38 special revolver

Status
Not open for further replies.
Well, uh... it worked(s)... ?

I guess you would need to qualify your question a little bit.

Is the cartridge effective? For most things personal protection related, yeah probably.

Are revolvers good choices for CCW and personal protection? yeah... has a lot to do with the user, though.

Will people recommend other things? oh you know it. LOL

Welcome to forum!
 
Mighty easy to handload for,which should provide more and better(accuracy) practice. Learn to shoot a revolver dbl action proficiently and everything else is a breeze. Good luck with your 38 sp.
 
The 32s were effective enough for a long time, but then car doors became shields and people became bulletproof... 38s were more effective but at the cost of carrying more weight with the same capacity. Semi autos only became popular when people quit shooting as kids meaning green LEOs had to learn everything about shooting in the academy, and the hit ratio of 6 shots was not acceptable... so they tried to hit with 17 shots and still didn’t fare well.
 
The way I see it the gun/cartridge combo has less to do with effectiveness than the shooter does. 38Spl falls somewhere between .380 and 9mm on the power scale and they are both very effective defense rounds. 38Spl is also a very effective defense round. I tend to agree that in a lot of cases capacity is used to cover for lack of skill. I'm totally content with 5 shots at the ready. Others may feel 17 is what they are comfortable with. On a soft target I don't think the recipient will be able to tell the difference between 9mm or 38 Spl.
 
Capacity was not the reason for the overwhelming switch over to Semis though it was a factor in the decision making. The main thing was reload speed. The yeoman police officer with no other training besides academy or state college shooting education can more effectively reload a semi auto vs. Revolver. Ironically history has shown that the high brass in various places wanted the revolvers merits without it's detractions we see this in things like the Glock and other striker fired pistols with no manual safeties it is closer to the revolver in function of just "pull the trigger) than either SA or DA/SA autos, we see it in ammo choices such as the Creation of the .45 ACP cartridge which duplicates black powder .45 Colt loads, 10mm/.40 cal debate when we already had the .41 mag and some can even argue even earlier for the .38-40 WCF, remember the biggest switch came over in the 80s due to a variety of factors that I care not to get into at the moment, the 1911 was invented well in 1911, the 92 series by Beretta in 1972, there were other autos like the HI Power as well in the 1930s and Smith and Wessons 39 and while several depts transitioned to those firearms either early on or later the true transition did not take place until the prolific Glock pistol came about. Even more currently the trend to copying revolvers continuing most notably with the .357 SIG cartridge intending to copy the .357 in lighter weight loadings and the 9mm by increasing velocity to try and once again duplicate the effectiveness of the ole 125 grain load. Revolvers are fine for SD,HD, Carry, Hunting, and even police and war fare for the EXPERIENCED shooter but the striker fired weapons are probably better suited to those who will wear a uniform not out of love of country and community or a sense of duty but the guy who likes to eat doughnuts in the morning and views it as a job and nothing more. The .38 worked fine and it still does with the right loads. Otherwise it wouldn't still be around.
 
Last edited:
With good loads the .38 Special is absolutely viable. The only .38's I own are in J-frame 5 shot snubbies, a S&W M60 and 642 and a Taurus M85. Otherwise I prefer a .357 which allows the flexibility of shooting .38 Special but the option to increase power using .357 for whatever reason. My Ruger LCR .357 is only a couple ounces heavier than my wife's .38 Special LCR and I pocket carried the .357 LCR for over a year quite comfortably.
 
Well, uh... it worked(s)... ?

I guess you would need to qualify your question a little bit.

Is the cartridge effective? For most things personal protection related, yeah probably.

Are revolvers good choices for CCW and personal protection? yeah... has a lot to do with the user, though.

Will people recommend other things? oh you know it. LOL

Welcome to forum!
I suspected it was effective but was curious as to LEO opinion.
 
