So everybody knows that when it's time for battle, for all intents and purposes you want a rifle and not a handgun or submachinegun, for superior ballistics, superior cavitation, superior performance against armor, and (usually) superior magazine size.

Handguns are for checking small closets and cupboards and a contingency for your rifle being destroyed (or as a "better than nothing" when you can't practically carry around a rifle, as in day to day civilian life), and traditional submachineguns firing pistol cartridges are probably obsolete and mostly for police departments concerned with overpenetration that might come from using .223s in dense urban settings.

That being said, in role playing games, characters often run around not with typical handguns, but rather with mondo novelty handguns, loaded with cartridges such as 10mm, .454 casull, and .500 magnum. In real life, these types of handguns would be impractical for logistical reasons, because of overpenetration concerns, because of public image concerns, and because of externalities to the power of these cartridges such as difficult follow up shots and potential hearing damage. (Recall that the FBI actually stopped using 10mm due to agents having trouble with follow up shots.) I understand that today mondo handguns like this are used by collectors and big game hunters only for the most part.

However, just looking at cavitation and performance against armor, I have not been able to find any scientific studies documented on the internet that compare cavitation from, say, .454 casull at close range versus .223 at close range. Therefore, what is not really clear to me is how to assign Power and Damage codes to mondo handguns versus typical medium caliber military pattern rifles. Does anyone know anything about this?

Shadowrun traditionally has gone there a bit by giving heavy pistols a damage code of 9M, which is pretty devastating, so I always imagined that an Ares Predator was firing some comically large hunting cartridge whereas it was the light pistols that were firing stuff like 9x19 parabellum.

But if we wanted to handle this realistically in a role playing game, how exactly would .454 casull stack up against .223 or 7.62x39 WP within 50 feet? Can .454 casull penetrate level IIIA body armor that would stop most typical combat handgun cartridges, and if it does, how would the cavitation compare to a .223? Has anyone seen cavitation profiles in gelatin for giant handgun rounds versus something like .223?

If we were to reconsider shadowrun damage codes, and if we assume that "heavy pistols" are all firing impractically powerful handgun cartridges, might we consider giving them an S damage code instead of M, but adding double uncompensated recoil, and maybe making the Power lower?

Hey hey hey, wait a minute. I'm a big fran of PCCs(Pistol Caliber Carbines), as they are more than sufficient for engaging a human target within 100m, they are economical(9mm is cheap, cheap cheap!), they are easy to control in rapid semi-automatic fire, and they are cheap.

Also, If you are worried about Over-penetration, I highly recommend against using pistol rounds. A 9mm is what, like 5x as heavy as a 5.56 ball, and it doesn't tend to break up nearly as much when going through barriers. Yes, if you're using NATO green tips from an 18" or 20" barrel, you should expect a lot of penetration. On the other hand, if you use special ammunition and a 10-14" barrel, you substantially reduce the risk of over penetration. Also, given that a shoulder-arm offers a longer sight radius, increasing accuracy, offers superior bracing, increasing accuracy, there's a decidedly lower risk for misses.

I'll take a carbine over a pistol any day. The advantage of the pistol is it's lighter, more compact, and is a great backup(as you have already pointed out). Performance wise, carbines are increasingly surpassing them in lethality, accuracy and flexibility of use.



Yeah, I'm not a big fan of mondo handguns. Don't burn me at the stake, but... Fuck the .45. Its loud, the recoil makes it harder to follow up, and I carry half as much ammo as a 9mm. Given that the .45 isn't very superior in internal ballistics, I favor putting twice as more holes in a target than a slightly bigger hole.



Well, first off, the SR2-3 damage code system is, well, problematic at best. I'm much more of a fan of the SR5 damage value/AP system. Particularly, it's made the difference between heavy and light pistols to be much smaller, which leads me to likign it more. Light pistols, imho, are compacts with short barrels, while heavy pistols are full-sized with longer barrels. Now, I can't find any internal ballistics to back up my theory, but I say that a .454 or .500 is roughly comparable to a 5.56 in terminal effectiveness.

I feel like the split damage codes are an attempt to separate penetration and wound channel/cavity, but I'm not sure I like that. After-all, neither the FBI nor DoJ have recommendations for minimal wound cavity area/diameter, but penetration is required to be at least 12" in gelatin to be considered a "man-stopper"



Yeah, if we consider heavy pistols to be firing .44 magnum, .454 or .500 magnums, then their damage codes make a little more sense. Because there's no way in hell an assault rifle is comparable in power to any smaller pistol calibers. However, assault rifles still don't do enough damage in comparison.



