A long time ago in a land far, far away, there existed 2 handgun calibers. The first caliber was .357 and launched bullets from between 95 and 200 grains very fast. The second caliber was .429 and used bullets weighing between 180 and 300 grains. Of course, this was the .357 and .44 magnums. Someone decided that a round was needed that offered a compromise between the 2 magnums. The result was the .41 magnum. It was .410 in caliber and used bullets in the 160 to 210 grain range. Supposedly it was more powerful than the .357 magnum and more pleasant to shoot than the .44 magnum. I personally have nothing against the .41 magnum. However, performance wise, it may be more than the .357, but it doesn't do anything the .44 didn't already do. If you load your own ammo, use the lighter weight .44 bullets and don't load them so hot. If you can't take the .44 magnum recoil, the .41 is probably going to be too much for you also. On the other hand, buy the heaviest framed .357 magnum you can find, and it will be more pleasant to shoot. The .41 magnum has enough devotes that it still exists, but it never caught on. Parially because it was a clone of the previous magnums, I think, and had no parent cartridge. You can plink and practice with light .38 special rounds in the .357 or .44 special rounds in the .44 magnum. I think I remember hearing about someone wildcatting some .41 specials by trimming down .41 magnum cases, but that could be voices in my head talking. Anyway, the .41 magnum was originally intended to be a law enforcement cartridge, but became primarily a hunting cartridge.
In 1983, Norma and Bren introduced the 10mm cartridge and the Bren Ten autoloader. The gun was a beefed up variation on the excellent CZ-75. The cartridge was designed to improve on the 9mm and .45 ACP. It was supposed to combine the velocity and capacity of the 9mm with the stopping power of the .45 ACP and improve on both in penetration, trajectory, and range.
The .45 ACP doesn't even attempt to reach it's full potential. Inherent weaknesses in the cartridge case make loading it to extreme pressure dangerous. Several cartridges including the .451 Detonics, the .45 Super, ect. have existed just to try to show what the old cartridge could do if it wanted to. The 9mm operates at a much higher pressure, there isn't a whole lot that can be done there beyond the +P+ rounds already offered.
The 10mm in full power offers a flat trajectory, good accuracy and good range. It uses .400 diameter bullets in the 160 to 200 grain range, and pretty much rivals the .357 magnum in ballistics. It falls a little short of the .41 magnum equivalent that some like to claim. It has proven an excellent hunting cartridge and a few law enforcement agencies use it. Most commercial loads are on the weaker end of the spectrum, because the cartridge has a lot of muzzle blast and recoil. It offers a few more rounds than the .45 ACP in the same sized package. The Bren Ten had some production problems, and failed, but Colt released the Delta Elite based on the 1911 design. Several other handgun manufactures also jumped on the wagon. Now the 10mm's that were basically just beefed up .45's had some issues, which may have hurt sales. The 10mm's that were designed for the cartridge didn't though. The FBI adopting the round resulted in a lot of the sudden flood, and the FBI adopted a Smith and Wesson, but then discovered that not all their agents could handle the big round. The result was the "FBI" or reduced load. This load would still offer the penetration and expansion demanded, but cut back on recoil and muzzleflash. This gave Smith and Wesson an idea.
The 10mm fans like the .41 magnum has its fans and they are a loyal lot. It hasn't ever caught on with the general public, but it is a good cartridge in the right handgun. The 1911 design seems a good fit and the Delta Elite had a good reputation. Glock also chambers for this cartidge and rumor has it that it is a good fit. Of course, Smith and Wesson got the FBI contract, so I assume they still build 10mms.
Smith and Wesson decided that they could shorten the 10mm round, use a 9mm size frame with a beefed-up upper, and produce the FBI Load ballistics in a 9mm size package. It worked. The result was the .40 S&W. The 10mm only offered a couple of more rounds than the .45 ACP. The .40 being closer in size to the 9mm offer a significant increase in capacity. A full size service automatic usually held around 12 rounds versus the 9 of the 10mm. And it was easier for a small-handed person to use. This has become the most popular law enforcement cartridge currently offered. I think almost every handgun manufacturer offers a line of .40's. It is also fast catching on with both the civilian and thug markets. Civilians like to carry what cops carry and thugs like things that are shiny and fit into rap music. Apparently "forty" sounds at least as good as "nine" when rapped. I'm not a fan of the .40 yet. That might change, but I like my 9mm and I like my .45. The .40 might give me the best of both worlds, but I like the light recoil and the 15 round clips of my 9mm. If I want more, the .45 offers more boom, more recoil, and more weight. It is a solid slab of comfort. My wife doesn't like my .45. She likes her .380. I plan to get a 9mm set up similar and see if I can move her up. If she likes the 9mm, then I might move her to the .40.
