No, the point is that ballistic gelatin is useful as a control enviornment for demonstrating the ballistic potential of bullets that do not meet rounded barriers like bone. The effect of such hard structures within the body are so complex and varied in different shootings they cannot be well modeled. The effect of clothing and other intervening items over flesh are tested in the full battery of gelatin tests (denim, auto glass, etc).
To answer your question "what good is a bullet that reaches a vital organ and just moves it out of the way without doing any real damage to it?"
assumes an effect that does not represent what FMJ does to a vital organ.
Vital organs are generally of 2 types: central nervous system and highly vascular organs (e.g., heart, lungs, liver).
Mother nature protects such vitals in 2 general ways: bone barriers and deep central placement within the body. Both require penetration to be reached; but if they are reached, all they have to suffer is a puncture to begin disruption of vital function. Something that an FMJ will do. The FMJ does not usually move the organ aside, it punctures the exterior integrity of the organ, many times on 2 sides, resulting in the beginning of bleed-out.
Remember, we are talking here only in the case of sub-caliber ammo like .380 or .32, where getting to vitals is a problem. For standard self defense or duty rounds, you want the expansion and fuller energy dump of JHP because getting to the depth of vitals is much more reliable.
The problem with whammo-blammo fragmenting ammo in sub caliber rounds is that you are basically relying on a psychological stop from shallow wound bleeding, not a biologically-based incapacitation mechanism.
"BTW...can you list the police departments that carry or issue FMJ ammo to their officers?" Which departments issue a primary caliber in .380 or .32???
Ok, I'll answer my own question: The mechanism for non-vital hits is the psychological stop.
And you might want to put some of these reviews of Extreme Shock ammo into the decision process re fragmenting rounds:
http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/bot23.htm
http://www.tacticalforums.com/cgi-bin/tacticalubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=78;t=000283
To get the flavor of the conclusions, for example:
"I was taeching an advanced firearm (handgun) class last week and a few instructors from the area were in attendance.
When it came time to talk about duty ammo I was asked my suggestions and I gave pretty much the standard of what I know is effective.....
I had a guy tell me he only carried the ammo the SpecOps guys carried and showed me a magazine filled with the new Nytrillium death pill.
I asked him if he knew that that ammo was absolutely worthless for general police work because he was likely to get no penetration through normal barriers like car windows and such......
Not one to resist a challenge I asked him if he would mind shooting a few rounds through a windshield we had at the range so we could see his wonder ammo.
He shot his glock 40 with the nytrillium death pill an I used mine with the issued 180 grain RA winchester load.
We put two vests on the head rests of the front seat of a donor car and took straight on shots through the windshield into the front seats. A target was placed over each vest.
The nytrillim round was really loud and the glass showed an impressive impact but the class noted that no impact was observed on the vest.
The RA 180 grainer punched a neat hole in the windshiend and hit the vest so hard it broke a cross brace in the seat back....."
And this was with .40 S&W