Making damage spikier?, or how to make that 9mm scary again Options

[counterveil]

So as it is, Shadowrun damage in the hands of "average" people is not a very scary prospect, even if you don't have any armor. Consider an untrained person firing a light pistol at point blank range (3 agi, -1 untrained, +2 point blank) at me, an average person with 3 rea, 3 body (10 Physical Condition Monitor boxes). Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they got 4 successes and I got none on my Reaction test, then utterly failed my Body test to soak the damage. With a light pistol (4P) and under the most favorable circumstances, this person *still* only got 8 boxes of damage, which is completely non-life-threatening.

At risk of sounding like a "realist", average people are killed by 9mm pistols in the hands of untrained assailants on occasion (and often accidentally). I'm not looking to completely mirror reality here, but it seems a bit off to me that under the best of circumstances an untrained person cannot kill, or at least incapacitate, an average person with a light pistol.

I considered instantiating bleeding damage for any hit that does > 1/2 condition monitor, implemented in a way similar to when one's damage exceeds the condition monitor (SR4a, p.163) but figured that might require a little too much bookkeeping, especially for NPCs.

I've also played - gasp! - Savage Worlds, where being hit *could* be a scary prospect as weapon damage dice explode and a very lucky dice roll could potentially drop you in one hit. A little too spiky and unreliable for my taste, but it did have the desired effect of making people try very hard not to be hit.

A comfortable median would be ideal...anyone here implement custom house rules to make damage a little scarier when facing mooks? I'd appreciate any feedback.