Good day of shooting at Champion Arms in Kent Washington!  Trying out new loads in .38 Special and .38 S&W, and brought some .32 S&W Long along because it has been too long since I shot the Detective Special.

The story begins with the Astra Police .38.  I’ve covered this in a previous blog so I won’t go into too much, but it’s a large-frame double-action revolver, somewhere around the size of a S&W L-Frame. They have a quick-release cylinder and you could get .38 Special or .357 Magnum cylinders. FN sold a very slightly modified version as the Barracuda with a .38/.357 cylinder and a 9mm cylinder, the only revolver FN has officially offered.

This gun has an excellent trigger, light, very smooth with no stacking. This is especially nice as the previous owner bobbed the hammer, so it is effectively double-action only. The sights are fixed but reasonably good. I enjoyed shooting this gun so much I ran through an entire box of ammo before I realized it.

The customized factory grips are very comfortable and easy on the hand, even with peppy loads. The first group was shot with 158gr. LSWCs over 4.3gr. of Unique with a CCI500 primer.  The 25-yard group was shot with 125gr. Montana Gold Brass-Plated Hollow-points over 5.3gr. of Unique with a CCI500 Primer.

Interesting thing with the Montana Gold hollow-points- the ammo loaded with them were mostly a very tight fit in the chambers, and some could not even be chambered at all. I have since heard that others have had this problem as well; apparently the procedure is to run them through a resizing die after seating the bullets. Live and learn, eh?

Moving on to the Fitz Special (no not a real one) I remembered that it shoots quite low. Naturally I only remember this at the range, not in my workshop where I could do something about it…

I didn’t spend a lot of time with the Fitz this time out- I was running out of ammo and I had dug out an old favorite- The Shopkeeper, a custom Cimarron Richards Mason Conversion belly gun. This is a seriously sweet-shooting gun. Light mainspring, super-crisp mechanism, good trigger. At one time this was my absolute favorite revolver, and it’s a near-run thing even now.

The photo on the left is a couple of cylinders fired at a rate of 1 shot/second. Yes, there are only nine holes- one bullet failed to ignite despite a heavy dimple in the primer. I’ve had reason to be unhappy with my latest brick of CCI500 Small Pistol Primers- this has happened rather a lot.  The photo on the right was aimed at the center of the target, and I screwed up my site alignment- but at least I did it consistently…

OK, firing this gun at a 25 yard target is ridiculous. This of course has never stopped me… I taped up the second target shown above and ran it all the way out.

That was pretty much the end of the .38 Special ammo- at least the ammo that would fit in a chamber… So. on the the next caliber- .38 S&W.

I brought two S&W .38 Double Action Safety Hammerless (4th Model) revolvers- The Steampunk Snubby and a very similar gun I put together for my wife… who decided she didn’t like shooting it. Linda’s has a nickel finish, has period Mother of Pearl grips and an aluminum grip adapter I made for it. The Steampunk Snubby is blued and has custom Desert Ironwood grips. This gun is one I carry around the shop, and out-and about when I need to be particularly discreet.

I haven’t shot Linda’s gun much, so I was curious to see how it would do. the trigger is not light, but it’s very, very smooth.

 

I was testing a new load this week. My standard load is a .361″ 150gr. SWC over 2.5gr. of Unique with a CCI500 primer.  Since my bore slugged at .361 this is perfect. These bullets are a finite resource however; they came from an estate sale, and Pinto’s has been trickling them out for some time but they are about used up.  I needed to find another bullet and load that would work, so I decided to experiment with a .357″ lead bullet, a 158gr. LSWC. I loaded these over 2.7gr. of Unique.

They worked a treat- accurate and no signs of key-holing. They do have notably more snap to them that my usual load, and I would not recommend them for some of the lower quality top-breaks; there is some likelihood a steady diet of these loads might cause them to shoot loose in short order.

I spent a good bit of time with this gun, firing strong and weak hand as well as my usual grip. The gun performed flawlessly, as expected, and as always was a pleasure to shoot.

Last but not least I trotted out my Colt Detective Special chambered in .32 New Police. Yeah, that’s just what they called .32 S&W long so that they wouldn’t have to mark ‘S&W’ on their gun. This gun was made in 1949 and fitted with a factory hammer shroud,  period after-market Franzite fake stag grips and a Tyler T-grip. The hot set-up in 1953 I am sure.

