As to impaling I've always had guns Impale. That is only way a handgun can kill in one shot typically.
To accurately model modern ballistics Penetration (the ability to penetrate armor and other hard substances) and Damage should be differentiated. The Armor absorbing damage model of BRP fails to capture this. It works well enough for Melee weapons, but with modern ballistics, armor piercing rounds, hollow point and hydroshock rounds, and advanced weapons like flechette weapons the combined damage/penetration used by BRP starts breaking down.
A 9mm should penetrate better than a .45, but the .45 should be more effective against an unarmored foe. A shotgun does massive damage against an unarmored foe but is not effective against armor. Flechette is sort of the opposite of the shotgun (high penetration but low damage - the damage compensated for by volume of fire and low recoil - making it easy to put a LOT of rounds on target).
Armor Piercing rounds should penetrate better than standard rounds, but do less damage. They also suffer a loss of accuracy at long ranges.
Hollow Point rounds should do more damage but armor should be more effective against them.
Without introducing a seperate Penetration value (though adding penetration is certainly an option for an advanced set of rules) I think a guidline like the following makes sense:
AP rounds: Reduce the Damage die one step and any damage add by one. Armor value is halved. Optionally additional hit penalties at long ranges. (A .45 acp does 1d8+1)
HP Rounds*: Increase the Damage Die one step but armor is doubled. (A .45 does 1d12+2)
On an Impale damage that penetrates armor is doubled. A crit Impales AND ignores armor.
Thoughts?
Other areas poorly covered by BRP: Auto-fire, Recoil, Psychology of gun combat (performing under fire), and range system (very poor recreation of snipers using RAW).
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