The Right One For You... How to Define It? (Part I
The Right One For You... How to Define It? (Part II)...Caliber (It's Long)
The caliber of your particular firearm is important on three factors; can you afford to shoot it enough to gain muscle memory/confidence and consistent practice? Will it consistently do well enough to stop an attack with kinetic energy transfer? Is it controllable?
Let's think of a bad idea; let's say I have a platform that shoots the fancy 5.7mm round. FN makes the only handgun that shoots that platform. As far as affordability goes, nope. Unless you're looking at the top three; 9mm, .40 S&W and .45 ACP, other calibers will eat you up financially. I'm not talking about a box of 50 rounds every other week but shooting at least 200 rounds at a time just to get familiar with it yet alone develop enough range time to gain muscle memory with the weapon and it's caliber and recoil. That takes some effort. As far as penetration goes; the 5.7 mm is known for extremely fast rounds but not known for it's use of kinetic energy transfer. In other words, much like rounds labeled with "magnum" in it, it will zip right through the target medium leaving a hole but will not do much when it transfers the energy to the medium. So unless you're a soldier in the field that wants to just wound the other combatant, it's pretty useless. However the 5.7 mm is a smaller diameter and it is quite controllable in most cases. So you may be thinking one positive and two negatives against it would indicate that it's the not right round for you and you would be correct.
Let's look at another alternative; a .22 LR pistol or revolver. Let's look at the three questions again; is it affordable? Absolutely. At only around .16 per round it is the cheapest to shoot. But let's look at the other question; will it consistently do well enough to stop an attack? No. It won't. However, if you look at Hinkley's assassination attempt on President Reagan he got really lucky and knocked down four agents, shot James Brady in the noggin and damned near killed the President. A little luck got stretched out for him big time that day but generally speaking; the .22 LR is a great affordable training gun but it pales when it comes to becoming a true defensive pistol cartridge. Is it controllable? Because of the smaller round and smaller propellant load, it is very controllable. So now you're thinking; hey! 2 of the 3 categories are met. But sadly, unless it meets all three, it's just not a good round to use to save your life with. It'll be either too expensive to gain any practical confidence and ability with, won't have enough stopping power to successfully end someone or totally uncontrollable for a user. Those three options will determine whether you'll survive a gunfight. You will never win a gunfight but you can survive one.
How about a .45 ACP? Everyone makes one and they are a popular round to use. Well, let's apply the three questions again; can you afford it? The .45's bullet weight is about 230 grains on average. Therefore it's also twice the bullet weight of a 9mm therefore it will cost twice as much. This entirely depends on what you can afford. I can get 1k 9mm training FMJ rounds for about $130. 1k training FMJ .45 ACP's will run you about $370. Some of you students that have come to my course already know that you can grease through 1k rounds quite quickly in a defensive firearms course. So add that cost to the cost of the maintenance and the course itself and you can see where it starts to add up. It's expensive for most folks. How about stopping power? There are few rounds out there that can compare to a .45 ACP round. It is big and slow and will deliver a superior kinetic energy transfer into a target medium consistently. Ever notice why the US Army went to the 1911 handgun that shot the .45 ACP in compared to domestic law enforcement went to .357's instead of our old .38 Specials? The police needed penetration power to punch through metal bodied cars. Whereas the military needed one to stop a human being with a center of mass shot. It has been my experience that rounds with the "magnum" label like .44's and .357's are pretty useless when it comes to engagements with human beings. There's too much penetrative power behind them. Sure you'll make a gaping hole in them and they will bleed out eventually but note the word "eventually". It will take some time and during that "eventually" time, is plenty of time to take you to The Void with them. Is that really a risk you want to take with a "magnum" round? A second or two is a lifetime in a one on one gunfight. I have been known to be able to engage successfully 8 targets from a holster and shoot them all knocking them down in 3.6 seconds. Yep. One gets really good if you practice enough.
Let's look at the evolution of modern calibers we use; the 9 mm is the Granddaddy of them all. When Borschardt introduced the first semi-automatic handgun many well to do shooting enthusiasts loved it. Paul Mauser introduced us to the Broomhandle shooting that funky necked .30 caliber pistol round and the very well to do loved that too. Winston Churchill packed one in his pants for years because of that design. Then Georgi Luger bought the patent for the Borschardt later and refined it to have a shorter barrel and chopped the rear spring system on it later on and created the famous Luger that you've heard about. The P-08 Luger, introduced into German Army service in 1908...get it? All in the meantime, JM Browning introduced us to the Browning link system and designed the pistols that we generally remember him for; the Browning Hi-Power in 9mm and the 1911 in .45 ACP. 1911 Pistol. Adopted by the US Military in 1911 get it?
