Posted on 01/06/2017 9:45:11 AM PST by w1n1
Agreed, for bears, a rifle is best, but I don't relish the concept of bumbling around in my house, in the dark with a 40" rifle.
A .357 revolver with an 8" barrel loaded with hard cast bullets is enough for black bears in my house.
Hit a guy with a 32ACP and if he feels it, he might just get pizzed enough to get off the couch and come after you.
Lucky Gunner website has some great real world tests of .380, 9mm, .40 and .45.
To me, .380 is marginal, 9mm is fine.
.357 is stupid. Guaranteed to have enough over-penetration to leave the body and hit the little old lady leaving early Mass two blocks away.
:)
Dang,
Shiney,8 shot Snubbey,
SmithWesson,correct?
The comparisons in the video are meaningless. If he is trying to determine the best self-defense round, then he should have used concealable handguns for the test rounds rather than Desert Eagle with a five inch barrel. I would have used a Ruger SP101 revolver with a 2.25 inch barrel for the .357’s and a Kimber Ultra RCP II with a 3” barrel for the .45.
My hunch is that at a range of seven yards or less, using a short-barrel concealable firearm, the .357 will perform better than the .45 in a defensive situation.
I have read their report. The tested different calibers 9mm, .38, .45, .455, etc. on horses, cattle, dead human bodies, etc. The key variables they looked at were the degree of bone breakage, when a human body or cattle body/slab of meat was suspended the degree of swinging that a bullet caused, and how quickly the animal died.
If you really examine the report what they focused on was bullet weight, but they did this indirectly. At the time all the powders were the same. As a result of that case capacity for powder and maximum case pressure were limiting factors in bullet/cartridge performance.
Larger caliber bullets had larger capacity cartridges with more room for powder and heavier bullets. That is why the report recommended the largest caliber as the most effective, it was actually a recommendation of the heaviest bullet in front of the most powder.
Had there been a modern .357 magnum pistol in the test with modern powder, the standard US Army handgun round during WW1 and WW2 would have been the .357 magnum. As the bone breakage, meat damage and swinging of the suspended target would have favored the .357 Mag.
I own both .45 ACP and .357 hand guns and shoot both. The historic choice of .45 caliber is an interesting study to read, especially if you read it critically.
Nothing short of a rifle round has proved superior to the .357 mag 125 grain HP round.
That is just the fact.
Whether the .357 revolver is a superior platform is a completely different discussion.
I have a Marlin 1895 in 45-70 and it’s typical lever action size. No sharps rifle for me - I wish. There is a 45-70 Derringer out there too if you want to punish your wrist.
Capacity means nothing to Security.
Revolvers are more secure because they retain ther shell casings.
Personally,
.45 for “two in the Deck”
.357 for “two in the Neck!”
I figured you’d be carrying a Zat’nik’tel
That’s a money saving idea, sure. But make sure “the cheap stuff” and your carry ammo have similar chacteristics and point of aim. I am reminded of fighter aircraft and tracer rounds used during WWII. The pilots used tracer rounds to adjust their point of aim. Unfortunately the tracer rounds had different ballistic performance than the regular rounds. This caused the pilots to miss with the non-tracer rounds. Once the military figured this out they revised the tracer so it had similar ballistics to the non-tracer. Every once in a while splurge and practice with your carry ammo.
FWIW
CC
It’s hilarious you mentioned that. It is the one thing that mattered to me. Murphy’s law has taught me that when you practice with one ammo, make sure the ammo you actually use in the field hits the same spot. Fortunately, that was pretty cheap to confirm.
And this really is for close-in stuff, less than 25 feet.
He might disagree, but I stated the average person would not get off the ninth round before I put 40 rounds down range with my XD-45. Revolvers are simply outgunned by semiautomatics.
The point I made is one I always try to make as an instructor. Just kinda leaped out at me I guess. and we are talking about “minute of bad guy” distances.
See you on the boards.
CC
Read up on the .357 mag 125 grain HP, it was the first modern pistol round that was done right.
All of the new stuff for 9mm, .45 and 40SW are all attempts to make the bullets do what the .357 has been doing for decades.
Yes, read up on the old.357 125 grain and you will see a round that has little if any expansion within the body and wastes all it’s energy by passing through the perp and flying another 200 meters.
Seriously, it was the first HP round that could reasonably be expected to expand and not exit.
It’s interesting that over penetration has not been mentioned on this thread. Bullet diameter, bullet configuration, bullet velocity, and distance need to be considered.
We are discussing that just a post or two above.
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