Capacity was not the reason for the overwhelming switch over to Semis though it was a factor in the decision making. The main thing was reload speed. The yeoman police officer with no other training besides academy or state college shooting education can more effectively reload a semi auto vs. Revolver. Ironically history has shown that the high brass in various places wanted the revolvers merits without it's detractions we see this in things like the Glock and other striker fired pistols with no manual safeties it is closer to the revolver in function of just "pull the trigger) than either SA or DA/SA autos, we see it in ammo choices such as the Creation of the .45 ACP cartridge which duplicates black powder .45 Colt loads, 10mm/.40 cal debate when we already had the .41 mag and some can even argue even earlier for the .38-40 WCF, remember the biggest switch came over in the 80s due to a variety of factors that I care not to get into at the moment, the 1911 was invented well in 1911, the 92 series by Beretta in 1972, there were other autos like the HI Power as well in the 1930s and Smith and Wessons 39 and while several depts transitioned to those firearms either early on or later the true transition did not take place until the prolific Glock pistol came about. Even more currently the trend to copying revolvers continuing most notably with the .357 SIG cartridge intending to copy the .357 in lighter weight loadings and the 9mm by increasing velocity to try and once again duplicate the effectiveness of the ole 125 grain load. Revolvers are fine for SD,HD, Carry, Hunting, and even police and war fare for the EXPERIENCED shooter but the striker fired weapons are probably better suited to those who will wear a uniform not out of lovr of country and community or a sense of duty but the guy who likes to eat doughnuts in the morning and views it as a job and nothing more. The .38 worked fine and it still does with the right loads. Otherwise it wouldn't still be around.
Thanks. Again I was curious about LEO opinions as the 38 special was used for quite a while.
 
The 1986 FBI/Miami gunfight was probably the tipping point for many agencies- even though it was eventually ended by a .357 revolver firing .38+P rounds. The suspects were hit multiple times by OO buck, 9mm, and .38s yet continued fighting, eventually killing two agents and wounding 5 more.
 
Last edited:
I suspected it was effective but was curious as to LEO opinion.

My uncle was a beat cop when he used a model 15 from S&W to kill one man while on duty. One shot with the old RN lead bullet was all it took. So I would say he liked the gun and round. He carried that gun to the end of his career (along with a couple other guns) and bought the gun from the PD when he retired. So he had confidence in the gun and the better rounds he later loaded in it.

I have kept a model 15 loaded in my closet for at least 25 years now and have no intentions of changing out guns. And I have plenty of other choices. A 38 Special is one of my favorite guns to shoot. It doesn't throw my reloadable brass all over the place like my autos do. If I could have only one handgun it would be a 38/357 with 4" barrel.
 
How effective was it for law enforcement?

A guns effectiveness is almost wholly dependent on how well the bullets are placed. Even a 22 is effective if the shooter makes kill shots. The 38 Special was used by LE for over 100 years. And of course you will read stories of how it failed to stop. And in most of those cases the failure is because of poor bullet placement. Even a RN lead will work if its placed in the right spot. Not many go very far with a bullet through the heart, lungs or liver.
 
The 38 was the standard and is still fine for most SD uses as most SD situations are very close and the 38 is low recoil and moderate size wound channel without over penetration into bystanders. Most State police/highway patrol went originally to 357 to penetrate car bodies, the older 60's cars could easily stop a 38, the 30's cars could actually stop 357's. modern cars can be penetrated by most pistol calibers...
 
I will preface this with the fact that I am usually carrying a revolver and it is almost always a 38 Special revolver. My CCW is usually a S&W 442 and my woods/tractor gun is an Model 10 Heavy Barrel.

With that said the revolver is obsolete for SD and Duty. There is no way to soften it. The high capacity polymer-framed semi-autos rule these two application and there is nothing we can do to a revolver to make it as capable as the semi-auto. Look at what is being issued to LEO and what is selling and its hard to argue the revolver is not obsolete. There is almost nothing a revolver can do that a semi-auto cannot do equally well or better.

Carburetors still work and yet are obsolete (in US passenger cars).
Slide rules still work and yet are obsolete to electronic calculators and calculators apps on phones
Typewriters still work and yet are obsolete.
Shapers (for metal work) still work and yet are obsolete.


38 Special Revolvers still work but are obsolete.
 
I own several .357 handguns that see a steady diet of .38 Special standard and + p rounds. Looking at the statistics .38 Specials have put down a lot of bad guys and conversely a lot of good guys. It's a round that has been around a long time and I'm betting will be around for many years to come. I've never felt undergunned carrying mine.

I'm guessing present day LEO's do not have much experience with it as most departments now spec 9mm. The older, retired LEO's probably carried them at one time.
 
The change over happened primarily because of the introduction of the Glock. Some used 1911's; mostly sheriff's dept types. The 38spl is plenty for self defense. If you need more than 5 or 6, you need to run. Running should be your first thought anyway regardless. Taking a life is not an easy thing to absorb.

You may recall the movie Dirty Harry.... most of those cops used 38spl revolvers at that time and had been for years. The 357 was something more.

A lot of the pistol rounds were all about trying to re-create the effectiveness of the 125 gr 357's. I think the 40 S&W achieved it for the most part. But things of this nature change over time.
 
I like the .38. If I am not carrying an "invisible" gun like a little .22 mag or belt carrying a semiautomatic, a boring .38 special is in my pocket.

