" Of course, there's something to be said for the old dinosaurs like my .455 Webley Mark VI -- when you run out of ammo you can knock your adversary cold with the thing. It must weigh 3 pounds empty. As a result it has no recoil, so you wouldn't know you had fired it (except for the 2 foot jet of orange flame at the muzzle, the flames jetting out sideways from the forcing cone, and the very loud BOOM! Talk about turning heads at the range . . . somebody down the line yelled, "Is that a Casull?" I was flattered. I think.)
As well you should have been flattered...The friend that owns the ppk also has an old winchester lever action .44-480.(Think Chuck Conners rifleman)It makes a tremendous noise when fired but is relatively tame recoil wise.
If you can ever get hold of a copy of this book, it's a charmer. Very useful loads for obsolete calibers, scathing reviews of cartridges he didn't like (his riff on the Italian Carcano is worth the price of admission all by itself!) Mr. Sharpe was opinionated, to say the very least, but he surely knew his business (and he was personal friends with Col. Whelen and almost all the other wildcatters and gun bugs of his day.)