There are however alternatives to the .40. First, IMI introduced a cartridge in 1986 that fired a .41 caliber bullet but had the same rebated rim as the 9mm called the .41 action express. It offered very similar ballistics to the .40 and was available in a gun called the Jericho. It never generated much press, and is now obsolete.
If you take the .40 S&W case and pop a 9mm bullet in you have the .357 Sig. Not really, the .357 Sig case is thicker, because it works at higher pressures. The goal was to create the ballistics of the 125 grain .357 magnum hollowpoint out of a 4 inch barrel in a service autoloader.
With light weight bullets the Sig is a match for the .357 revolver, but it falls behind with heavier bullets. It offers a different recoil than the .40. It isn't heavier, but seems sharper. This bottlenecked cartridge offers a lot of penetration, and is well suited for penetrating body armor. It is seeing some use from law enforcement and is being adapted by several firearms manufacturers.
Lastly, Glock introduced the a shortened, strengthened .45 ACP case called the .45 GAP. Using 180 grain bullets the GAP is supposed to duplicate the .45 ACP performance in a 9mm size package with increased magazine capacity. Initial findings seem to be that it works with the 180 grain bullets, but that performance wans with heavier rounds. Several companies have started chambering weapons for it, though.
At the moment, the .357 Sig holds most of my interest, although the GAP is interesting too.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
The Quest Part 2
The average law enforcement office was undergoing a change in the 1980's. In the late 1970's, a flood of autoloading pistols chambered for the 9 x 19 mm round hit the market. A great many of these took magazines which held 14 or 15 rounds. The average police officer at the time would be armed with a 5 or 6 shot .38 revolver chambered for .38 special. Image how hard a sell this would be. "Well, officer, your carring a Smith and Wesson model 13 there aren't you?" Officer nods. "What's that a 4 inch barrel?" Nod. "Hold 6 .38 specials right?" Nod again. "Well officer that is a fine weapon. What I have here is a Smith and Wesson, also, it has a 4 inch barrel, but it's a model 59 and hold 15 rounds of 9mm. How'd you like one of these."
I mean, most police officers aren't gun people, so some wouldn't matter, but really, how do you differentiate between 6 rounds of 158 grain, .357 diameter bullets going about 850 fps and 15 126 grain .355 diameter bullets travelling around 1200 fps? I would probably opt for the more shots myself.
There were valid arguments for sticking with revolvers, they are rugged, easy to learn to use, not much can go wrong, and they aren't really finicky about what kind of ammo you feed them.
Autoloaders, especially the ungodly variety of double actions that hit in this time period, could be complicated to use, clean, or repair. They could be a pain in the butt on what type of ammo you used, the best bet being to use ball ammo. Now here is the kicker, 9mm ball ammo tends to go straight through a target. So as more and more official people began to want the wonder nines, more and more research went into making hollow point bullets that would feed reliably and expand rapidly dumping energy into the target. Then 4/11/86 happened and it all crashed down.
Up to this point, the .45 acp in the 1911 format was king of the autoloaders. Now the upstart 9mm had showed up to spoil the party. The big debate was which is better, the fat, heavy slow moving .45 or the small, lighter, speedier 9mm. Throw in the single versus double action and the high capacity question and you have what kept gun magazines going for years. There were the occasional writers who would shake things up by comparing both calibers to the .38 or .357, but still this was THE debate. Some fore-sighted people began doing things like chambering the .45 in double action autos, and even high capacity .45's. Also the 9mm trimmed down concealable, and could be concealed quite easily. Also the bullet design ideas from the 9mm were also being applied to .45 acp, .38 special, and .357 magnum bullets. It eventually spead out through the entire line of ammunition. Then the Miami shootings.
Now in the firearms community, the 1986 Miami FBI shooting created waves. It seems that 9mm and .38 Special calibers were being declared ineffective. This is not entirely, or even remotely true. A not ideal shot was taken by an Agent Armed with the only 9mm Pistol carried by the FBI on that day. It was loaded with one of the Winchester Silver Tip bullets designed to expand rapidly, it went through the offenders arm and into the chest stopping about 3/4 of an inch from his heart. The shot was declared fatal, but not instantly incapacitating, so the man continued to fight for 4 minutes and killed 2 other agents.
While the ammo and caliber bore the brunt of the blame in the media, truth is that many tactical mistakes were made. At least one and maybe more of the officers unholstered their primary weapons during the car chase and placed them under a leg or on a passenger seat, only to lose them on impact of the felony stop and be left with only a short-barrelled BUG to fight with. However this event led to the first scientific look at handgun ballistics and wound characteristics and at the first tests and compilation of street use data on different ammo and calibers. It also led to the adopting of a new caliber weapon for agents and the creation of a highly successful new caliber.
