I’ve seen a few dead people from 158gr LRN, nobody got up off the autopsy table after the procedure.Originally Posted by jetfire
But where’s the fun being satisfied with the same old thing?
FWIW This is the load I carry in my 3” GP100 WC which is the same 4.6” from breech to muzzle as the G20 they used in the test
https://www.luckygunner.com/10mm-aut...rounds#geltest
Not all revolvers are .357” bore...
I think you worded a switch.
Well, you may be a man. You may be a leprechaun. Only one thing’s for sure… you’re in the wrong basement.
FRIG
Dyslexia will auto-correct it
From Older Offspring after a discussion of coffee:
"If it doesn't come from the Kaffa province of Ethiopia, it's just hot roasted-bean juice."
It's an interesting question, the .38.
A lot of bad people have been killed by .38 spl LRN bullets. If we go back in time and take a hard look at what the most accomplished gunmen of the pre-WWII era were using, we'd see a wide range of equipment. 1911 pistols shooting the sub-optimal FMJ, .44 caliber DA revolvers, registered magnums, Peacemakers, and plenty of .38 revolvers shooting LRN.
If we looked beyond the most accomplished gunmen we'd find contemporaries who used the very same equipment with poorer results.
No one would argue that 9mm ball ammo is a spectacularly good performer in terms of terminal ballistics, and yet there are a number of people in the military and the NYPD (before they allowed HP ammo) who killed bad guys deader than fried chicken on the spot with skillful application of it to the right pieces of anatomy.
The right pieces of anatomy are actually incredibly small. Reliably hitting them requires a much higher level of skill than is typically understood. If you look through some of the famous gunfighters from the pre-WWII era you'll find an awfully large percentage of them were accomplished competitive shooters. It was bullseye competition, but it still involved hitting a very small mark under competitive pressure. This experience seems to have come in handy when it was time to stop bad guys.
If we could talk to all those folks and get the facts and figures of their gunfighting experiences, we'd probably come to an aggregate conclusion that handguns are pretty bad at stopping the actions of bad people and that, with that acknowledged, even the sub optimal options by modern standards worked pretty good if you could shoot.
The people most famous for pushing the development of magnum rounds in handguns weren't really the gunfighters of the day. Elmer Keith was a hugely influential figure in the world of firearms, but he was killing game at ridiculous distances with handguns, not doing battle with bandits on the Mexican border. That said, if a magnum cartridge does a better job putting mule deer down at distance, the same factors will probably be useful in a gunfight, right?
Of course, anyone who hunts for a while encounters some of the realities of what projectiles do to flesh and figures out that most creatures don't really know how to quit. The last buck I killed wasn't one I set out to shoot. I had to shoot the animal before it could get up and run off yet again...this despite the fact that its guts were literally hanging out. Turns out that a 124 grain +P HST out of a Glock 17 delivered into the brain stem is immediately effective in a way that a .308 bullet sub-optmially placed in the chest was not.
Post WWII, police agencies increasingly sought out the new .357 magnum in hopes of getting better results than the .38 spl had yielded. Full power magnum loads were stout. The revolvers capable of handling those stout loads were few and generally heavy and expensive. Lighter guns were desired, and gun companies being in the business of selling guns people want to buy responded with medium framed revolvers. Those smaller revolvers didn't do so well with a steady diet of 158 grain loads stuffed on top of as much powder as the case would hold. The shooters using them didn't fare so well, either. So lighter bullets were used.
(Does this sound AT ALL familiar? Like maybe an almost identical description for how things went with a certain millimeter like 20 years later?)
A lot of lore and legend emerged around the capabilities of the .357 magnum. But I bet if we could go back in time and take the kind of look at police shootings that we have in modern times, we'd find that the .357 magnum in aggregate didn't do any better than the .38 spl. In theory the .357 magnum with a 125 grain JHP moving fast is better than the .38 spl. Except that the loads of the day often under-penetrated and/or failed to expand. Then there's still that whole thing about where, exactly, you put them.
If an officer put a couple of them in one of those small structures mentioned earlier, it worked pretty well. The .357 magnum ammo of the day didn't perform consistently while producing a lot more recoil and muzzle blast (which surely looked and sounded more impressive), but it still worked pretty good if you could shoot.
