…it’s complicated, because sometimes bigger isn’t really as ‘bigger’ as you might think.

Proponents of the larger calibers point out that a bigger hole does more damage. A bigger hole also means blood pressure drops faster. Seems like a no-brainer, right? But the collected data from actual gunfights doesn’t support this conclusion.

Research in recent years has shown little significant difference in the real-world performance of different calibers between .380 ACP all the way through .44 Magnum when multiple shots are fired. Service calibers (.38 Special, 9x19mm, .357 magnum, .40 S&W, 10mm and .45 ACP) actually perform surprisingly similar shot-for-shot too.. This is baffling; there’s a lot of variation there.

Here’s an experiment that may help explain this: get a thick piece of rubber and shoot it with a .380 ACP and a .45 ACP then look at the holes. The difference between the holes isn’t obvious. That’s because the material is elastic and stretches around the bullet as it passes through, then snaps back. The trick is that human flesh is also elastic and tends to do the same thing.

Regardless of the specific cartridge we’re looking at bullets between .355″ and .451″ in diameter. The difference is 1/10″. That’s not much, and as it turns out it’s not enough to overcome the elasticity of human flesh. Coroners and emergency-room personnel report that they often cannot tell what caliber produced a gunshot wound from a handgun until or unless they find the actual bullet that produced it. This is because flesh is elastic. We’re stretchy.

In other words the ‘hole,’ called the Permanent Wound Cavity, of a .45 ACP isn’t actually significantly larger than the one produced by the .380.

Surprisingly hollow-points don’t change the equation as much as you might expect. Modern hollow-points expand quite a bit, and if you’re relying on blood-loss to stop an attacker the extra damage of a large-bore expanded hollow-point is likely to speed things up slightly. Maybe not enough to make a difference though; an attacker that still has time to kill you isn’t ‘stopped’ in any meaningful sense. Neural Shock from shockwaves transmitted through the body may or may not have an effect, but this seems to be unreliable at best as a stopping mechanism.

The simple truth is that the way you stop an attacker with a handgun (quickly enough to do you any good) is to hit the central nervous system or major elements of the circulatory system, specifically the heart and major arteries. Any bullet that penetrates deeply enough to break the things you need to break can do the job. Any bullet that doesn’t hit these things relies on other methods like gross physical damage to non-vital structures, which is generally a pretty slow way to stop an attacker. In those cases a larger expanding hollow-point bullet is likely to do at least a slightly better job, but that might not be enough to make up for slower follow-up shots.

This may in part be because there are two kinds of ‘stops;’ the Soft Stop and Hard Stop. A Soft Stop (often called a Psychological Stop) occurs when the person consciously or unconsciously, simply gives up or runs away. A Hard Stop (called a Physiological Stop) occurs when an attacker is physically incapable of continuing their attack. A hit in the hand from a .25 Auto can produce a Soft Stop. A hit from a .44 magnum that misses everything immediately relevant can’t produce a Hard Stop. The only way either caliber produces a Hard Stop is to hit the central nervous system, which either caliber can do, or cause catastrophic damage to the circulatory system. An expanded .44 magnum JHP is a lot more likely to cause the latter than a .25 ACP, but .25 isn’t really part of this discussion.

Any bullet that hits the CNS or major elements of the cardio-vascular system is likely to stop someone pretty quickly. In the chaos of a gunfight you are shooting at a relatively small target that you can’t necessarily even see; more chances to hit those targets might be a good idea. Also if the situation is bad enough that you legitimately need to shoot someone you need them to stop as quickly as possible, so being able to put repeated hits on the target as quickly as you can manage is important.

This is why the FBI went back to 9x19mm. It has enough penetration, and recoil is light enough that the average agent can learn to put multiple hits on target fast. On the balance they feel it works better for their needs than a more potent caliber, even if it could be demonstrated that round was significantly more effective. Which, based on the data available, it can’t.