If you know weapons and calibers, you'll see that all of them except for the 1911 were in the .38 caliber range. Caliber or diameter is based on the inch in American designs measurements and metric millimeters in European designs. Between the original Borschardt and Luger, the Mauser C 96 Broomhandle incorporated an internal loading port forward of the pistol grip fed with a strip. The others used a magazine. The Mauser C96 Broomhandle many of the early European designs were meticulous to manufacturer and was machined from a block of steel. So they were time tedious the make at first and expensive even for the military to use yet alone the average citizen that wants to own one.
For unknown reasons, the .38 size/seemed to be the magic diameter that would be the best blend for control and kinetic energy transfer. The .45 ACP was a big, fat, slow moving projectile and delivered the most kinetic energy for target mediums. It was just brute force. Fast enough to penetrate most flesh but slow enough to knock them down. These two were the mainstays for most handgun calibers for nearly a century. Don't get me wrong, there were other manufacturers that made handguns in the .32 caliber range but for the most part, .32's lacked the punch in diameter. Even though a .22 could kill someone, the .32's and .380 ACP's just didn't have the necessary punch to do the job in one or two shots. It took quite a few rounds. They didn't really have the kinetic energy to really negotiate an obstacle past 15 feet. The problem with that is shot placement and you can read back to my article regarding Shot Placement in Stress Shooting for more details on that subject.
Here's the complication; as time went on and some folks were thinking about the 9mm Luger cartridge, some were looking at the gunfight statistics; it seemed that although they could carry more in a magazine, the targets in military and police shootings didn't drop after a shot or two. It seems that they were still able to engage and fight on unless they were pumped five, maybe six times. (Shot placement). Whereas the .45 ACP was pretty much unsurpassed. A good single shot into the chest would drop it's opponent 85% of the time. But then, the .45 1911 was hard to control, expensive to shoot and practice with and not everyone could control one. The military stayed with the .45 ACP 1911 handguns for nearly a century of service and the police agencies around here transitioned their old school .38 specials and .357 magnum revolvers to the more modern 9mm cartridge.
The 9mm vs. .45 ACP debate still goes on to this day. In the mid to late '80's the FBI was doing some testing and found out that a cartridge of 10mm would do the best. A tad smaller in diameter than a .45 but a tad larger in diameter than a 9mm. So they had Colt make them those 10 mm Delta Elites with your tax dollars and that was as popular as a lead balloon. Smith & Wesson was experimenting with a cartridge called the .41 Action Express. It was more of a sales pitch because it's best to develop your own cartridge when you'll be the only company making the pistols for them. You also get to name the new bullet and they were marketed as the .41 AE S&W. So that was popular for about half a decade. Then Sig Sauer got into the game with the .357 Sig round. Ballistically it was pretty superior compared to others. It had a smaller .30 caliber round that had a necked down casing with more muzzle energy transferred to the target however; they were expensive to go shooting with. A box of 9mm's were only $5 a box in compared to $10 then. Now they go for about $20 a box if you were lucky enough to find them at all. Glock even got into the game and redesigned the wheel badly and developed the .45 GAP (Glock Automatic Pistol) cartridge. I ask, why reinvent the wheel? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Again, it was extremely pricey to afford enough rounds to develop good muscle memory at the range. Some departments even got snookered in to buying the pistols. But in hindsight, they are known to be more of a sales ploy from Glock and I'll tell you why later in this article. FN came out with it's 5.7 mm pistol and P90 PDW's (Personal Defense Weapons) and you'd guess right if you said that you'd have to sell off your first born to afford shooting this bullet.
So during which, the 9mm vs. .45 ACP debate was brewing and S&W got smart and developed the .40 caliber. It has less recoil than a .45 ACP, cheaper to shoot also, ballistically rated well in lab tests and greater knockdown than a 9mm. Smith & Wessons are some of the better brands of handguns but in my opinion, they don't necessarily make the best semi-automatic pistols. Although they're trying to corner the market now with their Glock copy that used to be called the Sigma now re-named the M&P (Military & Police) Shield series. The .40 caliber is described to break snappier than both the norms out there. Therefore it was more controllable and it had greater knockdown...supposedly.