Well, I'll be honest: I'd expect better penetration from a 5.56 in penetration at under 50m(50 feet, or around 16m is just too short of a distance to be meaningful, imho), as the muzzle velocity is typically 360 m/sec higher, and the primary factors in penetration are velocity and diameter(I think it's something like velocity/diameter squared or something, but the idea is that doubling the velocity will increase penetration by 50%, while doubling the diameter will decrease it by 50%). And at those short distances, even an M4 should produce higher velocities than a .454. Now, past 50m, the m4 velocity rapidly decreases(comparable to .44 magnum or .45 super, so on the high end for pistols, but really low for a rifle), and I'd think a .454 or .500 would retain more velocity, and hence penetrate better.




Hmmm. Well, why not get rid of that hinky damage code system. Because I refuse to believe that most heavy pistols are actually massive mondo calibers.

... and improved sight radius, and improved ability to hang accessories, and improved reactions to recoil, and being a better close quarters weapon ...



Terminal ballistics is a big, big topic. Any police department issuing machine-anything has a huge problem, because machine-anything is hell to control. Machinepistols are for rear echelon types, as a last-ditch spray-and-pray-you-get-out-alive weapon, or for gangbangers who think they make better drive-by weapons. Police departments who issue them are begging for collateral damage. Granted, a .223 penetrates fairly well, but even so that's not what they issue beat cops either. Pistols and shotguns are the order of the day there.



In Shadowrun, the concept of mondo changes because the plausible opposition includes machines which feel no pain, have redundant circuitry, integrated armour and tiny critical points. The opposition also includes half-machine monsters, and tough-as-nails monstrous humanoids the size of bears (and every bit as tough to take down). Mondo handguns do have their place, and things can get surprisingly mondo in certain shooting disciplines. For instance, bowling pin shooting requires enough punch to knock the pin off a table - a .45ACP is about an acceptable minimum. When the pins are heavily used and full of lead, a .45ACP isn't enough to do the job reliably. .400 corbon is more like it, or a heavily loaded .357 Magnum. Or bigger.

Also, practiced handgunners who know their weapon can operate astonishingly quickly with so-called mondo guns. Heavily loaded 10mm? I've seen a table full of pins being cleared with one in under 5 seconds from first shot to last. So don't believe the hype.

Moreover, what's the size of your shooter? I reckon a troll could handle a .500 no problem.



Cavitation has very questionable value in actual lethality. The tissues stretch and bruise, but that's a mildly aggravating factor at worst. What makes the different is actual tissue physicall torn, cut or otherwise disrupted. (I have this on personal authority of an MD PhD who has spent quality time in emergency rooms, as well as writing actual textbook material on the nature and causes of death - this isn't a random guesstimate on my part.) Reliable, fast kills rely upon stopping nervous system activity, which can happen in a short list of ways. First: blow up the brain/cut the spine. No signals to the trigger finger means they stop shooting at you, and if they don't have a brain, that closes the discussion permanently. Second: send a massive shockwave up to the brain through either a major artery (by hitting the heart when it's full, for instance) or the spinal column's internal structures (i.e. using that tough, cartilaginous pipe as a wave guide for a pulse up the nervous material) so as to disrupt the brain. This, incidentally, is how I slaughter sheep. Third: disrupt the flow of oxygen by either emptying the body of blood (haemostatic shock by exsanguination) or emptying the blood of oxygen (suffocation) by punching big holes in the heart, liver or arteries, or by sucking chest wounds. Crashing blood pressure works in around about ten seconds, sucking chest wounds take a bit longer.

Your medium calibre rifles carry more energy in their rounds than most handguns, but their wounds are less symmetrical. Their entry holes are usually around the size of the bullet's profile, but their exit wounds are the size of grapefruit because the spitzer bullets are highly unstable and therefore tend to tumble on impact, thus causing a massive immediate increase in their frontal area, thereby disrupting a hell of a lot more tissue. This is true within the first couple of hundred yards, but by the time you get to 500 yards out, they carry too little energy to do the intended kind of damage, and don't tumble much. By contrast, your old 7.62mm NATO and your old-school .303, 7.62x54R and .30-06 will tear a hole through a troll at 500 yards and severely hurt the mage sheltering behind the troll too. This happens for a number of reasons I will (briefly) touch on further down.