Then there are the variables. The attacker’s physiology; large small, skinny, heavy, fat; these things all make a difference. As does the attacker’s psychology and mental state. How committed are they? What is their goal? An attacker that wants your wallet is going to be a lot easier to achieve a Soft Stop on than one that is absolutely determined to take you down with them. While we’re at it let’s talk about chemicals; are they drunk? Stoned? How much and on what? Is an attacker likely to be in light clothing or bundled up like an Arctic explorer? There’s also movement, environment, barriers, innocent bystanders… the list goes on and on.

So we can all just pack a pocket .380 and call it good? Probably not. For a person living in an urban environment where the principle threat is a full-frontal confrontation with a mugger or perhaps a car-jacking attempt that might well do fine. But someone living in a rural area that might encounter hostile wildlife might reasonably think a 10mm is better suited to their needs. In an apartment building over-penetration is a serious consideration; in a sprawling suburban neighborhood rather less so and in rural environments it could be a non-issue.

I’ve also talked before about the difference between police use of deadly force and civilian needs. The civilian is much less likely to encounter a committed attacker, less likely to need to penetrate barricades or engage in a protracted fight, less likely to have to fight at any significant range and is more likely to have the option of disengaging if circumstances allow. Caliber and weapon selection is different for civilians based on the most likely threats, and there’s a balance each of us has to find based on our individual lives, skills and circumstances.

All this being said ammo selection is not irrelevant; whatever caliber you choose modern, proven defensive ammunition should be employed in whatever caliber you select. Maybe it’s just stacking the odds in your favor, but that’s definitely worth doing when lives are on the line.

I think it is possible that some calibers are somewhat more effective than others, but with all the variables involved, real-life shootings seem to indicate that difference between calibers alone is not decisive. Consider your own physique, skills, abilities, style of dress and circumstances and choose based on that rather than some dubious thought that a given caliber is a better ‘stopper.’

Michael Tinker Pearce, 26 May 2021

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An article on this topic was pointed out to me and I was asked my opinion of the cartridges specified. I started to answer, but thought, ‘Hey, I should do my own version for my blog.’ So here it is. I might add a cartridge or two even.

Mind you I am restricting myself to cartridges that were once popular or were recently introduced but fell flat. There are a host of others that are clearly already obsolete, never attained any real popularity or were never offered in a commercial platform. I’ll be building one of those very soon, so you’ll get to read all about it before too long.

So, in order of diameter…

.25 Auto/ 6.35mm

People like small, clever things. These days it’s electronics, but at the turn of the 20thC. it was pistols.

.22 revolvers had been around since the mid-19th C., but semi-autos were the New Hotness. Sadly .22 LR of the time was not a good choice for tiny autos; no one had any depth of experience adapting it to the platform and a rimmed cartridge in a semi-auto isn’t an intuitive match. John Moses Browning designed a cartridge specifically to fill the role of .22LR in tiny self-loaders, and it worked. By that I mean that tiny guns could be made to function with it. Like the .22LR it was always a marginal prospect for self-defense.

But as time marched on people largely lost interest in micro-pistols, and had learned to make .22 LR work in them for the small market that remained.

Since the GCA68 basically killed the importation of these guns the cartridge has been fading into obscurity. .25 ACP has received no meaningful development since it’s introduction, and while it can be improved on there’s been little impetus to try. Given the millions of guns chambered for it in circulation it’s likely to continue to hang on for a long time, but it is definitely fallen entirely out of relevance.

.32 ACP/ 7.65mm Auto

Famous for equipping a fictional spy and killing a dictator far too late, this was the first wildly successful semi-auto pistol cartridge.

This cartridge has a long and storied history, and was used as a duty weapon well into the 1970’s. It was replaced in service by 9x19mm, not because it wasn’t working but because it was felt to have inadequate penetration against emerging threats.

.32 ACP has two issues: One, it doesn’t quite have the power to make hollow-points both work and penetrate deeply enough for reliable use and two, it only works effectively if you can shoot. Ball ammunition has to be placed precisely to be effective regardless of caliber. and people are convinced that they can substitute diameter for skill. They can’t, but since they almost never have to actually shoot anyone the idea persists.