Let's take a look at the police point of view; you had some complaining that the 9mm didn't have the knockdown but yet when you got them .45's, more than half of them couldn't qualify with them because of the bigger recoil. I would advocate that is a training issue but every department has a budget for that sort of stuff and most of them were stretched. At this time, departments that were issuing Beretta 92's and Sig Sauer 226 9mm platforms got a call from the Glock Law Enforcement Program. It was a good sales ploy. Glock would demonstrate and then trade in all of the police weapons in for the Glock 9mm platforms and offered them a discounted rate on their weapons. They'd take in hundreds if not thousands of pistols of all different calibers, brands and models and sent them through a refurbishing third party vendor and sell them to the private gun owners market. Here's the plus to that deal. Glock essentially broke even financially on that deal but got thousands of departments using the Glock 9mm handgun family. The G17, G19 and the G26 was all that was available at one time. I would say that 80% of most police agencies federal and state used their platforms and that's a big win. They still needed department armorers and so an Law Enforcement armorer course was available to the departments at a lower cost and such and everyone seemed to be happy except for the guys that wanted more knockdown power in a .45 ACP. Then there were night sights and other do dads departments wanted and that helped with the Glock bottom line. That was the status quo for about a decade. Since S&W had did the QC and testing homework, Glock made the G22, 23 and 27's in .40's. Then guess what they did? They went to all those former departments using their 9mm's to trade them in for .40's. Since a lot of departments were having a good success rate with Glock all the other departments that didn't use them during the last trade started looking at them and they jumped aboard the Glock cult train. When it was all over, about 90% of all law enforcement agencies in the municipal, state and federal level was using the Glock platform. All those 9mm Glock handguns were then refurbished and sold wholesale to police and armies worldwide with a tag of America's preferred Police Pistol. This is why you see a Glock on a cops patrol belt stateside. It was due to clever marketing, not necessarily because they were ultra superior in anyway. They do make a very good handgun in my opinion which is virtually maintenance free. A few years later Glock got really greedy and redesigned the proven .45 ACP for the .45 GAP to see if the military would bite. The military didn't because of another reason which I'll get into but then Glock took those Glock .45 GAP and tried to market them to law enforcement agencies again. That idea was flat and the .45 GAP and it's pistol is dying a slow death in the gun stores of America. At nearly $20 a box a ammo it's no wonder. This is why you see .40 caliber Glock handguns on most cops belts in America. Not because it was great but because it was a very clever marketing strategy from Glock. So what do you think about Glock's and .40 caliber rounds now?
Guess what happened from there? We've been crunching the numbers since the transition from 9mm's to .40's and the shooting statistic numbers are still the same. Greater knockdown power didn't matter. It still took numerous rounds to drop someone so what does that point to? You guessed it. Familiarity and shot placement. It all has to do with enough of a budget to train effectively with the handgun because you may have a million round magazine in it, if you can't get a hit with it; it's just a noisemaker and expensive paperweight. Training. That's the difference.
Just as a tidbit of trivia. In 1994 the Assault Gun Bill was passed. Along with a good number of certain weapons that can't be sold, one of the provisions of the bill was that handgun magazine capacity could not hold more than 10 rounds. Some shooters, primarily the civilian market said to themselves; if I can't get a 17 round magazine for that Glock 17 and limited only to 10 then I may as well get a .40 caliber or .45 ACP. Hence the resurgence in sales of 1911 handguns from '94-'04. Now folks are rethinking that option with their 1911's sitting on the shelf and being too expensive to shoot. The used gun market is being flooded with used 1911's now. Just look around the used shelf at the gun store and you'll see what I'm seeing. A lot of .40's and .45's are being traded in for higher capacity 9mm's now.
Here's the US Military story; .45 ACP was the standard. They've proven themselves in combat and millions of servicemen have worn one since our Mexican Campaign to hunt for Pancho Villa. It was our standard and unlike many armies in the world, we used them. Most commissioned officer were issued the rather than a rifle and a lot of rear echelon guys got one. Tank crewmen, assistant machine gunner/ammo guys got one but if you've ever served in combat with a infantry unit, you'd find one quickly. We actually used our stout .45 1911 handguns and for the most part, we liked them. Sure they had a hell of a kick but it would knockdown your target in one or two shots pending round placement and that was the norm for many decades and then the '70's started kicking in. The Cold War was in full tilt then. NATO leaders in Europe imagining a WWIII scenario was thinking how all of us could use the same calibers so every army, no matter what nationality could use the ammo. Our 5.56 mm was now standard. STANAG magazines were standard, .7.62 mm rounds were standard but guess what bullet wasn't? While all the other armies 9mm rounds were standard, our .45 ACP rounds weren't and that posed a logistical snag in case something occurred in Europe. So the US started to feel around for a pistol replacement against conventional thinking. We needed a 9mm pistol. We could've just redesigned the 1911 to use a double stacked 9mm magazine and that would have been it but the powers that be thought that we should get a more modern design created in the United States. We eventually met up with Bill Ruger and told him our specs; 9mm pistol double stacked magazine blowback cast forged pistol with safety with a 50k round service life under XX bucks a piece. Ruger then lit a fire under his team and came out with a decent pistol built like a tank and called it the P-85 and prepared 100k units for immediate delivery. But low and behold, the B2 bomber just came off the shelf as well. You're thinking what the hell does this have to do with a handgun? Keep reading. The B2 Bomber is a subsonic stealth bomber with limited range and it was primarily designed to bomb strategic targets in the Soviet Union but we had no place to base them that could be used effectively against the Soviet Bear...except one place; Italy. Did you ever hear of Aviano airbase?
