[Chuck Perry]

Just finished watching In the Line of Fire again on TNT. Does anyone know what round the assassin used in his plastic handgun? They show a closeup towards the end, but I couldn't make out the headstamp on it. Short OAL, rimmed straightwall centerfire cartridge. Appears to be under .35 caliber. Some sort of 32, perhaps 32SW?

[rugerfreak]

9mm Federal----IIRC


Basically a rimmed 9mm Para

[Archie]

.38 Smith and Wesson.

A rimmed case shorter than .38 Special and somewhat wider at the base. But due to the time of the film, I think I'll agree with Rugerfreak, most likely 9mm Federal.

Barrel life can't be very long, huh?

[Nightcrawler]

9mm Federal? Never heard of it.

[XLMiguel]

Nightcrawler, look here:
http://www.federalcartridge.com/

Prolly meant Federal brand 9mm Parabellum (9mm Luger)?

[Nightcrawler]

I've heard of Federal brand ammo. I've USED Federal ammo. But he said basically a rimmed 9x19mm, so I was thinking that 9mm Federal was like the 9mm equivalent of .45 Auto Rim.

But I don't think such a cartridge exists.

[SelfProclaimedExpert]

Nightcrawler,

Here's two websites that talk about the existance of a the 9mm Federal rimmed revolver cartridge:

http://americancustom.tripod.com/index-3.html
http://forums.forthehunt.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=66680

I'm going to agree with Archie - it looked like the stumpy .38 S&W to me. Plus (if we're going for realism), 9mm Fed. is a high pressure round, the .38 isn't at 1/3 the pressure of 9mm. It's better for a resin gun.

[Dean Speir]

...it wasn't the rounds John Malkovich used in his "trick pistol" in In The Line of Fire. Upon information and belief, those were an old rimmed revolver round of .32 caliber.

Chuck Karwin, probably the best Technical Writer around over the past 15 years, took an extremely jaundiced view of the 9mm Federal in one of his DBI Books, The Complete Book of Combat Handgunnery - Volume 2 (or perhaps 3), and discussed at length why it was a decemt idea poorly executed.

Ruger was going to produce the revolver until they took a close look at the round that Federal had wrought, and bailed. The only company to have produced a firearm in this chambering was, unfortunately, Charter Arms.

Federal wound up "eating" a whole lotta that rimmed 9mm.

[Skunkabilly]

Just finished watching In the Line of Fire again on TNT. Does anyone know what round the assassin used in his plastic handgun? They show a closeup towards the end, but I couldn't make out the headstamp on it. Short OAL, rimmed straightwall centerfire cartridge. Appears to be under .35 caliber. Some sort of 32, perhaps 32SW?

"I'll be thinking about that when I'm pissing on your grave!!!" :p :D