Which Handgun Caliber Is Better?

[Jack Ryan]

What will its purpose be- carry, plinking, competition, hunting, ?????

Match the tool to the job.

Guess I don't need to post in this thread after all.

 

[Jack Ryan]

I was involved in a shooting where a guy took several 9MM, 40 CAL and four rounds of OO buck from me.

One of my last two rounds blew the gun out of his hand and removed his thumb in the process. It still took him several minutes to expire. You can imagine my horror when OO buck failed to cause him to burst into flames.

That said I am a 9MM fan, especially the Glock 19. Keep putting rounds on target until the threat is stopped, while you are doing that keep moving, harder than it sounds. There are three ballistic stops, central nervous systems stops, circulatory stops and structural stops. When someone is shot most of the time it compromises the circulatory system. Even though he may be dead and just does not know it he can still do a lot of damage. When rounds COM don't work I teach to drop to the pelvic girdle for structural stops. The interesting thing about rounds to the pelvic girdle are that beside being great circulatory and structrual targets they are likely to result in the head coming forward and down giving you a better chance of hitting the CNS when continuing to shoot COM.

Caliber and blade length are a poor substitute for mindset and training.

This post brings a lot of thoughts to the forefront of my mind.

What all of those thoughts leave me with is 9mm is the absolute minimum calibur I'd even consider by choice for personal protection and the option being available 45 ACP, 44 mag, 357...

 

[Jack Ryan]

I planning on using this firearm for concealed carry.

Put one in your hip pocket of your jeans and walk around the gun shop for an hour, sit down and read a magazine, drink a pop.

If at any time in that hour you get the urge to move it to another pocket or lean the other way in your seat, give it back to them and start over with another one.

Get the biggest calibur you can carry in your pocket all day long no matter where you are going in or out of or who you are going to see that day. For me a S&W 3913 in 9mm fits that bill all day, every day, summer or winter, hip pocket or front pocket, or holster.

Now since I own more than one gun, I do carry other larger hand guns when the situation allows it but it's not a fit personal protection weapon if it's laying in a drawer, back in the glove box or under the seat.

It's not a fit weapon either if you think you might wish it was made out of Hersey's chocolate someday either.

 

[Jack Ryan]

Study more... there are plenty of example of .45 failures.

There are examples of 12 guage 00 buck shot failing, I assure you any handgun round will have plenty of failures.

9mm, .40 S&W, .45 ACP all perform well in actual shootings, so long as good, modern ammo is used.

That said, I'm a pretty big fan of revolvers, so I gotta say .357 Magnum is my favorite. In fact, it's a 3" Ruger SP101 sitting on my hip right now, with a handload that moves 158 grain XTP hollowpoints out the muzzle of my little gun at 940 fps. Somewhere between .38 +Ps and full power .357s, while hitting exactly to point of aim and being extremely accurate.

Other than fail to fire, the guns don't fail any more than a hammer can fail, the operator fails.

Bullet failure, gun failure, what happen? these bullets are no good, are all just a bunch of bull crap by people who don't know what they are doing and never will because they always look some place other than the mirror for the solution to their own failures.

 

[Joe Williams]

Other than fail to fire, the guns don't fail any more than a hammer can fail, the operator fails.

Bullet failure, gun failure, what happen? these bullets are no good, are all just a bunch of bull crap by people who don't know what they are doing and never will because they always look some place other than the mirror for the solution to their own failures.

I'm gonna have to find the article about a cop who plunked 17 COM hits onto a bad guy with a .40 S&W, and the bad guy didn't die until several minutes afterwards. Operator didn't fail, round failed to stop. Which, being low powered defensive weapons, handguns rounds of any caliber are prone to do.

Though the .357 Magnum with the right loads does so less often.

 

[Naptown]

I am wanting to purchase a new handgun. I have a .38 revolver but I am currently looking for a semi-auto. Would you recommend a .40 cal, .45 cal or 9MM?

go to pop guns and shoot all 3. Some can't shoot a .45 or even a .40. 9mm is a bit cheaper to run too.

 

[Metro 40]

.

 

[Joe Williams]

Officer Down - The Peter Soulis Incident

 

[Metro 40]

.

 

[gglass]

I'm gonna have to find the article about a cop who plunked 17 COM hits onto a bad guy with a .40 S&W, and the bad guy didn't die until several minutes afterwards. Operator didn't fail, round failed to stop. Which, being low powered defensive weapons, handguns rounds of any caliber are prone to do.