The Italians knew that we were searching for a new handgun in 9mm and they had Beretta. The oldest gun manufacturer in business since the 1580's. They cut a deal. We would make the frame safety mounted, blowback operated, double stacked magazine 9mm pistol redone to what the US military needed and we'd buy our handguns from them and we could have Aviano airbase at a good deal. Plus, Beretta said they would create at least one factory in the US so they could be made domestically just in case. Hence why there's a Beretta plant in Maryland. Creative huh? So we took the Beretta 92 and told them to move the frame mounted safety to the upper receiver, flare the trigger guard and a few not worthy enough to mention changes done and we now have the Beretta 92FS 9mm handgun which we gave the nomenclature of 9mm, Pistol, M9 semi-automatic. In other words, we screwed over Bill Ruger and his team over for company that initially made them in Italy for an Italy located airbase in order to have a shorter range to fly to get to the Soviets. Modern handgun; the Beretta 92 is an evolution of the Beretta 1934 model. Hell, Mussolini wore one of those. It's a robust design but as old school as it gets. Bill Ruger supposedly said that his company will never again deal with the US military and then marked out his P-85 and 85DC's to the general gun public. In my opinion, the Ruger may be made in the US originally but it was still a poor pistol. It's not exactly the best pistol one could have. Both pistol choices were pretty bad in my opinion.
This is why the US military currently has the M9/Beretta 92FS handgun in it's inventory. It's not like it was the best. It was due to a clever strategic deal. What do think of what the military uses now? Makes you think doesn't it?
Now we're here in the modern day military. Unlike some other nations, we actually use our pistol for fighting and not to merely adorn a uniform with. We've been actively at war since '01 in one way or another in GWOT. We've crunched numbers since then and have noticed that the 9mm's aren't doing it's job and the Marine Corps announced a few years ago that they're going back to .45's. Just recently the US Army has announced that Sig Sauer's new 230 model is the newest and greatest flavor; the 230 modular handgun system while Special Operations will get the Glock 17. Honestly, "modular". What am I a fashion designer before each mission? I'm gonna strap on the tactical toilet paper dispenser for what tactical purpose on a handgun? Please. If I have to put anything on my handgun other than a night sights and it's filled magazine then there's a problem and it's not related to the design of the handgun. It's about training and getting the shooter good enough to do their job with one in case their rifle or SMG fails miserably.
All that weird BS you'd see in a special forces movie is pure fantasy. The equipment may be a bit fancier, the accessories may be a bit more friendly and the mystique of it all fascinates those uninitiated but guess what? It's all about the training. Hours into days into weeks into months into years worth of training shooting, shooting, shooting and shooting some more. That's what it takes to get good with your handgun. Training. Training correctly and practice. Good old fashioned, no holds barred, tedious, pain in the scrotum training through sunny days, hot as balls day training, through snowstorms and thunderstorms. Training and learning how to move with it and engage. Training and practice. You do it until your hands bleed and feet blister and your ears ring. You can taste the range and lead dust when you go to the shower. That's how much you shoot. Tens of thousands of rounds a year until it is second nature as wiping your ass. You can u*********sly do it and engage your targets successfully. That's the difference between a SF soldier and a policeman. Law enforcement are known to be life saving organizations that have to adapt other skills like de-escalation of situations. The military are not; especially the shooters. We are the opposite and are not known for abstract thinking.
So, we're still back to the debate of caliber. Guess what's been happening with the police agencies in the US. I don't exactly know but I'm guessing that a lot of leadership meetings are deciding that if we aren't changing much with the .40 caliber handguns, we may as well transition back to the 9mm and we can get more ammunition for the same amount of money to incorporate more training. Don't believe me? Check out the new lines of handguns marketed for the Law Enforcement field now. Everyone from Sig to H&K and Walther are making new 9mm handgun platforms. Interesting trend don't you think? So in about 30 years of deviation from the 9mm, it seems that everyone is slowly transitioning back to the 9mm.
So now you kind of understand the history of the three most popular calibers out there. You also know my three questions for it's criteria for selection. You also understand now why so many folks are duped to believe that these calibers or pistols are so popular because they weren't the greatest but popular due to clever marketing.
At my level of shooting; I'm confident I can drop whomever with my 9mm handgun. With the plethora variety of defensive rounds one could purchase for it, I am certain that within two rounds I can do the job with good shot placement. I love my .45's and the .45 ACP round but even for me, it's getting to be expensive to shoot. Although I can shoot a .40 caliber quite accurately, I'm a traditionalist. I don't even own a .40 caliber. I don't need to. I can shoot just as accurately with my .45 if not better.
So think about what I typed and the three questions you need to ask yourself before you arbitrarily just pick up any old pistol and caliber. It's no big deal really. Only your life depends on it. So it's your life and your decision. What will you do? But then again, what do I know? It's your life.
