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.