What Wounds Would Result from an Attempted Gun Placed Under the Chin?Suicide with aQ: placed under his chin, and the gun is loaded with "hot loads" (overpowered magnum rounds intended for use against vehicles and similar targets), what kind of ballistic results could be expected? Would the resulting injury produce a relatively small hole due to overpenetration, or would the mushrooming effect obliterate most of the skull; in other words, is there sufficient resistance to the bullet to cause it to mushroom? Is there a chance of survival, or is this technique highly effective? Aside from "gray matter," is there likely to be much blood? A : Yes, this is effective and virtually 100 percent fatal provided the gun doesn't slip and the angle change. I saw a man years ago w h o placed a shotgun under his chin and pulled the trigger. He had angled the barrel slightly forward and opened his face as if someone had cleaved it with an axe. The shot never entered the skull and he was neurologically intact and awake when the paramedics arrived. A plastic surgeon and a neurosurgeon put him back together. But short of such an odd occurrence, this type of approach is uniformly fatal. Typically, the entry wound is relatively small and the exit wound large, likely removing the entire skullcap and most of the brain. There would be a great deal of tissue and blood. However, a bullet coated with Teflon or otherwise manufactured to "penetrate armor" probably would not "mushroom," and therefore both entry and exit wounds would be small and there would be less tissue and blood. Still effective, but less messy.