If you get even more old school, things happen differently. Standing downrange of a .45-70 Govt is a good way of getting a big, fat half-inch hole through you (assuming it wasn't a hollowpoint, in which case up the estaimated size to an inch or more).

What you really are dealing with is the characteristics of energy transfer from the kinetic energy of the bullet to plastic deformation and (if the bullet fragments or tears) fracture of the bullet itself, plus displacement and fracture of the tissues as well. This is partly why arrows kill in a way which is qualitatively different from that of bullets: arrow design for maximum lethality is all about creating the smoothest, slickest, deepest penetrating cut into and throughout the target, while bullets are designed to dump all their energy within a given range of penetration. This is why bullets designed for prairie dogs are basically metal dust sintered so as to hold together long enough to hit a prairie dog and then turn to angry dust with a minimum loss of energy, or hollowpoints designed for immediate and violent expansion, as opposed to big game rounds which are engineered to hold together while penetrating elephant bone and keep holding together until they come to rest. Partition bullets split the difference with a front part which folds open like a hollowpoint, and a base which penetrates like a spike on a piledriver.

With all that in mind, the bullets of pistols and the bullets of rifles are substantially different because they are intended to operate in different performance envelopes, and do different jobs on the way. Rifle bullets of the high velocity variety are intended to tumble, while pistol bullets are intended to expand and/or penetrate deeply. Old school low velocity thumper bullets are intended to penetrate deeply through tough barriers, and if you go old school enough, do enough damage to drop a charging horse.



It's not comically large if it's intended to stop a troll cold. Again, compare trolls with bears: to my certain knowledge a handgun round which passed right through a large black bear's heart did not drop it on the spot (the heart must have been in the empty stage of its pumping cycle) even though it did persuade the bear to leave, while it went off to die. It left at a run despite further gunshots wounding it further, and the bullet which dropped it came from another gunman armed with a .375 H&H Magnum.



The .454 Casull, if loaded (plausibly) with partitioned hollowpoints, would do a similar amount of damage to unprotected flesh, judging by energy numbers, but would probably penetrate more (higher momentum, which is a far better proxy for penetrating capability). However, body armour works better on bullets with lower sectional densities and lower velocities (other things being equal) and the .454 Casull has a lower sectional density than that of a .223, depending on bullet mass. It has about four times the frontal area, and (again, depending on details) somewhat less than four times the mass. In particular, the .223's sharp tip can start to penetrate whereas a typical flat-nosed or hollowpoint .454 bullet will catch more fabric on the way. This favours the bulletproofing. On the other hand, that's not a guaranteed victory for the bulletproofing either... how old is the vest? How well was it maintained? And so on, and so on.

You seem fascinated by cavitation - well, aside from the fact that (as I mentioned above) it's not all that closely related to lethality, the big pistol bullets make a big, fancy cavitation splash early on. This doesn't actually mean much unless you're fighting animated blocks of gelatin. Live tissues really don't work the same way.



Sure, whatever waxes your weasel. Frankly, I'd add another category of pistols. Superlight (.22 and anything else better suited to mice), light (.380, 9mm, .38 special class), heavy (.45, .40, 10mm) and trollstoppers (.400 Corbon and up). Give the trollstoppers S damage, and tweak their armour penetration, recoil, concealability and signature.

Mostly a good post. A few comments:



Mostly true (although not all are semi-automatics). However, without some kind of recoil management, accuracy suffers with rapid firing no matter what you have. Also, the internal ballistics changes because of the length of barrel, probable changes in mechanism compared to a pistol or revolver, and suitable powder choices.



Actually, a 9mm is something like up to twice the mass of a 5.56mm round, depending on selection. It also travels a lot more slowly (half the speed or less, depending on platform). Hollowpoints expend a hell of a lot of energy going through barriers because they tend to physically disrupt in the process.

Also, the muzzle velocity difference from 14" to 18" isn't as big as you think. Granted, the fireball is a lot bigger.



I've seen a Glock .45 used to clear a table loaded with bowling pins in under 3 seconds, from first to last shot measured by a shot timer. Its recoil isn't that hard to handle, and a plastic covered Glock is a lot lighter than a metal 1911. It's not substantially louder than a 9mm. I'm with you on the round count, but not every .45 pistol is a 1911 either. And you even get double stack 1911s.