They just work. Reliable and effective, with the right load, even the snubbies can be plenty accurate. I just commented on another thread how accurate and soft shooting the Ruger ARX is out of my very inexpensive Charter Arms Undercover.
 
I carried a .357 loaded with .38's at the start of my law enforcement career. The old RNL round was known as the widow maker due to it's poor effectiveness in stopping the BG. The 158 grain LSWC HP and other improved loadings were much better. After a few years the agency I was with at the time allowed us to start using magnum loads. What I saw was that non-dedicated shooters scores dropped significantly with the magnums since they didn't practice or have the mental discipline to shoot the magnums well. The policy was changed to require that only those who shot expert could carry magnum loads, all others had to carry .38 Special.

A couple of years later we were allowed to go to 9mm semi-auto at personal expense. Within a couple of months the majority of officers had 9mm. 15+ rounds before reloading along with a faster, less fumble prone reload was the driving force.

I'm retired now but I don't personally know any officer that would willingly give up a 9mm/.40./.45
auto and go back to the .38.

The .38 can still do the task but there were and are better options when your life is on the line. If I were Chief for the day I would not equip my officers with a .38 revolver. I would issue a semi-auto in either single stack or double stack format (officers choice) and train the heck out of them.

If an individual wants to carry a .38, more power to them, it will probably serve them well. I still carry one on occasion.
 
Capacity was not the reason for the overwhelming switch over to Semis though it was a factor in the decision making. The main thing was reload speed. The yeoman police officer with no other training besides academy or state college shooting education can more effectively reload a semi auto vs. Revolver.

I appreciate your post, but want to argue for the sake of discussion. My proposition is that it was not capacity or reload speed, though both those things became a (false) excuse. There were two more decisive factors that have taken a little longer time to come to light: the heavy double-action trigger, and the recoil of the .357 magnum, combined with the necessary weight to control recoil.

Once speedloaders were accepted as duty equipment, the revolver reload was not anymore a problem than a magazine reload. Inadequately trained people under stress can still fumble either, but a well-trained person can be just as fast with whatever they commit to training with.

The first problem with the revolver was the long, heavy double-action trigger. Even in the 1920's, new recruits that trained with a 1911 immediately had better results shooting the single-action trigger. But the long, heavy, double-action of the revolver kept it in favor of the authorities who were mindful of liabilities and embarrassment for unintentional discharges. During most of the century the revolver was popular in law enforcement, rules like keeping the finger off the trigger were not widely espoused, and most officers and their trainers were not aware of things like startle reflex and sympathetic squeeze. In fact, they were very strictly "point shooting" in the academies up until the 1980's when Cooper, his "Modern Method" and Rule #3 began to have attention paid to them.

While the .357 was introduced in the Registered Magnum (what later became the N frame Model 27) as early as 1935, most officers considered the gun too heavy (and too expensive) for regular duty use. To put it in perspective, it was just as large and even heavier than Dirty Harry's .44 Magnum Model 29, being the same frame but with less metal bored out for the smaller caliber. The Model 19 was super popular because it did not weigh significantly more than a K-frame .38. However, because of that, most officers used .38 Special in it, that is until the .38 Special with the issued round-nosed lead bullets proved time and time again that it had very poor effect. In effect, .38 Special was replaced by the .357 Magnum, at least for duty ammo. But officers scored better on qualifications with .38 Special. So they practiced and qualified with .38 and carried .357.

After the Newhall Incident in 1970, officers were compelled to train and qualify with the same ammo they carried. This is really what ended the popularity of the .38 Special with law enforcement -- not the semi-automatic pistol. The L frame S&W and the Ruger GP-100 were introduced to handle the higher volume of .357 Magnum that resulted from policy requiring officers to train, practice and qualify with .357 Magnum. Those guns' weight with their full underlugs, approached that of the N frame. Put simply, this weight was necessary to tame the .357 Magnum's recoil, and many people still had trouble with it.

There is no question one of the most compelling things about the Glock was that it was half the weight. But it sure didn't fire .357 Magnum at that featherweight. Because of Miami, the FBI and police agencies flirted with the .40 S&W for a couple of decades but ultimately it lost out because it didn't pair well with a 22 ounce polymer gun. When it was conceived, it was expected to be shot in guns similar to the Model 4506 -- at over 40 ounces. Indeed it debuted in the 4006, which was nearly 38 ounces. People came to overwhelmingly prefer the 22 ounce Glock, which is understandably better paired with the 9x19mm chambering. Trigger pulls have also gotten shorter and lighter and are compared today to the lightest single-actions whereas at first they had been marketed as "double-action only."