.32 ACPs final problem is .380 ACP. It has just enough power to make hollow-points work and penetrate deeply enough if you shop around, and you just can’t make a .32 enough smaller than a .380 to justify the perceived lesser effectiveness of the smaller round. Let me be clear- a modern hollow-point bullet that both expands and penetrates adequately is better than ball ammo, but that doesn’t mean non-expanding ammo can’t do the job… if you can shoot.

Like the .25 Auto there are millions and millions of these pistols in circulation, and while ammo is likely to remain available for decades this cartridge’s day has passed.

.32 H&R Magnum

Let’s make one thing perfectly clear from the start. This is a fake magnum that only exists because Harrington & Richardson didn’t want to admit their normal .32s weren’t capable of realizing the full potential of .32 S&W Long without suffering a premature death.

Older reloading manuals show loads that equal or exceed the power of .32 H&R Magnum for .32 S&W Long, but there were a lot of crappy guns sold that wouldn’t hold up to prolonged use with these loads. These .32 S&W Long loads are decent, low-recoil equivalents (in power) of .38 Special, and in a J-frame you get an extra shot. So H&R made the cartridge slightly longer, made a gun as good as it should have been all along and pretended they’d done something new.

It’s hung on by it’s figurative fingernails for decades, but the death-knell was struck when the .327 Magnum came along with 150-200% more power in the same size package. While .32 S&W Long remains a popular caliber for target shooting, small game and even self-defense in the rest of the world it’s popularity has waned in the US. Despite being more recent the .32 H&R Magnum isn’t as popular even in the USA, let alone the rest of the world. Buy one if you like, but be prepared to handload for it, because it’s slipping away.

.357 Sig

At some point it occurred to someone at Sig that they could bottleneck a .40 S&W to .357 and have an equivalent to .38 Super that would fit in a 9mm frame.

Once again it worked pretty much as planned. They overlooked one small thing though. Except for competition shooters in the 1980’s that figured out they could use .38 Super to game the rules of IPSC nobody wanted a .38 Super, and they didn’t want .357 Sig either. More expense, muzzle blast and recoil than 9mm without a demonstrable increase in effectiveness sufficient to justify it.

Various Law Enforcement agencies flirted with it for a time and it has its fans, but essentially it’s dying of apathy. There’s nothing wrong with it really, it’s just that no one cares. It might not vanish from the scene, but it’s well along the path to obscurity.

.40 S&W Auto

No photo for this one… the only .40 S&W I own is a HiPoint I bought for $75, and I’m embarrassed to show you. Just imagine a 9mm; that’s what they all look like anyway.

This cartridge is the answer to a question that would never have been asked if people had better sense, or at least it’s parent cartridge the 10mm Auto was. In the 1980’s the 9mm was perceived as having failed the FBI in the 1986 Miami shootout. It didn’t; tactics, training and doctrine did, but we needn’t go into that here. It was felt it was easier to address caliber than training and culture, and so the 10mm auto was adopted.

Essentially this was a .41 magnum that fit in a Government model or other service-sized handguns. Like .41 Magnum (which we’ll discuss later) it was too much for the job for most people. It’s an excellent cartridge, but it’s recoil demands serious training to master. S&W shortened the 10mm to fit in a 9mm magazine and lowered it’s power to make it easier to train with and a star was born. The FBI and other LE agencies adopted it in droves. It did the job and everyone and their sister Sally was enamored of it. But…

It offered slightly fewer shots than 9mm, with more recoil, greater cost and a steeper training curve without any evidence that it actually worked better… at least not enough better to justify it’s deficiencies. Eventually the FBI threw it under the bus and went back to 9x19mm. Law enforcement agencies followed in droves.

Thing is, it’s a perfectly good caliber, and with the glut of surplus duty guns flooding the market it’s not going away any time soon… but it’s another peg without a hole and it’s likely to fade away in time.

The .41 Magnum

Despite owning the distinction of being nearly the only cartridge that is actually the diameter it claims to be, the .41 magnum was never supposed to be.