Internal ballistics is what happens inside the gun. Terminal ballistics is what happens inside the target.



The reason for the penetration requirement is that an agent may take a shot which has to travel through heavy clothing, an arm and a shoulder to reach vital organs. On trolls this number will change, I guarantee. Imagine if every cop expected to have to stop rogue bears? They wouldn't even give a 9mm the time of day.



Intermediate power cartridges such as a 5.56 or a 6.5 are ferocious at ranges where their energy is high enough to induce them to tumble on striking resistance with that spitzer design. Outside those ranges they drop below typical 9mm effectiveness, as judged by wound severity. They're still a lot more accurate from long arm platforms, and a lot flatter shooting than pistol calibre carbines.



Actually, the muzzle velocity is a lot more than 360m/s faster. Your typical 9mm round travels a hair under 400m/s whereas your typical 5.56mm NATO round is over 900m/s. Also, you need to double-check your information on penetration. It's a lot more dependent on momentum than you account for.

As for the M4 - the bullet doesn't know what shot it. The bullet only knows how fast it's going and what its ballistic coefficient is. The 5.56mm NATO's ballistic coefficient is ludicrously high compared to just about anything out of a handgun, so it would travel for a long time before dropping down to anything comparable with anything but the most overpowered handguns.

Well, I can put most rounds into a human torso size target at 25m fairly well. I still gotta get out to the range and put it on the bench. Guy I bought it from around tax time told me it was bore-sighted. Either it got dinged a bit in storage, or they replaced the barrel because hulk bent it. Currently, it shoots about 4 inchs up, and 2 to the left with the holo. The irons are much better, though they loosen up all the time. Remind me to get some loctite when I'm out.

But the 995 pushes fmj luger at about 1300 fps if I'm not mistaken, which is a niiiice improvement over a pistol.




Well, green tip is 55gr, right? So yeah, comapred to 115gr, that's only about twice as much. Still, when I shoot into water crates, I can often get my 9mm ball back, but my green tips disintigrate. 9mm ball really doesn't deform that much. I don't keep hollow points in my carbine, for a variety of reasons. There's a lot more illegal body armor out there than you'd think. Also, I'll be honest, I'm cheap. I can get ball for less than jhp, and paper doesn't care(actually, I use a lot of old plywood for targets, but... whatever, you know what I'm sayin). Also, since you see that I'm not a huge fan of bigger bullets, but more bullets, hollow points just don't interest me.

My philosophy has always been to shoot center of mass, and keep shooting until it's no longer moving.

But as they say, pistols are pistols, rifles are rifles.



I like the 21. I really, really, really do. But I think I like the various 9mm glocks more. I mean, what's the currently largest double stack .45 mags? Like 12 or so? While 17 or 18rnd 9mm doubles are out there. And 9mm is cheaper and lighter than .45. I mean, really, it's 6 of one, half dozen of the other. I don't like the blast from .45. But I really don't like pistols, in general. I prefer long arms, hence the 995 carbine that I can share mags and ammo with my uncle's 9mm pistol.

The last .45 I shot was some sort of kimber compact, and it was just. Well, I don't like it. I mean, it's sexy as hell, but I don't like shooting it.

But yeah, I'm used to most of the cult of the .45 worshipping at the altar of the 1911. Which was a great pistol when it came out. Ya know, over a hundred years ago.



Ah, yup. Internal, flight and then terminal. I was thinking it was terminal, but then I was sitting here, going.. "but.. it's.. inside the body... internal? Meeeh". I'm having a good pre-memorial day work-up, ya know





Well, they won't issue .454s on a regular basis. Too hard on the wrists, too hard to follow-up, too loud, too small of an ammo capacity. If I was gonna take on a troll, I'd probably want something like a shorty 12g loaded with 3" whole ounce slug. That'll hamburger a softball sized area about eight inches inside the troll. For an unarmed troll or ork, I'll settle with 00 buck(I actually prefer #1 for home defense, but... TROLLS). But yeah, if a troll is pissed at me and wants to make bread from my bones, I'm not reaching for my hip, I'm grabbing my long arm. Fuck that.

I'm guessing shotguns with slugs are probably standard issue in cruisers.

