Compensators and ports are good ideas they said, trust me they said….

[jetfire]

It's kind of a pet theory/idea of mine that the impressive muzzle blast is the reason the .357 magnum performs better in real life results then the on paper numbers would seem to indicate. So, you know, maybe it's a feature and not a bug.

I have had this exact conversation at some length with DB, and we (all three of us) agree that the 357 might have the side effect of producing more psychological stops because people realize they've been shot when they see all the blast and flash. Shame that something like that is impossible to test.

[MandoWookie]

A little off topic but still somewhat related. I recently bought a Ruger AR-15 SBR. It has an 18" barrel with a compensator instead of a flash hider. It results in a very soft shooting AR, but the concussion is really impressive! It literally hits you when shooting over a bag. When my brother shot it for the first time it shredded a bunch of paper targets lying under the bag.

??? 18" isn't SBR length, it's 2" longer than the legal minimum of 16". Unless you mean something different than I assume.

[JimLob65]

??? 18" isn't SBR length, it's 2" longer than the legal minimum of 16". Unless you mean something different than I assume.

Oops... My mistake. Meant to say MPR, not SBR. Sorry.....

[Wonder9]

I wonder if it was ketamine or jenkem that lead engineers to put porting on small defensive firearms.

I'm looking right at you S&W PC Shields.

[Hambo]

I think Nyeti/DaggaBoy has also expressed the idea, but I may be misremembering.

On the ammo, nothing comes to mind other than "Hollywood blanks".

Didn't Chuck Haggard also talk about his J-frame "flash-bang"?

About the ammo, I was thinking "cheap" and "Russian" are part of the equation.

[jh9]

As someone who shoots Hybra-Ported SP101s in .357 Magnum and a 9x23 2011 with "poppel" holes, I find it interesting to place an 8.5" by 11" sheet of paper a few inches over the comps/ports and see what the paper collects with various ammo used in the pistols. So far, the SP101s have dumped some powder on the page with no tears or burns. The 9x23 is another story; that gun tears the paper.

I have no issues shooting the SP101s from retention; I am not going to try the 9x23 even I did have delusions of carrying a six-inch 2011.

Do you know how something magnaported would compare?

There are a couple guns I've thought about getting ported (as opposed to an add-on comp) but never really looked into it since I assumed they were all equally damaging if you angled one of the ports wrong without adequate eyepro.

[jandbj]

I shot an entire snubby class with a magnaported 442... including through the coat pocket drills. Other than shredding the pocket a tiny bit more than the unported gun I used in a prior class, there was essentially zero difference in handling.

Tried the sheet of paper 12” above to test what effect it would have on shooting from retention.

Personally, I have no concerns with the magnaport design, but also saw no real benefit to the porting on my sample of 1. I think magnum pressures would make a noticeable difference. I’ve always wanted to try a S&W model 19 powerport.

[Forte Smitten Wesson]

That's pretty crazy. My carry gun is a S&W Performance Center M&P40 Shield with a ported barrel, which I later replaced with an Alpha Wolf Threaded Barrel, and bought a Kaw Valley Precision Linear Compensator just because. I shot it at night on Independence Day, yet the muzzle flash wasn't anywhere near as spectacular as what is shown in your pics.

Granted that it was just CCI Blazer Brass target loads that I was shooting, but I always thought that the muzzle flash of .40 S&W out of a ported barrel/compensator would be bigger/brighter than 9mm. Guess I was wrong.

[JCN]

I was shooting frangible ammo in the first picture.

I was able to order a PMM comp this go around so will do some back to back testing.

[DpdG]

I have minimal experience shooting comps, but frangible makes a big difference. That stuff tends to be quite dirty and I suspect they start shedding projectile materiel (compressed copper powder?) basically upon ignition. In addition, all frang I have seen is significantly lower projectile weight and likely less total energy to run the comp than standard loadings. Perhaps that’s what the picture is showing?