In the 1960s hollow-point ammunition was not well developed or particularly reliable, and a bunch of boffins got together and said, ‘wouldn’t it be great to make a gun more effective than a .38 Special with less recoil than a .44 Special or .45 Colt for police duty?’

It wasn’t a bad idea, and they proposed a .41 caliber cartridge that would launch a 200gr LSWC at 900 fps from a duty revolver. Remington agreed, and took up the idea and ran with it… straight down a rabbit hole. They upped the power enough to negate the cartridge’s advantages as a police duty round, but not far enough to really compete with their .44 Magnum. Well played, Remington. Well played.

A few agencies adopted it briefly, but recoil and penetration were excessive and it took dedicated training to master… all to do nothing that .357 magnum wasn’t already doing just fine, thank you.

Again, it’s a great cartridge. It can be loaded light for self-defense, heavy for big game or anything in between; it’s quite versatile. I personally love this cartridge and think it’s wonderful, but while it has always had its fans it never set the world on fire. A lot of younger shooters have never even heard of it. It hangs on as a niche cartridge, developing just enough new fans to keep staggering along. Predictions of it’s demise have been made routinely since the 1970s and it’s still with us. I’m not sure it’s ever going to completely go away.

.45 GAP

At some point it occurred to the folks at Glock that with modern propellants there was no need for .45 ACP to be as long as it is. Consequently if they made it short enough to fit in a 9mm magazine they could easily adapt their existing platforms to it.

It worked just fine. The problem was basically people that wanted a .45 didn’t want a Glock. The operation was a success, but the patient died. Not much more to say about it.

That’s my round-up of cartridges teetering on the brink of the dumpster of history. I hope you enjoyed it and maybe found it educational.

Take care and stay safe.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 15 may 2021.

I admit it, I am. I’ve put an inordinate amount of thought into a scenario even less likely than being involved in a self-defense shooting. I’ve spent a great deal of time putting together a ‘Pooping-In-The-Woods-Oh-My-God-Is-That-a-Bear?’ gun.

Here’s the scenario: I’m out in the woods with no rifle or shotgun within reach, and some hostile wildlife comes by to have a look. I want to have a gun on hand to discourage their curiosity.

Locally we have Black Bears, which are inquisitive creatures. We also have cougars (oh grow up) that are known to wander deep into cities to gaze hungrily through the fences around elementary schools. In The Scablands it is not un-heard of for these critters to contest the ownership of a fresh-shot Mule Deer. It seems prudent to have a potent sidearm handy.

All of which is, of course, just a cheesy way of justifying getting a big-bore snubby. Which I did, and have written about here before.

Selection Criteria

Black Bears aren’t Grizzlies, but they can get up to 200-300 lbs. and are extremely strong. They generally aren’t aggressive and will often flee an approaching human. But Black Bears, well, they’re notional. Most likely they’ll make themselves scarce, but they might decide to join you in your tent for a little snack, or decide to play with you until you break. Or just eat you. A momma bear can decide you’re too close to her cubs when you had no idea they were within a mile of you, so it’s not totally ridiculous to be prepared.

People have defended themselves from bears of all kinds with all sorts of handguns, but the smart money has traditionally been on a magnum that begins with ‘4.’ Whatever people choose, penetration is a must, and I mean a lot more penetration than self-defense ammunition offers. A heavy bullet stepping out fast is the ticket; something that will blast through heavy bone and still have enough penetration to reach the important stuff.

The long-running favorite for the role is the .44 Magnum, and it suits the bill, but they are expensive (for my budget) and you have a choice between ‘really heavy’ and ‘really brutal to shoot.’ The first is undesirable because I’m old and fat, and the second is so unpleasant that follow-up shots may be too slow, and a gun that hurts is a gun few people will practice with.

So, high penetration, not too heavy but not excessively painful to shoot, easily packable, fast follow-up shots and launching a heavy bullet at reasonable speed… sounds like a perfect reason to buy that Taurus Model 415 .41 magnum I’ve always wanted but could never justify. “But honey, you don’t want me eaten by a bear, do you?”

