@Background Pony #602C
[bq="Background Pony #602C"] @Background Pony #F305
о ты дерпи хувз

@Background Pony #F305
The only way to guarantee your target stops is to destroy base of the brain or the spine. Nothing else can single-hit, not the heart, not even the rest of the brain, not any other tissue. Sure, you can make them unable to move with muscle and bone hits, but that won't actually stop them. The rest is entirely psychological — some people will believe one shot to the gut is enough to instakill so they'll drop, some people are simply wimps and can't tolerate pain nor have pain suppression kick in, while some will fight until they physically cannot anymore.
Incidentally, tribal fighters tend to specifically be naturally and intentionally selected for the last one, and modern ones aren't, both because they're not expected to receive wounds, and because someone who gets shot and drops is someone who can be healed and put back in fighting (and, for the enemies, someone who's occupying more of your resources while not fighting back), while someone who fights until he bleeds out is a goner.

@Background Pony #7164
It's not about firearms. It's about all the media that depicts people instantly keeling over when shot, which was likely done for this exact reason as much as it was done for watchability (it doesn't make for a good movie when the shot guy returns fire, kills you, then drops down and dies) and convenience.

Poland pony
Poland pony

@Background Pony #7164
[sperg]"Muh stoppan powah" is a deep, deep rabbit hole if you want to go down it. Some people fight until they bleed out and tip over, some are stunned by the blow and fall down immediately. Part of it seems to be psychological. Some people have always believed that the stunning effect is more common with projectiles that inflict more damage because they are larger, or traveling at higher velocity, or designed to deform in soft tissue. Individuals of my acquaintance who spent time in certain dusty and sandy parts of the world recently and had the opportunity to observe such phenomena firsthand said that a big part of it seems to be whether or not the bullet strikes bone and breaks it on the way through.[/sperg]

Kind of a terrifying concept honestly. In places where there are no guns because the people there haven't developed them, you can unload lead into spearmen and they will not fucking drop from immediately nonlethal hits because they have no concept of firearms and do not know that they're a walking corpse now.