The caliber of your particular firearm is important on three factors; can you afford to shoot it enough to gain muscle memory/confidence and consistent practice? Will it consistently do well enough to stop an attack with kinetic energy transfer? Is it controllable?
Let's think of a bad idea; let's say I have a platform that shoots the fancy 5.7mm round. FN makes the only handgun that shoots that platform. As far as affordability goes, nope. Unless you're looking at the top three; 9mm, .40 S&W and .45 ACP, other calibers will eat you up financially. I'm not talking about a box of 50 rounds every other week but shooting at least 200 rounds at a time just to get familiar with it yet alone develop enough range time to gain muscle memory with the weapon and it's caliber and recoil. That takes some effort. As far as penetration goes; the 5.7 mm is known for extremely fast rounds but not known for it's use of kinetic energy transfer. In other words, much like rounds labeled with "magnum" in it, it will zip right through the target medium leaving a hole but will not do much when it transfers the energy to the medium. So unless you're a soldier in the field that wants to just wound the other combatant, it's pretty useless. However the 5.7 mm is a smaller diameter and it is quite controllable in most cases. So you may be thinking one positive and two negatives against it would indicate that it's the not right round for you and you would be correct.
Let's look at another alternative; a .22 LR pistol or revolver. Let's look at the three questions again; is it affordable? Absolutely. At only around .16 per round it is the cheapest to shoot. But let's look at the other question; will it consistently do well enough to stop an attack? No. It won't. However, if you look at Hinkley's assassination attempt on President Reagan he got really lucky and knocked down four agents, shot James Brady in the noggin and damned near killed the President. A little luck got stretched out for him big time that day but generally speaking; the .22 LR is a great affordable training gun but it pales when it comes to becoming a true defensive pistol cartridge. Is it controllable? Because of the smaller round and smaller propellant load, it is very controllable. So now you're thinking; hey! 2 of the 3 categories are met. But sadly, unless it meets all three, it's just not a good round to use to save your life with. It'll be either too expensive to gain any practical confidence and ability with, won't have enough stopping power to successfully end someone or totally uncontrollable for a user. Those three options will determine whether you'll survive a gunfight. You will never win a gunfight but you can survive one.
How about a .45 ACP? Everyone makes one and they are a popular round to use. Well, let's apply the three questions again; can you afford it? The .45's bullet weight is about 230 grains on average. Therefore it's also twice the bullet weight of a 9mm therefore it will cost twice as much. This entirely depends on what you can afford. I can get 1k 9mm training FMJ rounds for about $130. 1k training FMJ .45 ACP's will run you about $370. Some of you students that have come to my course already know that you can grease through 1k rounds quite quickly in a defensive firearms course. So add that cost to the cost of the maintenance and the course itself and you can see where it starts to add up. It's expensive for most folks. How about stopping power? There are few rounds out there that can compare to a .45 ACP round. It is big and slow and will deliver a superior kinetic energy transfer into a target medium consistently. Ever notice why the US Army went to the 1911 handgun that shot the .45 ACP in compared to domestic law enforcement went to .357's instead of our old .38 Specials? The police needed penetration power to punch through metal bodied cars. Whereas the military needed one to stop a human being with a center of mass shot. It has been my experience that rounds with the "magnum" label like .44's and .357's are pretty useless when it comes to engagements with human beings. There's too much penetrative power behind them. Sure you'll make a gaping hole in them and they will bleed out eventually but note the word "eventually". It will take some time and during that "eventually" time, is plenty of time to take you to The Void with them. Is that really a risk you want to take with a "magnum" round? A second or two is a lifetime in a one on one gunfight. I have been known to be able to engage successfully 8 targets from a holster and shoot them all knocking them down in 3.6 seconds. Yep. One gets really good if you practice enough.
Let's look at the evolution of modern calibers we use; the 9 mm is the Granddaddy of them all. When Borschardt introduced the first semi-automatic handgun many well to do shooting enthusiasts loved it. Paul Mauser introduced us to the Broomhandle shooting that funky necked .30 caliber pistol round and the very well to do loved that too. Winston Churchill packed one in his pants for years because of that design. Then Georgi Luger bought the patent for the Borschardt later and refined it to have a shorter barrel and chopped the rear spring system on it later on and created the famous Luger that you've heard about. The P-08 Luger, introduced into German Army service in 1908...get it? All in the meantime, JM Browning introduced us to the Browning link system and designed the pistols that we generally remember him for; the Browning Hi-Power in 9mm and the 1911 in .45 ACP. 1911 Pistol. Adopted by the US Military in 1911 get it?