This gun has the best double-action trigger of any of my guns, and damn near the best I’ve ever experienced. It is in fact the gun that bumped The Storekeeper out of it’s number 1 slot as my favorite. The load used today was a 96gr. LRNFP over 2.5gr. of Red Dot with a CCI500 Primer. I did something a bit different today; I fired a rapid-fire group at 7 yards, taped it up and ran the target out to 10 yards, taped it, 15 yards, taped it, rinse and repeat for 20 and 25 yards. The results were interesting, and go a long way towards explaining why I love this gun! All groups were shot rapid-fire to see what would happen:

I haven’t practiced a huge amount with this gun, but that is going to change. I really, really like shooting this old Colt, and I cannot help but think that with more practice I could improve on these results. After this I fired up the rest of the rounds I had on hand, and then tried an experiment. I had a box of Fiocchi .32 ACP on hand, and I tried them in the Colt. Since this is a semi-rimmed cartridge there was no problem shooting them in a revolver, and they worked just fine and ejected cleanly and easily. The seemed slightly less powerful than my handloads and accuracy was what I expect from this gun.

 

Both targets were shot rapid-fire at seven yards with .32 ACP ball ammo. The left target was shot weak hand, the right shot strong-hand. Interestingly, since the gun has a short-stroke ejector the .32 ACP rounds were actually easier to eject that the .32 S&W Lo– uh, excuse me, .32 Colt New Police empties were.

I really, really like this gun. In my last post i mentioned that .22, .25 and .32 had about three times the failure rate of larger calibers in stopping an attacker with head and torso hits. Despite that I would not hesitate to bet my life on this gun, particularly if it were loaded with some of the stout Buffalo Bore SWCs. I am quite confident that I could put the rounds where they need to go if it should come to that.

So, a really great day at the range.  I wish I had loaded more of the LSWCs in .38 Special; I had my S&W M1905 M&P along, and it would not chamber the 125gr. loads at all, so it didn’t get fired at all.  Still, I can’t complain- it was a great way to start out the weekend!

Michael Tinker Pearce, 7 September 2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Handgun stopping power arguments rage throughout the gun community, most often 9mm vs. .45, but we’ve all seen about every conceivable variation over the years. Evan Marshall tried to study this back in the 1980’s by studying real-life shootings.  His study was flawed by only examining the percentage of incidents where only a single shot was involved. Still, we began to see a trend even then- statistically there didn’t seem to be a nickel’s worth of difference between service calibers.

Then a few years ago the FBI announced that they were going back to the 9mm, because their thirty years of studying the topic indicated no significant difference in stopping power between service calibers, therefore they will go with the caliber that offers the most shots in the magazine, the lowest recoil impulse and the greatest ease of training for a wide variety of personnel. It probably didn’t hurt that it’s also the cheapest of the options- a fact which many in the gun community seized on as the real reason, to the extend of accusing the FBI of being so eager to save a buck that they were putting the lives of their agents in danger.

Recently Greg Ellifritz published the results of his study of 1700 real-world shootings. What he discovered was informative, because he looked at the data in a different, and I think more relevant way. First we need to get some terms straight- what do we mean by ‘stopping power?’ In this case it means the attacker immediately ceased all hostile action– not one more shot fired, not one more blow thrown. If they were running they must have fallen within five feet and not undertaken any further hostile action.

We’re not really worried about lethality here; in a defensive shooting the overriding concern is that the attacker instantly stop doing whatever it was that made it necessary to shoot them. So the first relevant statistic he uncovered was the percentage of times a given handgun caliber produced a stop with a single hit anywhere on the body. This worked out to be about 35% of shootings– regardless of caliber. Pretty much every caliber fell within a 5% range, which does not represent a statistically significant difference between calibers.

These are examples of a ‘Soft Stop’ or ‘Psychological Stop.’  It happens because people don’t like being shot. Their brain, either consciously or unconsciously, says, “Nope, we’re done.”

The next relevant statistic was how many times a single hit to the head or torso caused a ‘Stop.’ This could be a Soft or Hard stop- the data doesn’t differentiate. Single hits from handguns to the head or torso produced a stop, either ‘Soft’ or ‘Hard’ an average of 2/3 of the time. This was regardless of caliber or whether hollow-points or ball ammunition was used. Some calibers were at the low end of this range, some at the high end, but none of them fell outside the standard margin for error. In other words no single handgun caliber stood out as significantly more likely to produce a stop with a single hit to the torso or head than any other caliber.

This is pretty counter-intuitive; I mean, seriously, a .22 handgun is as effective as a .357 Magnum? It seems unlikely. That’s when we get to the next category- failure rates.

Ellifritz’s data indicates that most calibers fail to stop with one or more hits to the head or torso about 15% of the time- except for .22, .25ACP  and .32ACP. These three calibers result in three times as many failures to stop as the other handgun calibers studied.  That’s far outside the range of statistical error. Essentially what his data indicates is that .380, .38 Special, 9mm, .45ACP. .357 Magnum etc. all work about as well in real-life shootings. .22, .25 and .32 work significantly less often.

This data is hemmed about in caveats of course. .22 and .44 Magnum had relatively small sample sizes, semi-autos might be less likely to produce single-hit stops because their high rate of fire might mean that additional shots were fired after the subject was stopped by the first shot etc.  Nonetheless the basic data appears sound, and moreover is in agreement with my own, less scientifically rigorous observations spanning several decades, and even more or less in agreement with the FBI’s extensive studies.

