At this point, I'd like to think that everybody knows that Biden's statement about a 9mm bullet being able to rip the lung out of the body is simply bonkers.
Still, as a broader issue in the gun debate, I think this raises some valid points and questions -- especially given the silence of the anti-gun people.
So, to throw a bone to Biden, there is a reason why 9mm is so popular in the military, the police, and among citizens who carry guns for self-defense. The 9mm is no slouch. If a .22LR round fired from a handgun can kill you, a 9mm definitely can.
Still, with the gun debates that are going on, especially in conjunction with debates about policing, why make this statement?
Before the 9mm round became the standard for law enforcement, cops regularly carried .38 Special revolvers like mine. There's no doubt that .38 Special has killed a few people since its introduction in the late 19th century. The diameter of a .38 Special bullet is almost identical to a 9mm. 9mm, in general, has better ballistic performance at this point than .38 Special; but, the Plus P rounds of .38 Special that I just bought are rated at 1250 fps, which is on the higher end of velocities that can be expected from 9mm. Although 9mm usually performs slightly better than .38 Special, both rounds regularly pass the FBI minimum standards as a self-defense round.
Namely, you don't wanna get hit by either a 9mm nor a .38 Special bullet. Well, you don't want get hit by any bullet. There's no way that you have a good day if you get shot by a real bullet.
So, why focus on 9mm?
Well, as stated above, 9mm is probably the most popular pistol round in the country, just as the AR-15 is the most popular rifle in the country. It tells you that it's about attacking the most popular tools rather than the most legitimately dangerous.
A legitimate argument to be made for attacking the 9mm round instead of the .38 Special would be that 9mm is more common in semi-autos (with some revolvers) while .38 is mostly only used in revolvers; so, 9mm usually means a greater capacity -- guns that take .38 Special are usually limited to six rounds while there are 9mm guns that can take fifteen. Still, that's not the argument that Biden made.
9mm is also significantly cheaper than .38 Special. Maybe he could have gone the route of claiming that, if we legally restricted 9mm bullets, potential mass shooters wouldn't be able to buy as much ammo.
I don't think that he made any of the practical arguments for a few reasons.
One reason is that he doesn't know the first thing about guns. Just like most gun-grabbers, there's no nuance. If I put a bullet for my 30-30 Winchester next to a .223 round for an AR-15 next to each other and asked him what he would ban, I'd bet that he, like most anti-gun people, would ban the 30-30 because it's scarier looking and bigger. Of course, 30-30 is actually particularly good for deer hunting (it's actually been estimated that 30-30 has brought down more deer in American history than any other round) and I'm unaware of the round ever being used in a mass shooting.
It also tells us that that anti-gun side really isn't thinking about the implications of their rhetoric. Like I said, 9mm is the most popular round for the military and the police. So, the argument is that I can't have a bullet that can rip a lung out of the body; but, the racist, violent cops should still have it?
Still, bottom line, assuming that Biden was lucid at that moment, it tells us that the anti-gun movement is devoted entirely to the rhetoric of fear and not to facts. For any somewhat reasonable argument that they can make about opposing increasing the capacity of the guns, none of that is going to be as scary as the image of your lung being ripped from your body, even if the claim is false.