[John Lenin]

You lose accuracy with a heavier round.

[Vaquero]

not necessary at handgun ranges and the guns can be made much more accurately than the original 1911, which as anyone knows has been made very accurate in guns like the colt Gold Cup.

I own a WWII 1911A1 Remington Rand....always shoots, never jams and up to 25 yards is a guaranteed man killer (not pretty groups but good enough) further away than that and you should have your Rifle or Carbine out and ready.

[76834]

Beg to differ: Here is a pix of my protector

Great big ole S&W .357
158 grain hollowpoints.
More killing power than a .45ACP

[ghostcat]

"You lose accuracy with a heavier round."

Hogwash!!! many of the paper punchers prefer the .45 over the smaller rounds because of its accuracy.

[Erik Latranyi]

You lose accuracy with a heavier round.

A sidearm in the military is not meant for accuracy (although the .45 has been demonstrated to be one of the most accurate pistol cartridges ever) but is meant to be used for point defense and close-quarters combat.

The 9mm has been a failure due to its inability to stop crazed, junked-up Muslims and the poor quality/reliability of the Beretta M9. Funny, it was crazed, junked-up Filipinos that made the Army adopt the .45 nearly 100 years ago!

[hiredhand]

With rifles, maybe. The variances in ballistic coefficients between large diameter bullets, with slower rifle cartridges can make a significant difference with accuracy at rifle distances.

But with handguns, the differences in accuracy at usable distances isn't worth splitting hairs over.

I was just going over ballistics tables from a reloading manual here, and a 260gr .45ACP load transfers "roughly" a full 50FtLbs more torque on target than the hottest 125gr 9mm load I could find.

Having said all that...I've got a light class 1000 yard rifle and when I bought it a couple of years ago, I was having GREAT difficulty getting better than MOA accuracy from it even at 300 yards. I went to the oldest gun shop in the area and talked to a guy who looked a little younger than Methuselah, and the load data that he gave me for that rifle was a shock!

The rifle is chambered for .30-06 Springfield. He told me to use 49gr of IMR-4064 behind a 180gr bullet. This is OVER the max load in one of my manuals by a little over a full grain! The guy told me (as I later discovered by experience) that the twist rate on my barrel wasn't "slow enough" to stabilize my previous load.

With rifles, barrel twist rates and the projectile weight factor HEAVILY on stabilization of the projectile once it's free and clear of the bore. With that one rifle of mine, it went from 4" groups at 300 yards, down to 3/8" groups at 525 yards once I managed to achieve the correct velocity of the projectile.

The problem with the previous load (168gr HPBT) was that with a 1:10" twist barrel, I would have had to use a hotter load in order to get enough velocity to stabilize the bullet in flight. I could have done this, but they encouraged me to use the heavier bullets because they said that although overall drop was greater, midrange trajectory would be farther out.

This entire "barrel-twist-rate/projectile-weight/velocity" relationship is much less pronounced with handguns because their maximum effective range is so much less than rifles.

Not only this, but the typical engagement distance makes it such that it's a real non issue usually. :-) Most handgunners (even police!) fire the first several rounds into the ground anyway...sometimes even ruining holsters...during a gunfight because of stress and panic.

[Centurion2000]

You lose accuracy with a heavier round.

Not true. You lose accuracy with rapid follow up shots with a heavier round. A 454 casull will take down a cape buffalo at 50 meters with proper shot placement.

[Thunder90]

Accuarcy is not an issue if you can't hit what you are shooting at because of stuff in the way. It is the same argument with the 5.56 shells.