Big Army and the MHS??

[Jeep]

Nowadays the "in" crime is drug distribution. Prescriptions, Oxy, some meth, etc. Not much in the way of shootings besides the occasional suicide, but lots of drugs.Either guy's pre-service who were dealing and kept it as a side gig, or folks who got lawful prescriptions and decided to "suppliment their income."

Getting Schedule I substances really should be harder on base then off post, but that's "Obamas Military" for ya.

We not only had plenty of drugs--we had drug wars and very rich loan sharks who financed the drug gangs. That was largely (but of course not completely) cleaned up in Reagan's years, but if you treat soldiers like scum, you tend to get a fair number of fairly scummy guys as soldiers.

Do you get the sense that the treatment of enlisted men has declined to the point that recruitment has been become difficult and standards have drastically fallen?

[Chuck Haggard]

IIRC, the original Parabellum cartridge used a truncated cone (flat point) bullet.

One wonders what reason (if any rational one exists) caused the Germans to drop that in favor of a round nose bullet?

And you got to wonder who is driving that bigger-caliber bus? Is 9mm ball really that ineffective? You hear it both ways from guys who have used the M9 in combat. I've seen quite a few 9mm ball bullets- mainly light ones- in the past few years that made one or two shot kills. But- and this is a BIG but- most of those came from corpses who were not expecting to get shot, judging from the incident reports. That can make a huge difference.

Adopting a new gun in .40 would only have one big drawback… the increased recoil would make the already-dismal general military training, such as it is, even less effective. The cartridge is already in the "system", supplying the Coasties and the JSOC units who use it.

But I cannot forget the Coast Guard Senior Chief who came to check out our range, prior to their borrowing it for annual quals when the range they normally used was closed for maintenance. This guy had been involved in firearms training for almost as long as I had, and told me that their ammo consumption rates had sky-rocketed since replacing their M9s with the P229; and it was all due to the troopies struggling with the .40 recoil.

I retired a year before we adopted the .40, so I have no first-hand knowledge… but from everything I've heard, qual score averages went down shortly afterward. I do know that a lot more of our guys chose the G17 this time around, instead of the G22.

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We noted a rise in qual scores going from the G22 to the G17

Ref the original Parabellum cartridge, my historical reading tells me the flat point ammo went away due to the Luger not feeding it is well.

I've seen 9mm ball be VERY effective when properly applied, as have a few other people on this board. Most of the planet, even the Russians, have gone that route for good reasons.

[Jeep]

I've seen 9mm ball be VERY effective when properly applied, as have a few other people on this board.

And therein lies to rub. Good hits with 9mm ball will do the job, but we don't train most of our troops well enough to get even mediocre hits, and from what I can tell a lot of soldiers aren't even told about the importance of trying to put multiple rounds on target.

We really need to go to JHP and announce we are doing so to honor the Hague convention's underlying concern about not hurting other people.

[GardoneVT]

And therein lies to rub. Good hits with 9mm ball will do the job, but we don't train most of our troops well enough to get even mediocre hits, and from what I can tell a lot of soldiers aren't even told about the importance of trying to put multiple rounds on target.

We really need to go to JHP and announce we are doing so to honor the Hague convention's underlying concern about not hurting other people.

Careful note- the Air Force already uses 9mm JHP.

Stateside use only , of course. Because overseas bad guys deserve more humane bullet holes then our own citizens......???!!?

[Kyle Reese]

And therein lies to rub. Good hits with 9mm ball will do the job, but we don't train most of our troops well enough to get even mediocre hits, and from what I can tell a lot of soldiers aren't even told about the importance of trying to put multiple rounds on target.

Surely switching to a higher pressure cartridge, like the .40 S&W, will make up for troops being unable to get good hits with the 9x19 on baddies, right?

[Jeep]

Surely switching to a higher pressure cartridge, like the .40 S&W, will make up for troops being unable to get good hits with the 9x19 on baddies, right?

Well, of course. Because "it starts with a 4."

[Drang]

Jimmy Carter's army.

I was in Basic Training at Fort Lost In The Woods from September-October 1980.
When giving the "It's your duty as a citizen to vote" talk the Senior Drill Sergeant made some rather derogatory remarks regarding "that peanut farmer and anyone who would vote for him." Even as a recruit, I was taken aback.

[LSP972]

We noted a rise in qual scores going from the G22 to the G17

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As has everybody who will be honest about it.

As I have stated earlier, I have seen a lot of 9mm ball bullets retrieved from corpses in the past few years, here at the lab. But... most of those were from people who weren't expecting get shot. Many ways to look at all of this, of course... me, if sub-caliber ball is all I've got, I'll be shooting for CNS, or a lot of rounds per target; whichever is more expedient at the time.

As for the TC bullet not feeding in the Luger... you're probably spot on there. It doesn't take much to choke those things, delightful though they may be.

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[Chuck Whitlock]

Getting Schedule I substances really should be harder on base then off post, but that's "Obamas Military" for ya.

Not just "Obama's Military". Candidly, there are a few FBI types who will tell you that the biggest drug pusher on reservations is the Indian Health Service.

[DocGKR]

Why worry about how a projectile looks? Perhaps the focus should be on the military end-user requirements the projectile needs to meet in order to successfully complete the mission...