“Optimized for Secret Agents.” Hey, I’m just reading what’s on the box!
No, I don’t know how these bullets are optimized for secret agents. I suspect someone at Missouri Bullet Company has a sense of humor and doesn’t know James Bond’s PPK was a .32 ACP.
I’m waiting for a tool to arrive to replace the one tool in my shop I pretty much can’t do anything without, and I was recently given a box of 1000 of these 95gr. bullets so it seemed like a good time to try these out. They look good and are very consistent in weight and diameter as you might expect from this company, with a black coating designed to reduce leading.
I could not find load data among my usual trusted sources for a 95gr. cast bullet, so I pored over other loads for a while and settled in 3.8gr. of Unique. I have Magtech no.1-1/2 small pistol primers and used those. The average of five shots from a 2-3/4″ barrel was 800 fps. on the nose, with an extreme spread of 82 fps.
These bullets are at 18 Brinell hardness which is pretty hard, and between that, the coating and the appropriate velocity I have no concerns about leading. All loads cycled the gun properly, but Linda’s Sig P-238 needed to re-strike the Magtech primers on three occasions. I have noted that these primers are unusually hard, and several of our guns have issues with them. *shrug*
So looks like a useful and reasonable target load. I’ll add it to the Reloads page.
I know, this isn’t ‘Tinker Talks Cars,’ but bear with me here.
I like old cars. They have history, character and sometimes represent a seminal change in the industry. They can be a functional and useful piece of rolling history. But, and this is a big one, modern cars are better by any and every objective standard.
The cars that many people of my generation revere were less safe, less reliable and less durable than modern cars. The cars I grew up with almost universally had bad brakes, horrible gas mileage and despite being made out of steel instead of ‘recycled beer cans’ were flimsier than modern cars. Yes, if you took exceptional care of them and got a car built on Wednesday they could last a long time. But they required constant maintenance to stay on the road. Rebuilding the heads was ‘maintenance’ and rebuilding the engine at 50-80K miles was not unusual. While they often wafted down the road like a magic carpet they handled like a bowl of pudding on wet linoleum. Oh, and if you wafted down the road for an extended period of time you were likely to have a sore-butt and a stiff back when you stopped. YMMV.
My old Afa Romeo. It was a great car, but not a very good car.
Still, I have some affection for these cars and not all cars were created equal; there were exceptions that proved the rules. Sometimes a particular car, while sharing the general faults of its age-mates, has a particular feature that appeals to us and makes the inconvenience worthwhile. For a number of years my daily driver was a 1974 Alfa Romeo 2000 Spider. While it’s performance limits were lower than its modern equivalents it’s exceptionally tactile driving experience and heavenly engine noises made up for that. Got non-tragic mileage too, which is a plus.
But it was expensive to keep working. While it had more utility than you might imagine it was not great in that department and if I ever got in a serious accident I was dead. We don’t often think of it but driving is a life-or-death activity and accepting that increased risk of death for intangible benefits was not an entirely rational decision. Eventually it just got too expensive to keep on the road and we sadly parted with it.
The average car of today gets several times the gas mileage, stops from 60 mph is 1/3 to 1/2 the distance, can go around corners faster and you are enormously more likely to survive an accident. Rebuild the engine at 50-60K miles? Dude, your first tune-up is at 100K! Yes, you still need to change the oil after a few thousand miles; some things don’t change.
No, cars were not better in the good old days, we just had a crappy standard for comparison. Oh, and when they were new they did not have ‘more character,’ they were just what cars were like then. The ‘character’ thing comes from their relative rarity and our memories of them.
You see where I am going with this. A 1968 Mustang is cool and it will still get you from Point A to Point B, but seriously it’s not going to do so as well, as fast, as safely, as reliably or efficiently as a 2023 Ford Mustang.
I know, that’s not why one would choose to drive the ’68 Mustang over the ’23 Mustang. You drive the classic because it’s cool and you feel good doing it. But if someone t-bones you I guarantee you will miss the side-impact beams and airbags of the newer car. If you are alive to do so.
You see where I am going with this, right?
If I am hosting a gun-related social event or am attending a certain sort of barbecue I am going to pack a cool gun over a practical one. Risk is low, the gun is still likely to do anything I actually need and I’ll have plenty of back-up. I can afford the potential or actual lesser practicality of the cooler gun. But day-to-day, in less controlled and predictable environments another choice might be prudent.
No, this does not mean I need to always have a Glock 19 and two 20-round magazines on my person, but a modern and sensible option generally speaking seems like a good idea.
I’m human and sometimes I just can’t be bothered. For some time if I was running out to the local convenience store for a pack of smokes and a Maple Bar for the wife I’d toss and Airweight Chief’s Special in one pocket and a speed-loader in the other and call it good. This wasn’t stupid; having lived in the neighborhood and patronized that store for almost 25 years I have a decent handle on the level and type of threat that’s likely. I didn’t do this because the gun was cool, for nostalgia or to feel good. I did it because it was probably adequate, its was handy and I was lazy. So what changed?
