Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Duty caliber question

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    #31
    Originally posted by bboswell View Post
    I’m interested in your 40 to 9 conversion. I have been die hard 40 but my son went 9 and I can say the extra capacity and speed of return to target is attractive.

    But I don’t get to see all the real world results you do.
    Waiting on next range practice day to check it out. I got a double diamond barrel and some magpull mags.

    Cheaper than buying a new gun by far

    Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

    Comment


      #32
      I've carried 45 and 40 for years. Switched out my stuff for all 9mm. There are just too many factors to say one is better than the other. Lots of dead people from all the major calibers and lots of live people that have been shot by all the major calibers.

      Comment


        #33
        at one time or another i carried the 38 special, 9mm, 40 s&w, 45 acp , 38 super and 10mm,,,, during the course of those 30 years 28 of those as a firearms instructor... i have shot bullet proof vests, books, blocks of wood, soft wood, hard packed dirt, mud, fish, bowling pins, snakes, dogs. hogs. armadillos, deer and cars.....

        if the only thing your shooting is human flesh,,, any of them can work "IF" you make good hits..... after the 10mm came out it was the last duty gun that ever road in my holster,,, and that for about 15 years,,,,,, if a barricade of any type any thickness the 10mm was always more effective at reaching the target on the other side... along with being highly effective on flesh targets even if that flesh was behind leather or hide

        ,,, it was the only of those rounds that could reliable penetrate a car from any angle and hit a target with good effectiveness in that car.... i was lucky and never had to shoot anyone but i spent several years on the back roads working traffic a long ways from back up,, in my case and because the probability of me having to shoot into a car was much higher than the average officer the clear winner was the 10mm and the best bullet was the winchester silvertip,, high velocity, good bullet weight and excellent weight retention after expansion with deep penetration , i literally spent thousands of dollars on ammo to learn all of this for myself,,,,, and i put the practice in and the recoil was a non issue for me and could fire it as fast as anyone with a 9mm and stay on target 100% of the time... but i choose to go that route ,,, to borrow the title of a good book " there is "no second place winner" in a gun fight,,
        sometimes you need expansion, sometimes you need penetration, sometimes you need fast follow up shots,,, un like ballistic gelatin a human target has many variables,, you gotta prepare for the worse case,,, if you want to go home ,, if your only going to carry one pistol for many years it needs to be able to handle the thicker clothes of winter, sometimes a medium to light obstacle can reduce the 9mm effectiveness ,,, the added weight of the 40 does make it a better choice,,, the reduced speed of the 45 can reduce its effectiveness sometimes hollow points can become plugged and stop expansion from any round,,,

        what ever you eventually decide on using,,, be the fastest on the draw you can, be more accurate than any one you get to shoot against, and a 80 or even 90 % score on your score card does mean that 10-20% of the time you could loose in a gun fight,, it is your life,, you gotta decide what percentage of bad shoots is acceptable to you.. so carry the fastest heaviest slug you can hit every time with. you might just have to shoot through a car door at an angle and the 9mm FAILS,, and the 40 and 45 are only a little better .... if you dont believe me go find a junker you can shoot and give them all a try and change the angle of impact and the distance,,, if you think the 9mm is awesome, good for you but be darn good with it,, be darn good with any of them,,, if your a 40 cal freak, good for you learn to use it,, 45 fanatic,, it's been around for over 100 years because it has proven to be effective,, but it is not perfect even the reaction of the slide recoil is slower than the 40 and 9mm in most guns,, but it is not a one shot stopper every time the impact spot is key,, the 10mm has its failing too, ammo is harder to find, more expensive, it's not supplied by departments. recoil can be bad for many people so follow up shots may be harder to get on target for many people,,,
        but full power loads are very effective,,, and they can penetrate a lot,, even that can be bad.... good luck on your carrier and choices!

        Comment


          #34
          Lots of great info... I switched from 40 to 9.

          Comment


            #35
            Not a LEO.... but I've been a 9mm guy for a long time... based first on affordability, then on comfort, some weird sense of loyalty i guess,... but no real ballistic reasoning... figured..IF i had to shoot at someone..they are getting all 8 or all 13.

            so why, specifically, are some of you switching to 9mm if the ballistics are similiar/same to your current 40/45?

            Comment


              #36
              Originally posted by systemnt View Post
              Not a LEO.... but I've been a 9mm guy for a long time... based first on affordability, then on comfort, some weird sense of loyalty i guess,... but no real ballistic reasoning... figured..IF i had to shoot at someone..they are getting all 8 or all 13.

              so why, specifically, are some of you switching to 9mm if the ballistics are similiar/same to your current 40/45?
              For a lot of LEOs it's not really personal choice due to the firearm selection being a department/agency decision...