So we should all be carrying .380s? No. Other factors enter into it- barrier penetration, heavy clothing’s effect on penetration, concealment requirements etc. If you expect to encounter dangerous large animals this might affect your choice; large, fast heavy bullets pretty conclusively do work better on large animals, and they won’t work less well on human attackers. Also these are pretty raw figures; their are other factors that are not taken into account. A hit with a .22 to the cerebral spine will almost certainly stop someone. A hit with a .44 Magnum to an extremity might not. Yes, just like in real estate it’s location, location, location.

The conventional wisdom since the 1970 has been to put multiple hits center-mass. It’s good advice- it’s the part of the body that moves least, it’s the biggest target and the heart, aorta, and spine are all there. Multiple hits in that area will be more likely to disrupt some or all of these structures, which is likely to stop the attacker sooner rather than later. This is true with any caliber bullet, but it is significantly more likely to work with calibers .380 or larger.

So what should you carry? Any gun, in any caliber, that you can rapidly and reliably put hits on target with that meets your needs for carry and concealment. If circumstances allow carry a weapon .380 caliber or larger– provided you can rapidly and reliably put hits on target. If high penetration is a requirement carry a 9mm, .357 Magnum, a 10mm or other gun known to have high penetration– provided you can rapidly and reliably put hits on target. If dangerous animals are in the equation something that fires a large, heavy bullet at a decent velocity– provided… well, you know. If you want to stack the odds the smart money says to carry modern defensive hollow-points, and there’s no way that more shots is a bad thing.

I have two guns that I carry regularly. If more discretion is required I carry a custom S&W .38 Safety Hammerless in .38 S&W. It holds five shots comparable in power to a .380. It’s loaded with lead semi-wadcutters. If enough clothes are being worn to conceal it properly I carry a Detonics Mk.1 Combat Master .45 that holds seven rounds. It’s loaded with modern hollow-points.

Two very different guns with very different ammunition– so what’s the common thread? I can rapid-fire both guns with a high degree of accuracy at defensive ranges, I enjoy shooting them, and they are easy to carry.  Objectively there are better choices; guns that are lighter and hold more rounds, but these two work for me. That’s what really matters in the end- that you are comfortable with the weapon, have it with you when you need it and can employ it effectively.

 

Michael Tinker Pearce, 1 September 2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I spent some quality time after my last range trip to rectify a few of the faults from last time, and to make the final repair on the Webley RIC.

The Webley is supposed to have a flat spring in a slot in the cylinder-pin. Without it the cylinder rotates too freely; you’d fire two shots and the weight of the three loaded rounds would cause the cylinder to rotate backwards when you start to pull the trigger, and you wind up re-striking the cartridge you’ve already fired.  The original was missing and a replacement was unobtainable, so I fabricated a new one and tried it out.

It worked a treat. The gun is a tiny bit fussy about ammunition, but overall it functioned fine and shot well. I fired it at seven yards and then at five yards, with pretty decent results:

The load used was a 200gr HG68 SWC over 4.0gr. of Unique with a CCI300 primer. The only issue was occasional failures to ignite on the first strike; the firing pin strikes off-center and CCI primers tend to be a bit hard. I’m going to try Winchester or Remington primers next time.

Next up was the ASM New Dakota SAA. I’d already shortened the sight once and it wasn’t quite enough, so I shortened it a bit more. Now it’s shooting a touch high, though honestly that might be an aiming error on my part. It is shooting a bit to the left, and I may shave the sight a bit to bring the POI on-center.

The J.P.Sauer & Sohn custom Sheriff was shooting massively high, so I removed the front sight and replaced it with a taller sight that I made. this solved the problem with shooting high- it now shoots a little low, but that’s OK; it’s a lot easier to make a sight shorter than it is to make it taller. I also corrected the slight cant of the sight that was causing it to shoot to the left.

I’m liking this gun quite a bit- it’s accurate, easy to pack and, since it’s built on a .44 Magnum frame it’ll handle a stout load just fine. This gun may well wind up in contention for my sidearm for hunting.

The load used for both of the .45 Colts was a 200gr. HG68 SWC over 8.0gr. of Unique with a CCI primer.

I also brought The Dandy along as it was also shooting low last time. I ground the front sight a bit and wanted to try it out. It’s now shooting to point of aim. This a very pleasant gun to shoot; comfortable in the hand, nice trigger, mild recoil and good accuracy.

I’m going to look into honing the chambers; they were a bit sticky occasionally, and without an ejector it’s important the spent rounds come out easily.

Last up I put a few rounds through the Detonics Mk.1 Combat Master. Always a pleasure-

I did have a problem with the blued Detonics factory magazine; the follower has gone a bit out of whack and it would only fit five rounds. I’ll have it apart and take a look later.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 31 August 2018