Actually, I think SR or any other sci-fi setting where Troll sized humanoids and walking machines exist might give some real legs to niche cartridges like the .50 beowulf. Sure, no where near the range of 5.56, but a much bigger wound channel, and a round that is less likely to break up in a large body or when penetrating metal/hard plastic cybernetics.

Shame we don't have a .50 beo SMG in sr.




Well, I've seen some stuff that suggests that from 50m to 100m, the M4 loses a lot of it's lethality. Then again, as a friend who served in Iraq and the 'Stan said when I asked him if he had any performance issues said: "I just shoot'em again. I have 29 more rounds left"




Remember, comparing .454 casul at this point to 5.56. Not 9mm. And yeah, my penetration figures are very rough. Momentum matters more at lower velocities, less at higher velocities, more at long range, less at short.

And yeah, we're talking about the "overpowered" handguns here. .454 and .500 are really, really, really impressive for pistols. Out of a 10" barrel carbine, I'd think they would be fucking scary as all heck.

And that is the problem: Police have other requirements than the military and are bound by other laws, so they frequently use something else than Ball/FMJ. So maybe at first you should decide what is to be shot at whom under which circumstances, instead of jumping from revolver cartridges to AP rifle rounds and back again


Aw shit, I'm out

Easier to undo than loctite, and just about as good: Sally Hansen's Tough as Nails clear nail polish. A tip courtesy of an old gunsmith. Also, many guns are pretty sensitive to the exact load, for the sake of repeatability. It can be well worth your time to investigate different bullets and powders, especially since the 995 will eat a steady diet of +p without a second thought. You can consider slower powders and heavier bullets, for example, to get more punch out the front end. Then resight.



Only way to be sure; get a chrony. In the words of an engineer I know: never calculate what you can measure.



Horses for courses. For humane hunting of small to medium game, hollowpoints make a hell of a lot of sense. Also, if you shot your 115gr FMJ at 2500fps, it would come apart. If you're seriously worried about body armour on your opposition, you want a lot of velocity on a very hard bullet with a lot of mass behind it. Think .400 Corbon over 1600fps, 200gr hard cast lead. Or a .30-06.



Depending on circumstances, that's what I do, but I also often pull head shots, especially on skunks. Flexibility in the face of a developing situation is key.



It's at the terminus of the ballistic path. And may be terminal to the target, if you catch my drift.




It doesn't matter what they issue. Lots of cops thought the .38 special was underpowered, back in those days, and brought their own .357 Magnums, even when departments told them not to. If I were a cop in trogland, you'd better believe that I'd have a .454, with a recoil compensator, a long barrel barrel with a full underlug and a rubber grip (think Hogue Recoil Tamer). Because in a fight? I won't feel the recoil, but I want to be damn sure that Trog Thugalicious feels my bullets.



You may want to do your research. I spoke with an experienced big game hunter about shotguns and slugs, and he recounted a time in Africa where he tried his 12 gauge with slugs against cape buffalo. He shot the target buffalo twice, right in the boiler room ... and the buffalo ran off. He set the shotgun aside, grabbed a serious Big 5 hunting rifle (I forget the exact calibre, but it was a magnum rifle starting with .4) and started tracking. Two days later he found the same buffalo, with marks in the flank from the slugs, standing around and grazing. Took it down with the rifle, and then went to do the autopsy. The slugs had penetrated the hide, the subcutaneous fat and muscle and the ribcage and came to rest against the lungs, flattened out like silver dollars. The lungs he found when he started cutting were as tough as leather. So .... slugs aren't all that and a bag of chips on a tough target.

Just food for thought.



Maybe. I'd just take a .30-06. Will flatten any north american game if you aim straight, and that's all the way up to polar bears and Kodiak browns. Should work fine on trogs. Or, just use a .45-70 Government. Loaded to modern standards, it's quite capable of taking elephant.

Appreciated. It's nice hearing positive words on the 995. Often on gun forums or social media, the 995 get's ignored because it looks ugly(well, it does) and it's inexpensive(it is.), but I've found it's been excellent for the whole 300 bucks I spent on it(not counting the sling i bought afterwards). I kinda wanna buy another one.





One day man. Steps man, steps. Next I wanna get a reloading bench set up so I can make my own #1 buck and slugs.





I don't currently hunt small game. If I do go deer hunting this year(for the first time, depending on if my younger cousin, a practiced deer, bear, coon, basically anything that moves hunter, will take me), I plan on using my shotgun with slug. A dedicated deer rifle is out of my price range at the moment.