Though the .357 Magnum with the right loads does so less often.

I did read this article on a LEO web site a month ago. The guy actually took 22 hits with 17 that where called COM's from a 40 cal Glock. What you have to read into the article is that the subject was being fired at through both glass and metal during the exchange. The cop took 4 hits from a 9mm Sigma (breast plate, forearm, shoulder and leg) and walked away from the exchange.

Of the 17 rounds that hit COM, it was not disclosed how many actually had much penetration after going through barriers. The subject was finally dropped when he came out from cover and thought the cop was dead. He then took a couple of real COM rounds and dropped like a sack of potatoes. (At least that is how I remember it.)

I'll post a link to the story if I can find it.

 

[gglass]

I found it!

Officer Down - The Peter Soulis Incident

I don't thing the story would have been any different with a 9mm, 40 SW or 45 ACP.

 

[Joe Williams]

I found it!

Officer Down - The Peter Soulis Incident

I don't thing the story would have been any different with a 9mm, 40 SW or 45 ACP.

No, it wouldn't have been. Which was kinda my point. Handguns just don't always work.

At least I think that was my point... now I've forgotten what it was LOL

 

[HICKMAN]

and yet people die by a single .22 shot

 

[Joe Williams]

and yet people die by a single .22 shot

I heard a story years ago, where a dude died after being shot at by a blank pistol.

Story goes that the store owner kept getting robbed, but had moral convictions that would not allow him to exercise a violent act against other people. He bought a blank gun in the hopes that he could scare a robber off. One night a robber comes in, owner whips out his blank gun and fires a round. The bad guy jumped up and back like he'd been hit by a 12 guage in a Hollywood movie, and fell dead as a door nail. He'd had a heart attack, scared to death.

 

[kludge]

and yet people die by a single .22 shot

They die yes, but did it stop the attack?

 

[indyjoe]

I heard a story years ago, where a dude died after being shot at by a blank pistol.

Story goes that the store owner kept getting robbed, but had moral convictions that would not allow him to exercise a violent act against other people. He bought a blank gun in the hopes that he could scare a robber off. One night a robber comes in, owner whips out his blank gun and fires a round. The bad guy jumped up and back like he'd been hit by a 12 guage in a Hollywood movie, and fell dead as a door nail. He'd had a heart attack, scared to death.

That was a little different than I expected. I heard about a blind man who was worried about using bullets in his revolver because he wouldn't know where they were headed. He had some pretty hot custom blanks. His plan was to press the barrel into the attacker and pull the trigger. I imagine the expanding gases would be pretty gnarly, if it got inside the skin. Probably wouldn't make a nervous or circulatory stop, but would hurt like hell, I'm sure. The sound would also help attract attention to the attack.

 

[singlestacksig]

many, many people are killed by blanks.. most recently a kid on a highschool stage.....

 

[Rookie]

You are always going to be able to find something that proves out of the ordinary. When I was in high school, I used to participate in ride alongs with the local police department. The officer got called to a shooting. When we arrived, I had to stay in the car for safety, we see a guy sitting on the sidewalk outside the residence. The officer talks to him and finds out that the guy sitting there had just gotten shot, point blank, with buckshot from a 12-gauge. Here is this guy, talking to the officer, with a huge hole in his chest. Ambulance arrives, the guy walks to the ambulance, climbs in, and is taken to the nearest hospital where he died.

 

[gglass]

If you read the post from officers beneath the story, you would have seen that the LEO consensus is that the whole affair was over in such a short time that the subject was dead, but not brain dead early on in the affair.

Bullets do not make people fly backwards when hit... If they did the shooter would fly back as well... It's simple physics. Movies sure distort reality when it comes to gun fights. None of the rounds caused CNS dysfunction, so the will to survive allowed the firefight to continue until the brain was deprived of oxygen. DEAD MAN WALKING.

I still do not see how the whole incident would have changed if the subject had been hit with a 9mm. 40 SW or 45 ACP, if the shot placement was exactly the same. All three of these bullet types are superb at penetration, just read something like the The Box O' Truth - Ammo Penetration Testing or FirearmsTactical.com - Web Site Index and Navigation Center articles to see the slight differences.

I do prefer the .40 SW round to the others, if I haven't mentioned it yet.

 

[singlestacksig]

I think the main point to the OP is, there is no "better" caliber.. they all have documented cases of one shot stops, andcasses of multiple hits not stopping... but the real hing is, the gun you carry & can properly use will stop an attack much better than one you don't carrry or can not use well in high stress...