First though, lets point out that nothing is for free. You have only so many components to work with in ballistics. Bullet weight and speed are what give you your power. The starting weight of the bullet will be fixed, so you can try to design a bullet that either breaks up easily, or sticks together well. At one time it was thought fragmenting added to stopping power. Unfortunately it takes away from penetration. If a bullet is designed to dump as much as possible of its power into the target, it needs to hold together, but expand. This also lessens penetration. What the FBI test decided, was to test the various calibers and loads setting 12 inches of penetration in 20% ballistic gellatin as the minimum acceptable standard. They also added 7 additional test using various levels of clothing and other barriers.
Now, there have been many confusing issues develop over this, so let us say first that the "ideal caliber and cartridge" for the FBI, may or may not be the ideal cartidge for any other law enforcement agency and probably won't be for the average CCW citizen. What, the FBI doesn't know what I need to carry? No they don't and they don't claim to. In setting their standards, the FBI looked at past shootings and around 50 percent of those shooting involve offenders in cars or near cars. So the FBI needs the capability of shooting a suspect through a car door or windshield. The average person does not. If the average person gets involved in a situation where he or she has to draw a weapon and the person the weapon is drawed on jumps into a vehicle, unless an attempt is made to run over the legally armed citizen, there is no justification to shoot. The threat has ceased to exist, so the justification for use of force has also ceased to exist. The average citizen is probably not going to have to worry about firing through doors either, so your best bet is to find a gun that is reliable and you shoot well, preferably .380 or larger in caliber, premium self defense ammunition that your gun feeds reliably, and practice. Don't worry whether or not your weapon is "Police issue".
Next we will look at the "new" calibers.
I mean, most police officers aren't gun people, so some wouldn't matter, but really, how do you differentiate between 6 rounds of 158 grain, .357 diameter bullets going about 850 fps and 15 126 grain .355 diameter bullets travelling around 1200 fps? I would probably opt for the more shots myself.
There were valid arguments for sticking with revolvers, they are rugged, easy to learn to use, not much can go wrong, and they aren't really finicky about what kind of ammo you feed them.
Autoloaders, especially the ungodly variety of double actions that hit in this time period, could be complicated to use, clean, or repair. They could be a pain in the butt on what type of ammo you used, the best bet being to use ball ammo. Now here is the kicker, 9mm ball ammo tends to go straight through a target. So as more and more official people began to want the wonder nines, more and more research went into making hollow point bullets that would feed reliably and expand rapidly dumping energy into the target. Then 4/11/86 happened and it all crashed down.
Up to this point, the .45 acp in the 1911 format was king of the autoloaders. Now the upstart 9mm had showed up to spoil the party. The big debate was which is better, the fat, heavy slow moving .45 or the small, lighter, speedier 9mm. Throw in the single versus double action and the high capacity question and you have what kept gun magazines going for years. There were the occasional writers who would shake things up by comparing both calibers to the .38 or .357, but still this was THE debate. Some fore-sighted people began doing things like chambering the .45 in double action autos, and even high capacity .45's. Also the 9mm trimmed down concealable, and could be concealed quite easily. Also the bullet design ideas from the 9mm were also being applied to .45 acp, .38 special, and .357 magnum bullets. It eventually spead out through the entire line of ammunition. Then the Miami shootings.
Now in the firearms community, the 1986 Miami FBI shooting created waves. It seems that 9mm and .38 Special calibers were being declared ineffective. This is not entirely, or even remotely true. A not ideal shot was taken by an Agent Armed with the only 9mm Pistol carried by the FBI on that day. It was loaded with one of the Winchester Silver Tip bullets designed to expand rapidly, it went through the offenders arm and into the chest stopping about 3/4 of an inch from his heart. The shot was declared fatal, but not instantly incapacitating, so the man continued to fight for 4 minutes and killed 2 other agents.
While the ammo and caliber bore the brunt of the blame in the media, truth is that many tactical mistakes were made. At least one and maybe more of the officers unholstered their primary weapons during the car chase and placed them under a leg or on a passenger seat, only to lose them on impact of the felony stop and be left with only a short-barrelled BUG to fight with. However this event led to the first scientific look at handgun ballistics and wound characteristics and at the first tests and compilation of street use data on different ammo and calibers. It also led to the adopting of a new caliber weapon for agents and the creation of a highly successful new caliber.