As far as armor: I know that there are many members of criminal gangs that maintain armories, and II and IIA vests are available in large numbers, and some of them do armed robbery while wearing vests. In event of a "Without Rule of Law" situation, I worry about what will be out there in the world. In a pinch, one can take newspaper or books, sew them into a vest, and have rudimentary protection against low powered 9mms at longer range(25-50m), and buckshot within 10m.




I'd prefer a big truck with armor on it, a ring mounted GPMG, and heavy durty long arms. Eff Trogland. Remember: the Spiked Wheels in Seattle regularly clashed with the Metroplex guards. That's a Trog gang, and they would run LoneStar off the road. In my games, I make it clear that Ork and Troll dominated gang areas are no goes for the basic Star. When a small group of trogs can flip over a roadmaster, you don't roll on their turf without serious back up.




Cape buffalo range from 600-1000lbers(or troll size), up to 2000 lb Savannah bulls that are real scary. I figure those are probably Body 15, with innate armor 3 or 4. And yeah, THOSE(cybered trolls) are going to be a fucking terror in a city. They can tackle a car, rip the door off, then start shooting you at pointblank with a massive gun and not have a problem doing it. Shotguns ain't gonna work either, I guess. But there's a reason why a troll with bioware and cyberware are like body 15-16 with 4 or 5 natural armor. You need some serious bang bang on that.

If a 300-450lb man is Body 6 or 7, then I figure smaller trolls are probably in that range, while the body 10 trolls are around 600-800lbs. Only truely massive trolls would be half a ton. The lower scale is black bear territory, and slug should work on that. Will work on that, because I know guys who have shot black bears with slugs.

Which, by SR5, isn't a bad deal:

A Body 14, natural armor 4 cape buffalo, shot with a T-250(which I assume is a basic "tactical" shotgun in the vein of the 500 or 870) is getting hit with 11p(let's assume they are actually fairly agile and have good reaction, they arn't in the Big 5 for no reason), and throwring 18 dice at the soak test. That's 6 hits, so 5 damage, and it has 15 physical damage boxes. With a decent dodge, you'd just grace it, which could be those slugs flattened against the lungs. Or maybe a one ton buffalo is even tougher than body 15. Well, better than SR3, where you'd probably be doing a serious wound at least.






The .50 beo is comparable to the .45-70. There's heavier and faster .45-70 rounds, but .50 beowulf can kick out a 400gr at 550 m/sec. It's a hefty round, and well built, it shouldnt break up on hitting strong bones or implants. Load it in an m4 carbine size package, keep those nearby, and when big Orks and Trolls are around, you come out with those and shotguns. A big heavy bullet moving fast will wreck an armored cyberboy, I think. Plenty of rounds to hit'em with, each round should do a bunch of work(a 22g ball is a big freakin' ball), a shoulder arm so you can brace it better, get a longer sight radius.

Shotguns still work because of the general fact that armor doesn't have 100% coverage. A suit of military body armor today leaves gaps at the armpits(and arms, unles using supplementary armor packages), the groin and leg, the neck and face. if you throw a cloud of #1 or #00 at a human sized torso within 10m, you can get 30+ hits. A single 00 or 1 buck pellet is somewhat comparable to .38 or .32 pistols(not the +p), but when you put 15 of them in a 5" or 10" circle on a person's upper torso, there's a great chance for them to get through and do their damage. five or six pellets to the throat might not kill you, but will probably incapacitate you. And without prompt, golden hour treatment, you will die.

I just don't think that the Ares Predator V is chambered in .50 AE. One, the ammo capacity for that is insane: 15 rounds of .50AE is a big'ol thing, about the size of a stanag. 15 round sounds good for .45 or 10 mm, and maybe a slightly extended magazine.

Like I said, the .50 beowulf is a great thing to use for big game. You get maybe 14 to 15 shots, but each one is hitting real, real hard.

Actually, let me say: I'm actually sold on SR5's firearms: you accuracy with a gun is limited to the actual quality and equipment of the gun. Give Craig Harrison a beat up rifle with irons, and he can only do so much. Consider this: I'm figuring the Remington 950 in SR5 is a 30-06 or 7mm RemMag, so it does 12 boxes of damage(a regular human has 9 to 10, a natural max troll has 13, a Body 15 buffalo has 15), and reduces the armor worn by 4. That's putting a serious hurt on the buffalo(8 damage on a hit, compared to the 5 of a shotgun slug). Two slugs, and it runs off, two rifle hits and it goes down.