If you know weapons and calibers, you'll see that all of them except for the 1911 were in the .38 caliber range. Caliber or diameter is based on the inch in American designs measurements and metric millimeters in European designs. Between the original Borschardt and Luger, the Mauser C 96 Broomhandle incorporated an internal loading port forward of the pistol grip fed with a strip. The others used a magazine. The Mauser C96 Broomhandle many of the early European designs were meticulous to manufacturer and was machined from a block of steel. So they were time tedious the make at first and expensive even for the military to use yet alone the average citizen that wants to own one.
For unknown reasons, the .38 size/seemed to be the magic diameter that would be the best blend for control and kinetic energy transfer. The .45 ACP was a big, fat, slow moving projectile and delivered the most kinetic energy for target mediums. It was just brute force. Fast enough to penetrate most flesh but slow enough to knock them down. These two were the mainstays for most handgun calibers for nearly a century. Don't get me wrong, there were other manufacturers that made handguns in the .32 caliber range but for the most part, .32's lacked the punch in diameter. Even though a .22 could kill someone, the .32's and .380 ACP's just didn't have the necessary punch to do the job in one or two shots. It took quite a few rounds. They didn't really have the kinetic energy to really negotiate an obstacle past 15 feet. The problem with that is shot placement and you can read back to my article regarding Shot Placement in Stress Shooting for more details on that subject.
Here's the complication; as time went on and some folks were thinking about the 9mm Luger cartridge, some were looking at the gunfight statistics; it seemed that although they could carry more in a magazine, the targets in military and police shootings didn't drop after a shot or two. It seems that they were still able to engage and fight on unless they were pumped five, maybe six times. (Shot placement). Whereas the .45 ACP was pretty much unsurpassed. A good single shot into the chest would drop it's opponent 85% of the time. But then, the .45 1911 was hard to control, expensive to shoot and practice with and not everyone could control one. The military stayed with the .45 ACP 1911 handguns for nearly a century of service and the police agencies around here transitioned their old school .38 specials and .357 magnum revolvers to the more modern 9mm cartridge.
The 9mm vs. .45 ACP debate still goes on to this day. In the mid to late '80's the FBI was doing some testing and found out that a cartridge of 10mm would do the best. A tad smaller in diameter than a .45 but a tad larger in diameter than a 9mm. So they had Colt make them those 10 mm Delta Elites with your tax dollars and that was as popular as a lead balloon. Smith & Wesson was experimenting with a cartridge called the .41 Action Express. It was more of a sales pitch because it's best to develop your own cartridge when you'll be the only company making the pistols for them. You also get to name the new bullet and they were marketed as the .41 AE S&W. So that was popular for about half a decade. Then Sig Sauer got into the game with the .357 Sig round. Ballistically it was pretty superior compared to others. It had a smaller .30 caliber round that had a necked down casing with more muzzle energy transferred to the target however; they were expensive to go shooting with. A box of 9mm's were only $5 a box in compared to $10 then. Now they go for about $20 a box if you were lucky enough to find them at all. Glock even got into the game and redesigned the wheel badly and developed the .45 GAP (Glock Automatic Pistol) cartridge. I ask, why reinvent the wheel? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Again, it was extremely pricey to afford enough rounds to develop good muscle memory at the range. Some departments even got snookered in to buying the pistols. But in hindsight, they are known to be more of a sales ploy from Glock and I'll tell you why later in this article. FN came out with it's 5.7 mm pistol and P90 PDW's (Personal Defense Weapons) and you'd guess right if you said that you'd have to sell off your first born to afford shooting this bullet.
So during which, the 9mm vs. .45 ACP debate was brewing and S&W got smart and developed the .40 caliber. It has less recoil than a .45 ACP, cheaper to shoot also, ballistically rated well in lab tests and greater knockdown than a 9mm. Smith & Wessons are some of the better brands of handguns but in my opinion, they don't necessarily make the best semi-automatic pistols. Although they're trying to corner the market now with their Glock copy that used to be called the Sigma now re-named the M&P (Military & Police) Shield series. The .40 caliber is described to break snappier than both the norms out there. Therefore it was more controllable and it had greater knockdown...supposedly.
