Let’s state this at the outset: none of the news reports of Sunday morning’s Essex, Maryland home invasion mention what caliber the bad guys were using. Why is that important? “According to investigators, two armed men broke into the apartment and shot 24-year-old Kenneth David Cox several times.” But Cox is obviously the resilient type. Though wounded and apparently without a firearm, “Cox then grabbed a blunt object and struck the alleged shooter in the head, killing him. At that point, police say the second suspect fled the scene.” The good news is that Cox is reported to be in serious but stable condition. Neither this report, nor one at baltimoresun.com IDs the gun – or the blunt object – used. The dood who took off running into the night is still, as they say, at large. Let the caliber speculation commence.

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61 COMMENTS

    • Nah, starter pistols don’t actually shoot anything. Rather, it had to be the dreaded .9mm shooting 0.36 grain “cop killer” armor-piercing bullets.

  2. Baseball bat, not as clumsy or random as a gun. An elegant weapon, for a more civilized age.

    • Probably not a Raven: The Maryland law that put the handgun roster in place (Google “Maryland handgun roster” to learn more) means that really cheap stuff, like the Raven, disappeared (no legit market for them; few legally owned remain to be stolen). This has had the effect of ensuring that MD criminals are armed with quality weapons.

      • “This has had the effect of ensuring that MD criminals are armed with quality weapons.” And their victims aren’t.

  4. You have to be a serious fvcking bad a$$ to get shot multiple times, and then decide to take on two guys, at least one of whom has a gun, and beat one of them to death.

      • Even if he was shot multiple times with .22 shorts he’s still a fvcking bad a$$.

      • A .22 LR is one of the most diabolical little bullets you can be shot with. They often will, when contacting bone, rather than smashing through it and losing most of their velocity will instead ricochet. This causes massive internal damage. Also, as we have seen many times on here, a properly placed .22LR will kill just as effectively as a larger bullet.

        • ^ as evident a few years ago when a young girl proceeded to lay waste to a burglar coming through the window with a pink .22 semi rifle. How sweet is that, not the death….the shooting

        • Would like to reference an early episode of “COPS” in which a convenience store clerk was shot in the heart at close range by a perp with a .22. He phoned 911, waited for police, gave description of the perp and the getaway car, then sat down on the curb and died, much to everybody’s surprise. Yes, a .22 can and will kill you, but not necessarily in a hurry.

  6. Coulda been a revolver. They may legitimately not know what caliber was used without fishing the bullet out of the victim/wall and doing an analysis.

  7. Also, there seems to be no info about the races of the parties involved.
    More important than the gun/caliber, is what is the guns legal status?
    Are we taking any bets that it was a MAIG’s gun, that was used? Hmm?

    • No, O’Malley relies on his armed-to-the-teeth State Police bodyguards. That way he has no blood on his hands when residents try to approach him.

  9. I don’t know what the mystery is. People routinely get shot multiple times by all calibers of handgun and not only live but manage to put distance between themselves and the shooter. The real difference here is that the shot person attacked instead of running. It was his home, he had more at stake than the bad guys did. What you want to bet that when the wounded man gets out of the hospital he gets a gun.

    500 S&W is still a fairly rare gun so shootings with it are probably nearly nonexistent. But the gun was designed, like the .44 mag, to handle large predators. It will probably shoot right thru the average tweaker with so little resistence that it would have scarcely more impact than a mouse gun.

  10. Knowing nothing else, a .22 is the best bet simply based on the odds since they are so common.

      • good point. I’m starting to see 9 mm, .40, and .45 at my local shop/range, but not much .22 still.

      • Well it’s not like criminals really go to the range to practice, so unless there has been a rash of shootings, the ammo could have come from a box of 500 rnds that was bought like 5 years ago

  12. You can find videos on youtube of people getting shot in fights, they don’t even move. Many times they react like the sound scared them, before defending themselves by slapping/punching/kicking. Handguns will not drop people like a rifle or shotgun would. Most people shot by handguns survive. Exclude suicides and the number gets even better.

  13. The local news describes Cox as the home invader who was killed with the blunt object, not the victim who was shot. Other sources have it the other way around. Go figure — the MSM can’t get its story straight.

    As for the blunt object, I’m guessing that it was the other bad guy.

    As for the caliber, I’m going to guess that it started with a 2 and not a 4. Just a guess. Or is that two guesses?

    • Maybe but not necessarily, there are stories out there of bad guys getting shot up multiple times with 9mm, .40, .45, and surviving.

    • A long time ago I took over management of a movie theater in Dayton, OH. The previous manager had been counting the receipts at night, alone, when two crooks broke through the glass front doors. He confronted one of them, was nocked unconscious from behind and then shot 5 times with his own .25 POS. He survived and on his recovery joined the Cincinnati PD!

  14. My money would be on relatively low grain (high velocity) 9mm ball ammunition. Passes right through like Chipotle and burns slightly less.

    • Chipotle jokes, for shame. I would have thought TTAG commenters had stronger intestinal fortitude.

  15. City trash strike the suburbs again. Should put up a wall around the city to keep the garbage from (further) ruining Essex, Dundalk and White Marsh.

  18. surviving multiple gunshots is fairly common, even up to two .45 cal. holes Statistically, if you get shot you have about a 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 chance of surviving [ based on CDC data, 55k injuries, 11k deaths]. Even head shots – think Gabby Giffords.

    my guess would be 9mm or .22 because these are the most common handguns on the street.

    • dwb,

      I believe you misstated the data that you posted. The survival rate of all gunshot wounds is between 75% and 80%. That means the fatality rate is between 20% and 25%.

      I think what you meant to say is that you have about a 3 out of 4 … or 4 out of 5 chance of surviving a gunshot wound.

  19. Just another example of how the mass media has little idea of what it is writing about and a lousy ability to report the details correctly; from MSNBC:

    “Pfc. Bradley Manning, intelligence officer who sent 700,000 secret documents to WikiLeaks, could face a maximum of 136 years in prison if the sentences are imposed consecutively.”

    — Since when is a Private First Class an Intelligence Officer?

  20. Where are these criminals getting all this ammo, damn. Last time I was able to score a brick of .22lr it was in a dark corner of a Jack-in-the-Box parking lot…

  23. Regardless of caliber, the man brought a bat to a gunfight and WON! Good job.

  24. My father claimed to have treated a patient who had run from the Chicago PD, and when they caught him, they stood over him and emptied their .38s into him for the trouble he’d caused. 12 rounds fired, point blank range, 9 hits. No serious injury. So I’ll go with the famous .38 revolver, loaded with fmj.

    • The 158 grain round nose lead load, which was the cop load of choice for generations in .38, was notorious for shooting straight thru a person and punching neat little thru and thru holes that healed rather quickly if nothing vital was hit. This load is responsible for the .38’s reputation as a bad man stopper. Just like fmj, nobody still uses it for defensive purposes.

  25. Just to ruffle some feathers, I’ll reckon it was a 300BLK… that was fired more than 300 meters! (or some birdshot fired at more than 25) Just kidding, it could have been a 38 special just as Mark N. mentioned. Wasn’t a home intruder just recently shot five times in the face at point blank range with that caliber and survived?

    • Actually this just made me think.. what if the burglar used a .22 with birdshot rounds… you could get shot many multiple time with that and never miss a beat…

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