Today thanks to the application of scientific rigor to the pursuit of terminal ballistics (bringing it away from a pursuit more akin to alchemy prior to Miami) we have 9mm ammunition that out-performs the 125 grain .357 magnum loads of legend. The bullets have been tuned to reliably penetrate and expand at a specific range of velocity, and the designs have been refined to the point where they even offer that reliable performance through heavy clothing and intermediate barriers. Of course, we also have similarly well-designed loads in .40 S&W, .357 sig, and .45 ACP.
After more than 20 years of examining the results of police shootings using all those calibers, the people who crunched the numbers, performed the testing, and studied autopsies concluded that you have to hit those incredibly small pieces of anatomy with a handgun if you want to make somebody stop. In other words, it all worked pretty good if you could shoot.
When this reality was considered alongside the number of problems agencies were having with the most popular .40 caliber pistols (turns out they kept having problems with reliability and breakage on top of being more difficult to get people shooting competently), the number crunching agency decided to go to...a 9mm pistol. Because lots of real-world results show that it works pretty good...if you can shoot. And if you can't, there's no bigger bullet we can stuff into a handgun that will make a meaningful difference in the outcome.
On the rare occasions I leave the house carrying a revolver it's usually a lightweight J frame, usually loaded with match wadcutters. I stuff it with match wadcutters because I've done a lot of shooting with various loads in lightweight J frames and I've found that I am able to shoot with more precise accuracy at speed using wadcutters vs. the technologically advanced JHP's stuffed on top of as much gunpowder as they can cram in a .38 spl. casing.
JHP's that quite often fail to expand when fired out of said J frames because it turns out that even when stuffed on top of as much gunpowder as you can cram into a .38 spl case, the 1 7/8" barrel doesn't reliably let the bullet to get travelling fast enough to perform as intended. Especially if the temperatures are cold. In which case all that extra gunpowder just gives you more blast, flash, and recoil for somewhat worse performance in tissue than the wadcutters. But they still work...if you can shoot.
The wadcutters let me can shoot considerably better since they hit to the sights and don't try like the dickens to wrench the gun out of my hands. So it's an easy choice.
I put the +P JHP's in my model 12 snub because I can get a full grip on that gun and the sights, such as they are, are much easier to use. The recoil isn't really a factor thanks to the extra grip I can achieve on the K frame. Of course, the only time I'm carrying that is when I'm in my gym shorts at home and there's usually a 12 gauge a few steps away.
3/15/2016
I think that's a given and well understood, at least for most people here. The issue becomes more marginal hits. A round that would have penetrated into the brain instead glancing off the skull because the angle was a bit too shallow, or a round that rides a rib for the same reason. What would have been "into a bit that matters" is now not. There are only a few ways to give you more margin of error for skipping off bone. Weight, speed, and bullet construction are really all you've got. Lighter, slower, and more rounded bullets that work samey-samey in a shot into the bridge of the nose as their heavier, faster, sharper shouldered brethren will likely not fare as well when the angles start to open up, round bone is hit, intermediate barriers come into play, etc.
Sorta around sometimes for some of your shitty mod needs.
Ive fucked up shit with 855 and standard buckshot and trust their ability to continue to fuck shit up. My personal ARs are loaded with 77gr hpbt and my shotguns with 9pellet flight control.
IIRC Jim Cirillo was a user of .38 special and 158gr SWCs. Or maybe it was 110 grain Super Vel JHP rounds...i forget.
I think his partner Bill Allard used a Colt National Match in .45 with SWCs as well.
Those guys could shoot pretty well though. Both regularly attended PPC or Bullseye matches and they used their sights to get rounds on target and that's probably got a bit to do with why they did so well in gun battles.
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At the Snubby Summit, in 2005, Jim Cirillo gave a presentation on his preference for a full wadcutter type of bullet. He did not say that was what he used in his SOU shootings, and I do not remember whether he mentioned the load that he did use.
Buffalo Bore, and, IIRC, Underwood, load full wadcutter bullets, in .38 Special ammo, these days. I may have to order some, in .38 Special, especially if none of the usual dealers get any fresh Federal Gold Medal Match Wadcutters.
Last edited by Rex G; 12-01-2020 at 09:52 PM.
Retar’d LE. Kinesthetic dufus.
Don’t tread on volcanos!
Buffalo bore is a lot hotter than federal match. That said, I like it in my LCR.
All: you’re not a revolver connoisseur if you don’t have a stash of unobtanium .357 loads with a rep for working ok... just saying...
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