Let's take a look at the police point of view; you had some complaining that the 9mm didn't have the knockdown but yet when you got them .45's, more than half of them couldn't qualify with them because of the bigger recoil. I would advocate that is a training issue but every department has a budget for that sort of stuff and most of them were stretched. At this time, departments that were issuing Beretta 92's and Sig Sauer 226 9mm platforms got a call from the Glock Law Enforcement Program. It was a good sales ploy. Glock would demonstrate and then trade in all of the police weapons in for the Glock 9mm platforms and offered them a discounted rate on their weapons. They'd take in hundreds if not thousands of pistols of all different calibers, brands and models and sent them through a refurbishing third party vendor and sell them to the private gun owners market. Here's the plus to that deal. Glock essentially broke even financially on that deal but got thousands of departments using the Glock 9mm handgun family. The G17, G19 and the G26 was all that was available at one time. I would say that 80% of most police agencies federal and state used their platforms and that's a big win. They still needed department armorers and so an Law Enforcement armorer course was available to the departments at a lower cost and such and everyone seemed to be happy except for the guys that wanted more knockdown power in a .45 ACP. Then there were night sights and other do dads departments wanted and that helped with the Glock bottom line. That was the status quo for about a decade. Since S&W had did the QC and testing homework, Glock made the G22, 23 and 27's in .40's. Then guess what they did? They went to all those former departments using their 9mm's to trade them in for .40's. Since a lot of departments were having a good success rate with Glock all the other departments that didn't use them during the last trade started looking at them and they jumped aboard the Glock cult train. When it was all over, about 90% of all law enforcement agencies in the municipal, state and federal level was using the Glock platform. All those 9mm Glock handguns were then refurbished and sold wholesale to police and armies worldwide with a tag of America's preferred Police Pistol. This is why you see a Glock on a cops patrol belt stateside. It was due to clever marketing, not necessarily because they were ultra superior in anyway. They do make a very good handgun in my opinion which is virtually maintenance free. A few years later Glock got really greedy and redesigned the proven .45 ACP for the .45 GAP to see if the military would bite. The military didn't because of another reason which I'll get into but then Glock took those Glock .45 GAP and tried to market them to law enforcement agencies again. That idea was flat and the .45 GAP and it's pistol is dying a slow death in the gun stores of America. At nearly $20 a box a ammo it's no wonder. This is why you see .40 caliber Glock handguns on most cops belts in America. Not because it was great but because it was a very clever marketing strategy from Glock. So what do you think about Glock's and .40 caliber rounds now?
Guess what happened from there? We've been crunching the numbers since the transition from 9mm's to .40's and the shooting statistic numbers are still the same. Greater knockdown power didn't matter. It still took numerous rounds to drop someone so what does that point to? You guessed it. Familiarity and shot placement. It all has to do with enough of a budget to train effectively with the handgun because you may have a million round magazine in it, if you can't get a hit with it; it's just a noisemaker and expensive paperweight. Training. That's the difference.
Just as a tidbit of trivia. In 1994 the Assault Gun Bill was passed. Along with a good number of certain weapons that can't be sold, one of the provisions of the bill was that handgun magazine capacity could not hold more than 10 rounds. Some shooters, primarily the civilian market said to themselves; if I can't get a 17 round magazine for that Glock 17 and limited only to 10 then I may as well get a .40 caliber or .45 ACP. Hence the resurgence in sales of 1911 handguns from '94-'04. Now folks are rethinking that option with their 1911's sitting on the shelf and being too expensive to shoot. The used gun market is being flooded with used 1911's now. Just look around the used shelf at the gun store and you'll see what I'm seeing. A lot of .40's and .45's are being traded in for higher capacity 9mm's now.
Here's the US Military story; .45 ACP was the standard. They've proven themselves in combat and millions of servicemen have worn one since our Mexican Campaign to hunt for Pancho Villa. It was our standard and unlike many armies in the world, we used them. Most commissioned officer were issued the rather than a rifle and a lot of rear echelon guys got one. Tank crewmen, assistant machine gunner/ammo guys got one but if you've ever served in combat with a infantry unit, you'd find one quickly. We actually used our stout .45 1911 handguns and for the most part, we liked them. Sure they had a hell of a kick but it would knockdown your target in one or two shots pending round placement and that was the norm for many decades and then the '70's started kicking in. The Cold War was in full tilt then. NATO leaders in Europe imagining a WWIII scenario was thinking how all of us could use the same calibers so every army, no matter what nationality could use the ammo. Our 5.56 mm was now standard. STANAG magazines were standard, .7.62 mm rounds were standard but guess what bullet wasn't? While all the other armies 9mm rounds were standard, our .45 ACP rounds weren't and that posed a logistical snag in case something occurred in Europe. So the US started to feel around for a pistol replacement against conventional thinking. We needed a 9mm pistol. We could've just redesigned the 1911 to use a double stacked 9mm magazine and that would have been it but the powers that be thought that we should get a more modern design created in the United States. We eventually met up with Bill Ruger and told him our specs; 9mm pistol double stacked magazine blowback cast forged pistol with safety with a 50k round service life under XX bucks a piece. Ruger then lit a fire under his team and came out with a decent pistol built like a tank and called it the P-85 and prepared 100k units for immediate delivery. But low and behold, the B2 bomber just came off the shelf as well. You're thinking what the hell does this have to do with a handgun? Keep reading. The B2 Bomber is a subsonic stealth bomber with limited range and it was primarily designed to bomb strategic targets in the Soviet Union but we had no place to base them that could be used effectively against the Soviet Bear...except one place; Italy. Did you ever hear of Aviano airbase?