The Taurus Model 415

In 1999 Taurus decided that what the world really needed was a compact, stainless, snub-nosed 5-shot double-action .41 Magnum based on their Tracker series. This was offered with a 2-1/2″ ported barrel, fixed sights and a ribbed rubber grip to help take the sting out of the not-insignificant recoil. The steel version of the gun weighs in at 30 oz. and is sized like a slightly beefy K-frame. For comparison my 3″ pencil-barrel .38 Special K-Frame weighs in at 28 oz. (Taurus also offered a Titanium version for people that hate themselves that was a full 9 oz. lighter.)

The smallish, relatively light magnum was not, as it turns out, what the world was looking for at that time and production was discontinued in 2003. These guns can still be had, however, though if you don’t want to search around you might wind up paying a premium for it.

The rubber grips do a fair job of managing the recoil, but they don’t make this a pleasant gun to shoot with full-power ammo. I also don’t like the way they can snag on cover-garments. I tried some home-made grips, and while they offered excellent control and fast follow-up shots they hurt. I needed a better solution. This came in the form of a pair of fancy grips I got for Christmas one year. They are quite large, and are covered in black enamel with inlays of abalone and mother-of-pearl. Subtle they are not, but they tame the recoil better than even the factory grips.

Further Foolery

Of course that matte stainless finish just looked wrong with those fancy grips, so I polished the gun to a ‘bright’ finish, stopping short of a full mirror-polish. Much better.

With a need to get off an accurate shot fast I relieved the right-side of the trigger-guard, as I do on most of my carry revolvers. This lets me get my trigger-finger from safely on the side of the frame to a proper position on the trigger without interference.

The stainless ramp sight was sub-optimal, so I coated it with my mix of enamel and lacquer to make it bright orange. This is great; highly visible, quick to acquire… and black after the first shot because of the three ports running along each side of the sight. No problem if I want to wipe off the front sight between shots. Yeah, no.

OK, I figured, if the sight is going to be black anyway make it black. I cut a step in the sight and carefully filed it to shape, then covered the sight and rear sight-notch with a mixture of soot and lacquer, which I have found holds up quite well.

OK, this works pretty well. The grip works, the sights are better. The DA trigger, while not awesome, is good enough. A proper holster, and it’s time to consider what to shoot out of it.

The Ammunition

Usually when contemplating defensive ammo I have concerns about over-penetration. Not this time; a I want all the pen I can get while remaining manageable. Factory ammo tends to be less-than-common in this caliber at the best of times, but since I reload I can tailor it to what I want.

I opted for J&J’s 210gr. copper-washed hard-cast LSWC as a staring point, and after consulting the reloading data opted for a charge of 9gr. of Unique with a Federal large pistol primer as a starting point. The Taurus launches this bullet at 1085 fps. for 549 ft./lbs. of energy at the muzzle. Not a screamer, but decently potent and relatively easy to shoot.

This turned out to be a pretty good choice; recoil is manageable and not unpleasant, and penetration? Yeah, it does that.

The bullet zipped through 25″ of Clear Ballistics 10% ordinance gel, just missed the final block of gel and smashed into the steel backstop hard enough to dent the hell out of it. It’s hard to tell in the picture, but the dent is deeper than the bullet is long. I’m guessing that will do the job if push comes shove, as long as I can actually put lead on the target.

Bears Beware!

Last fall it turned out a bear or two had moved onto the property I hunt, but they stayed well away from me. Obviously they was skeered of mah gun. I mean sure, I was also packing a 7-1/2″ .44 Magnum for deer, but I’m convinced it was this gun that kept me safe. *Nods earnestly*

But seriously, between a stout gun belt and a good holster I never even noticed I was packing the Taurus, and that’s what I really want. Out of sight, out of mind… but there if I need it.

Hmmm… now what kind of cheesy rationalization can I come up with for the next cool gun I have no use for?

Stay safe, and take care.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 9 May 2021

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