First though, lets point out that nothing is for free. You have only so many components to work with in ballistics. Bullet weight and speed are what give you your power. The starting weight of the bullet will be fixed, so you can try to design a bullet that either breaks up easily, or sticks together well. At one time it was thought fragmenting added to stopping power. Unfortunately it takes away from penetration. If a bullet is designed to dump as much as possible of its power into the target, it needs to hold together, but expand. This also lessens penetration. What the FBI test decided, was to test the various calibers and loads setting 12 inches of penetration in 20% ballistic gellatin as the minimum acceptable standard. They also added 7 additional test using various levels of clothing and other barriers.
Now, there have been many confusing issues develop over this, so let us say first that the "ideal caliber and cartridge" for the FBI, may or may not be the ideal cartidge for any other law enforcement agency and probably won't be for the average CCW citizen. What, the FBI doesn't know what I need to carry? No they don't and they don't claim to. In setting their standards, the FBI looked at past shootings and around 50 percent of those shooting involve offenders in cars or near cars. So the FBI needs the capability of shooting a suspect through a car door or windshield. The average person does not. If the average person gets involved in a situation where he or she has to draw a weapon and the person the weapon is drawed on jumps into a vehicle, unless an attempt is made to run over the legally armed citizen, there is no justification to shoot. The threat has ceased to exist, so the justification for use of force has also ceased to exist. The average citizen is probably not going to have to worry about firing through doors either, so your best bet is to find a gun that is reliable and you shoot well, preferably .380 or larger in caliber, premium self defense ammunition that your gun feeds reliably, and practice. Don't worry whether or not your weapon is "Police issue".
Next we will look at the "new" calibers.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Finally
Well, I finally did it. I finally bit the figurative bullet. I finally found a gunsmith, who when asked about removing the magazine disconnect feature of my HP didn't say something along the lines of, "Well, if the manufacture made it with that safety feature, then they must feel it needs the safety device." This guy was cool. Once he was sure I wasn't using it for a duty weapon, he yanked it right out of there. The gun was gone less than 24 hours and it cost less than $40. The trigger is much, much less mushy feeling and the magazines, even empty, fall free of the gun when you hit the release.
Let's briefly discuss magazine disconnect, shall we. What the f***? They have to be the most wishy washy safety device ever. You can argue either way and be neither right or wrong. The idea is that by removing the magazine, the gun won't fire. So if you are a LEO and someone tries to take your gun, you can disable it by dropping the mag. On the other hand, if the offender drops your mag, of it gets dropped accidently in the tussel, you don't have the shot in the chamber, unless you get a clip back into the gun. It's a quick way to turn a firearm into a club.
Now, even if you think the magazine disconnect is a good feature, surely you need to stress that it needs to be done well. Of the various Hi Powers out there, only the FM's from Argentina let the clip drop free of the gun. Otherwise, it lets go, but the clip just hangs there. A quick spank of the bottom of the clip resets it, so the disabling during a fight isn't very effective. Secondly, a speed reload is impossible. You have to use your fingernails to pry the clip out, unless you have bumpers on the magazines. Even with the bumpers, you have to pull the clip out of the gun. Secondly, it makes the trigger feel longer with a lot of take up. Smith and Wesson uses magazine disconnects, yet they manage to design them so they don't interfere severly with trigger or reloads. You would think FN would redesign the thing a little. I mean they aren't bargain basement priced firearms. The trigger is much crisper and reloads much easier. The pressure needed to fire the weapon doesn't change, but the take up disappears and the trigger just feels much nicer.
Let's briefly discuss magazine disconnect, shall we. What the f***? They have to be the most wishy washy safety device ever. You can argue either way and be neither right or wrong. The idea is that by removing the magazine, the gun won't fire. So if you are a LEO and someone tries to take your gun, you can disable it by dropping the mag. On the other hand, if the offender drops your mag, of it gets dropped accidently in the tussel, you don't have the shot in the chamber, unless you get a clip back into the gun. It's a quick way to turn a firearm into a club.
Now, even if you think the magazine disconnect is a good feature, surely you need to stress that it needs to be done well. Of the various Hi Powers out there, only the FM's from Argentina let the clip drop free of the gun. Otherwise, it lets go, but the clip just hangs there. A quick spank of the bottom of the clip resets it, so the disabling during a fight isn't very effective. Secondly, a speed reload is impossible. You have to use your fingernails to pry the clip out, unless you have bumpers on the magazines. Even with the bumpers, you have to pull the clip out of the gun. Secondly, it makes the trigger feel longer with a lot of take up. Smith and Wesson uses magazine disconnects, yet they manage to design them so they don't interfere severly with trigger or reloads. You would think FN would redesign the thing a little. I mean they aren't bargain basement priced firearms. The trigger is much crisper and reloads much easier. The pressure needed to fire the weapon doesn't change, but the take up disappears and the trigger just feels much nicer.
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