              Comment


                #37
                Originally posted by systemnt View Post
                Not a LEO.... but I've been a 9mm guy for a long time... based first on affordability, then on comfort, some weird sense of loyalty i guess,... but no real ballistic reasoning... figured..IF i had to shoot at someone..they are getting all 8 or all 13.

                so why, specifically, are some of you switching to 9mm if the ballistics are similiar/same to your current 40/45?
                If bullets are equal (and I believe that they are), the question is why wouldn’t you switch to the 9mm? Quicker follow up shots because of decreased recoil and more capacity wins the day.

                We have all seen anecdotal evidence that may make us lean one way or the other. I saw a man get shot with a double tap of 147 grain HST in 9mm and drop DRT. First shot hit him right dead center of his nipples and the second one was somewhere where his neck met his torso. That was enough for me to say the 9mm is legit and I never want to carry another round. Unfortunately, my department thinks .40 is still the way to go so that’s what I’m left to carry.

                Did a ride out a year ago at Westminster, CO PD. They just had an OIS a few weeks prior and the officers on scene had used .45 and 9mm GDHP’s. The two officers shooting .45 only penetrated one time through the car door after around a dozen shots to the vehicle. The officer on scene who had a 9mm hit the suspect multiple times, including the mortal wounds that ended the gun battle.The 9mm penetrated the car door and then deep enough into the perp to be fatal. When I was there, their shiny new 9mm’s were sitting in dispatch waiting for them to qualify that afternoon and they turned in their .45’s.

                There’s a ton of factors that go into a shooting (angles, clothing, bullet selection, caliber, barriers, body type, how many shots fired, hit locations, etc). It’s really hard to get solid data from a handful of individual shootings, you really need to base it on a large agency that has multiple shootings to get a large sample size (NYPD/LAPD/Chicago, etc) to really see what’s the most effective.

                I think it still comes down to shot placement, multiple hits on target and caliber/ammo selection, in that order. Three hits in the heart/lungs from a .45 APC of 230 grain GDHP is going to more effective than 3 hits in the stomach/pelvis area with the best .40 or 9mm round.

                Comment


                  #38
                  Makes sense

                  Comment


                    #39
                    I see the "good hits" like center mass etc. Like someone stated..........if it's your time then that's it, it's your time.

                    Go with what round your comfortable with. Our women officers did not like or handle the recoil of the 45s. Thus they went to 40s.

                    Confidence in shooting and dead on your target with 5 rounds vs 2 because you shoot well will take out the perp with most any round.

                    Comment


                      #40
                      Carried a Block 22 .40

                      kronik by Diamond

                      Comment


                        #41
                        Funny thing... back in the day the debate was 38 special, 357 mag, 41 mag, 44 mag... almost no one carried an automatic and if they did it was a 1911 in 45acp or a Browning High Power in 9mm.. but the 357 Colt Python and S&W model 28 were king... For grins I qualified with my model 29 but wasn't allow to carry it..

                        Comment


                          #42
                          The only thing I've ever carried was 9mm. Our department issue was a Glock 17, and I carry a Glock 19 as my personal carry. In my opinion, modern ballistics have elevated the 9mm to being the best handgun round. It's fast, accurate, has an easily manageable recoil, and allows for a higher magazine capacity. Regardless, shot placement is much more important than caliber. Train and be comfortable with what you shoot, not what you shoot.

                          Comment


                            #43
                            Originally posted by Chew View Post
                            I've carried 45 and 40 for years. Switched out my stuff for all 9mm. There are just too many factors to say one is better than the other. Lots of dead people from all the major calibers and lots of live people that have been shot by all the major calibers.
                            I don’t think any of them are better.

                            They now punch the same hole by design.

                            I don’t know it is a case of the 9mm being improved as much as the other calibers have been throttled back well below maximum possible penetration. Even when the FBI went to the 10mm after Miami (I believe the S&W 1006) they ended up scaling it back to subsonic velocities I think for control issues. They took a round that is capable of maybe 1,700 fps and scaled it back to about 950. It would be like loading a .357 magnum back to .38Spl velocities.

                            It really didn’t matter what the 10mm “could do”. That led to cutting the 10mm case almost in half, keeping the projectile at the same subsonic velocity and calling it the .40S&W (probably because 10mm Short doesn’t sound appealing but that is exactly what it is).

                            So that is where we are. I am fairly certain that most police agencies limit what caliber and what ammo can be carried. It doesn’t matter if an officer thinks he can handle and wants to carry a 10mm full charged load, most agencies simply won’t allow it.

                            We now have major ammo manufacturers (I would bet that one supplies probably over 75% of duty ammo in HST or Gold Dot) that have designed police rounds to punch the same hole.

                            That leaves the only choices of capacity and recoil..... or ego.

                            Comment


                              #44
                              Thirty-one years with DPS I carried a model 27 s&w.357, Browning 9mm, Colt Phyton, Sig 220, Sig 229 9mm, Sig 226 .357 sig., Glock 31 .357 sig. and a couple of 1911’s .45’s. The one I liked the most was the sig 226 .357. In my opinion it’s an excellent round.

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X