not of sufficient diameter to totally sever arteries in most cases, which is the best case vital hit outside of a CNS hit, so to then rely on a round with even less chance of large diameter tissue/organ/vessel damage is foolish. Bottom line, this round is a gimmick. I have no problem calling out a product that people may depend on for self defense if I believe the product to be disingenuous.
Moosie