The Italians knew that we were searching for a new handgun in 9mm and they had Beretta. The oldest gun manufacturer in business since the 1580's. They cut a deal. We would make the frame safety mounted, blowback operated, double stacked magazine 9mm pistol redone to what the US military needed and we'd buy our handguns from them and we could have Aviano airbase at a good deal. Plus, Beretta said they would create at least one factory in the US so they could be made domestically just in case. Hence why there's a Beretta plant in Maryland. Creative huh? So we took the Beretta 92 and told them to move the frame mounted safety to the upper receiver, flare the trigger guard and a few not worthy enough to mention changes done and we now have the Beretta 92FS 9mm handgun which we gave the nomenclature of 9mm, Pistol, M9 semi-automatic. In other words, we screwed over Bill Ruger and his team over for company that initially made them in Italy for an Italy located airbase in order to have a shorter range to fly to get to the Soviets. Modern handgun; the Beretta 92 is an evolution of the Beretta 1934 model. Hell, Mussolini wore one of those. It's a robust design but as old school as it gets. Bill Ruger supposedly said that his company will never again deal with the US military and then marked out his P-85 and 85DC's to the general gun public. In my opinion, the Ruger may be made in the US originally but it was still a poor pistol. It's not exactly the best pistol one could have. Both pistol choices were pretty bad in my opinion.
This is why the US military currently has the M9/Beretta 92FS handgun in it's inventory. It's not like it was the best. It was due to a clever strategic deal. What do think of what the military uses now? Makes you think doesn't it?
Now we're here in the modern day military. Unlike some other nations, we actually use our pistol for fighting and not to merely adorn a uniform with. We've been actively at war since '01 in one way or another in GWOT. We've crunched numbers since then and have noticed that the 9mm's aren't doing it's job and the Marine Corps announced a few years ago that they're going back to .45's. Just recently the US Army has announced that Sig Sauer's new 230 model is the newest and greatest flavor; the 230 modular handgun system while Special Operations will get the Glock 17. Honestly, "modular". What am I a fashion designer before each mission? I'm gonna strap on the tactical toilet paper dispenser for what tactical purpose on a handgun? Please. If I have to put anything on my handgun other than a night sights and it's filled magazine then there's a problem and it's not related to the design of the handgun. It's about training and getting the shooter good enough to do their job with one in case their rifle or SMG fails miserably.
All that weird BS you'd see in a special forces movie is pure fantasy. The equipment may be a bit fancier, the accessories may be a bit more friendly and the mystique of it all fascinates those uninitiated but guess what? It's all about the training. Hours into days into weeks into months into years worth of training shooting, shooting, shooting and shooting some more. That's what it takes to get good with your handgun. Training. Training correctly and practice. Good old fashioned, no holds barred, tedious, pain in the scrotum training through sunny days, hot as balls day training, through snowstorms and thunderstorms. Training and learning how to move with it and engage. Training and practice. You do it until your hands bleed and feet blister and your ears ring. You can taste the range and lead dust when you go to the shower. That's how much you shoot. Tens of thousands of rounds a year until it is second nature as wiping your ass. You can u*********sly do it and engage your targets successfully. That's the difference between a SF soldier and a policeman. Law enforcement are known to be life saving organizations that have to adapt other skills like de-escalation of situations. The military are not; especially the shooters. We are the opposite and are not known for abstract thinking.
So, we're still back to the debate of caliber. Guess what's been happening with the police agencies in the US. I don't exactly know but I'm guessing that a lot of leadership meetings are deciding that if we aren't changing much with the .40 caliber handguns, we may as well transition back to the 9mm and we can get more ammunition for the same amount of money to incorporate more training. Don't believe me? Check out the new lines of handguns marketed for the Law Enforcement field now. Everyone from Sig to H&K and Walther are making new 9mm handgun platforms. Interesting trend don't you think? So in about 30 years of deviation from the 9mm, it seems that everyone is slowly transitioning back to the 9mm.
So now you kind of understand the history of the three most popular calibers out there. You also know my three questions for it's criteria for selection. You also understand now why so many folks are duped to believe that these calibers or pistols are so popular because they weren't the greatest but popular due to clever marketing.
At my level of shooting; I'm confident I can drop whomever with my 9mm handgun. With the plethora variety of defensive rounds one could purchase for it, I am certain that within two rounds I can do the job with good shot placement. I love my .45's and the .45 ACP round but even for me, it's getting to be expensive to shoot. Although I can shoot a .40 caliber quite accurately, I'm a traditionalist. I don't even own a .40 caliber. I don't need to. I can shoot just as accurately with my .45 if not better.
So think about what I typed and the three questions you need to ask yourself before you arbitrarily just pick up any old pistol and caliber. It's no big deal really. Only your life depends on it. So it's your life and your decision. What will you do? But then again, what do I know? It's your life.
7 years ago