> Hence their destructive effect is likely to be qualitatively different from that of a bullet; a macro impact typically heats the cylinder of tissue carved out along its path to a temperature of 10^7 K[18, 19], resulting in an expanding cylinder of plasma inside the body. While some studies have been done on collisions of hypersonic, micron-sized projectiles with fixed targets[23], these differed significantly from macro collisions in that the experimental projectiles were of much lower density, and the targets were “hard” rather than “soft”. Nonetheless, it is reasonable to take the kinetic energy deposited by a macro as a threshold for significant damage to the human body. Energy con- servation requires that the macro energy ultimately be deposited in the body in some form, whether mechanical or thermal, which will result in an equivalent amount of damage.

Victims would look they’d been shot with a laser bullet out of sci-fi. As is mentioned in the article, they found no evidence of bullet wounds that also featured vaporization of tissue.

> These deaths would not go unnoticed—they would leave victims dead or dying with a tubular wound where their flesh was vaporized.