Not the store. Not the neighborhood. Not the perceived threats. No, the thing that changed was I got an option that is more likely to be adequate and is just as handy and easy. I get to keep being lazy but be better equipped while doing so.
If you’re interested that’s the Taurus G2S from the $200 challenge, which has yet to have a malfunction and is surprisingly shootable. It’s also very flat, not too heavy and drops nicely to a pants-pocket for a five-minute jaunt in a low-threat scenario, and it is undeniably more capable than the old S&W in almost every way.
If you’ve been paying attention at all you know I absolutely love old guns. I also love doughnuts and while they have their time and place they are not a valid staple for one’s diet. My go-to EDC is a modern pistol, and while I may change that in the near-future to an older style of gun it possesses modern features and significantly enhanced capability.
I’m a walking case of ‘do as I say, not as I do.’ I have an apprentice (a student really) in my knife-making shop. I frequently remind him to follow the rules even when he sees me breaking them, and I’ve explained that I do so because I’ve been doing this forever and know what I can get away with. He needs to follow the rules because he does not have that experience.
The Colt detective Special, a classic 20th C. self-defense pistol. Will it still work? Probably. Is it the best choice for you? Probably not.
I’m in a similar (though less expert) position when it comes to defensive pistols. I have been known to carry obsolete pistols for self-defense, including revolvers and 1911s. Some people regard me as an ‘expert’ and might take that fact as advice to do so themselves. It isn’t. It totally isn’t, and don’t take that as a recommendation!
I often stress that we are individuals and there is no one-size-fits-all solution to self-defense pistols. What I sometimes forget to mention is that there are a plethora of one-size-fits-most solutions, and I recommend that new owners avail themselves of them. When asked what they should look at I usually tell new gun owners to look at Glocks, S&W M&Ps and Sig P365s. These are good, modern guns that have proven themselves in use and have good features for the purpose. They are very well-suited for the task and should be the place most people start.
CZ P-07. Classic operation, modern features. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but a modern, very capable gun.
I have long maintained that the 1911/2011 platform is for advanced users; yes, it can yield exceptional results but it has more points-of-failure in use than more modern guns. A dedicated user who trains properly can overcome these issues. I’ve had people point to the use of these pistols as a military service weapon to counter this point, but context is everything. The military carried hammer-down on an empty chamber, and trained us to draw the weapon and rack the slide. The safety was there to make the gun safe after shooting, not before or during.
Here’s this posts first ‘mic-drop’ moment: We kept the 1911a1 as our service pistol for 70 years not because it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, but because it was literally the least important weapon we used, it was good enough mostly, and it would be a big, expensive hassle to replace it.
The Glock 19 has become the standard by which all other self-defense pistols are judged. There are reasons why that is that bear consideration.
Don’t get me wrong, while I view the platform as obsolete a properly prepared 1911-based gun can return extraordinary results in the hands of a skilled user. But a new shooter is not, by definition, that person. Another thing to consider is that the average person employing a pistol for self-defense needs ordinary results, not extraordinary ones. It needs to go bang every single time and put the bullets approximately where the user needs them to go. There are any number of models and configurations that qualify among modern pistols, and no compelling reason not to use them until or unless one achieves an extraordinary level of skill. Even then it’s arguably not necessary.
So yeah, my carry gun of choice is a custom 1911 tailor-made for me. This is despite it’s antiquated features and relatively low capacity. I have great confidence in the gun and my ability to use it effectively. This is because I have decades of experience to rely on, and in my hands the gun can deliver extraordinary results. I am also extremely comfortable with it, and the manual-of-arms is basically hard-wired at this point. Does that make this an entirely rational decision on my part? No, and here’s why.
I can get good enough results for civilian self defense with a large variety of pistols, notably pistols that are more modern, have better features and are generally better suited to my needs. But it’s not always about need. I feel more confident with the 1911a1 because of long familiarity with the platform and knowing it can return those unnecessarily good results.
The Conventional Wisdom is never absolutely correct for every single individual and situation, but it’s the Conventional Wisdom for a reason. It applies to most people in most situations and odds are better than not it applies to you. In a gunfight any gun is better than no gun, but a lot of very smart people have spent a lot of time and effort making guns specifically for self-defense and they are very well suited-to-purpose. Odds are good one of them will work for you. Why wouldn’t you use it? It had better not be because some old fart with unusual and largely obsolete experience tells you different. That would be just dumb.
So start with the go-to guns from Glock, S&W, Sig, Beretta and others. Find what works for you and train with it. If those options don’t work for you by all means venture further afield, but start with the standard options. They’re standard for a reason: they are fit for task for a very large majority of people.