I don't know much about guns, but the distinction between light and heavy pistols in Shadowrun has always been problematic.
In SR2 and SR3, light pistols made too little damage to be of any use compared to a heavy pistol (which you had better either load with APDS or mod for BF). Sure, there was the concealability difference, but heavy pistols were concealable enough for most cases.

In SR4, the difference between LP and HP is one or two DV. At least LP are now usable, but once again there are very little (non purely roleplay) reasons to go for a LP instead of a HP.

Some people are fin with this: LP are a bit more concealable and a bit less powerful, it's mostly a question of flavor. But on a game-design aspect it's a questionable choice. If it's purely a flavor choice, you shouldn't have difference in stats at all, otherwise, characters who opt for a "low profile" weapon for roleplay reasons get "punished" for that choice with a less powerful gun.

I prefer the flavor to be part of the rules (and vice-versa), so I'd rather make the choice between LP and HP an interesting choice, and have both options be as valid. That's why for my own ruleset of SR, I've made HP be far more powerful than LP, but limited them to SS (which is a bit more limiting than in the SR3/SR4 rules since in my rules SA weapons have a few more shooting options) and you need at least a Strength of 4 to use them effectively one-handed. They're big, bulky, unpractical weapons that were made to stop cyborgs and trolls. Now, when you see someone carry a HP, it means that he means business, or that he's a psycho.

You say that like it is two different things.

And to be fair, back in CP2020, my Netrunner had a custom made quad barrel sawed off shotgun with pistol grip, basically two double barrels welded atop the other, breech loaded and you just cocked the hammer back on the loads you wanted to fire.

Recoil was horrendous (in fact that was how I got my first cyberlimb when I basically shattered the wrist testfiring it-- the GM had tables for everything and used them, the bastard) but it was more for if something came kicking in the door/stepping over the remains of the razorboy that one multi-shot should make a big enough hole to knock them back out the door or at least give them cause to pause long enough for me to make a good head start out the window or down the hall.

With a professionally psychotic dance,

Sendaz

Ok, here's the rough primer: for handguns, there are what I would consider "combat loads", these are calibers that have sufficient energy to be considered effective against a human sized target. I'd say these are the 9mm parabellum/luger, the .45 Automatic Colt Pistol, the .357 Magnum, the .40 Smith and Wesson, and the 10mm Auto. Generally, these rounds are very comparable, and personal preference should decide what round you use, as shot placement(aka hitting the target in a vital spot, rather than a non vital spot) is key. A .45 to the gut won't kill anyone any faster than a 9mm, and both are lethal on headshots.

Now, even in one caliber, the difference between pistols can be dramatic. You can get a .45 in a very small package(Kimber makes really, really good ones), or in a bigger frame. A shorter barrel will reduce muzzle velocity and energy, but make for a lighter pistol, smaller and easier to conceal. Some of these smaller guns are imminently pointable(err... easy to point). Given that the ammo capacities of light and heavy pistols are very similar(ignoring the Beretta and Fichetti, which I assume have double stack, extended magazines, and the AVS and Roomsweeper which are... questionable), their damage codes are similar, I would say that they are probably close in caliber.

Were I wanting to get fancy, I'd say that Light Pistols, Heavy Pistols, Machine Pistols and Sub Machinegun Guns use the same ammunition, call it "Combat Pistol". Well, I'd say the Super Warhawk uses it's own ammo, call it Magnum ammunition.

Now, in game, the reason for taking a heavy pistol over a light pistol is you want to sacrifice concealbility for a little more punch. And that's about it: they actually have very similar top end damage values, as both will max out at around 14DV, though the heavy pistols do have more AP, which is useful.

But I have a big problem believing that heavy pistols are cartridges like .454 casull, .44 Magnums, .440 Corbun Mags, .50 Action Express or .500 Magnum. Those are some MASSIVE rounds. You can't squeeze 15 of them into a double stack magazine.

I work as armed Sec. We are usually ordered to use hollowpoint to ensure that if we HAVE to shoot something that the bullet usually stops there. This is also the reason that in TX Commissioned guards don't carry rifles anymore.