People want light guns -- above all the other criteria they want it to be easy to carry. Make a person carry a 45 ounce gun every day and they will soon forsake every advantage it has for a 22-ounce gun and say they are very satisfied.
People need light recoiling guns -- and when the gun has to be lightweight also, that means no .357 Magnum.
People hit better with light triggers -- and that means no double-action revolvers.


Guess why the .38 Special +P is still popular, maybe more so than ever, with civilians? You guessed it: lightweight compact revolvers like the J frames, LCR's, K6's etc. Light guns and light recoil.

It's not about capacity or reload speed. It's about lightweight and light recoil. It's why every handgun that is popular for carry or duty use is popular. It made the S&W 19 a smash-hit. It made the Glock 19 a smash-hit. It made the Ruger LCP a #1 best-seller for many years in a row. It made the G43 a hit. It made the Shield a multi-million-seller. It made the P365 a block-buster. And it will make the next big seller too.
 
I carried a .38 my first few years on the job, before switching (for other reasons) to a different agency that issued an autoloader. Our service round was a Winchester 95-grain Silvertip HP in a +P load. I always felt that that bullet was too light for duty use in LE, and other agencies around us tended to lean more toward something in a 125-grain SJHP +P load (one issued ammo in .357, a 110-grain SJHP.)

Used three of those Silvertips to fell a large feral hog running loose in town. Shooting it from above, aboard a commandeered boat (the pig had jumped into a connecting waterway), the hits I scored on its shoulder appeared ineffective. The one entering its spine, right behind the skull, from its left side did the trick.

I've been away from that agency since 1990. I think I even still have a few of those rounds left over from those days.
 
Personally, I do not feel under gunned with an S&W K frame 38 Special revolver, a Model 14 or Model 15. But, I'll admit that there are some semi-auto pistols that are more compact than revolvers and have similar or slightly better ballistics than the 38 Special.

You have to remember the capabilities of the round you are shooting and act accordingly.

I'd rather shoot a 38 Special S&W J-frame as opposed to a 357 Magnum S&W J-frame. The recoil of the 38 Special is more manageable than 357 Magnum. Remember, a hit with a 38 Special trumps a miss with 357 Magnum.
 
I appreciate your post, but want to argue for the sake of discussion. My proposition is that it was not capacity or reload speed, though both those things became a (false) excuse. There were two more decisive factors that have taken a little longer time to come to light: the heavy double-action trigger, and the recoil of the .357 magnum, combined with the necessary weight to control recoil.

Once speedloaders were accepted as duty equipment, the revolver reload was not anymore a problem than a magazine reload. Inadequately trained people under stress can still fumble either, but a well-trained person can be just as fast with whatever they commit to training with.

The first problem with the revolver was the long, heavy double-action trigger. Even in the 1920's, new recruits that trained with a 1911 immediately had better results shooting the single-action trigger. But the long, heavy, double-action of the revolver kept it in favor of the authorities who were mindful of liabilities and embarrassment for unintentional discharges. During most of the century the revolver was popular in law enforcement, rules like keeping the finger off the trigger were not widely espoused, and most officers and their trainers were not aware of things like startle reflex and sympathetic squeeze. In fact, they were very strictly "point shooting" in the academies up until the 1980's when Cooper, his "Modern Method" and Rule #3 began to have attention paid to them.

While the .357 was introduced in the Registered Magnum (what later became the N frame Model 27) as early as 1935, most officers considered the gun too heavy (and too expensive) for regular duty use. To put it in perspective, it was just as large and even heavier than Dirty Harry's .44 Magnum Model 29, being the same frame but with less metal bored out for the smaller caliber. The Model 19 was super popular because it did not weigh significantly more than a K-frame .38. However, because of that, most officers used .38 Special in it, that is until the .38 Special with the issued round-nosed lead bullets proved time and time again that it had very poor effect. In effect, .38 Special was replaced by the .357 Magnum, at least for duty ammo. But officers scored better on qualifications with .38 Special. So they practiced and qualified with .38 and carried .357.

After the Newhall Incident in 1970, officers were compelled to train and qualify with the same ammo they carried. This is really what ended the popularity of the .38 Special with law enforcement -- not the semi-automatic pistol. The L frame S&W and the Ruger GP-100 were introduced to handle the higher volume of .357 Magnum that resulted from policy requiring officers to train, practice and qualify with .357 Magnum. Those guns' weight with their full underlugs, approached that of the N frame. Put simply, this weight was necessary to tame the .357 Magnum's recoil, and many people still had trouble with it.

There is no question one of the most compelling things about the Glock was that it was half the weight. But it sure didn't fire .357 Magnum at that featherweight. Because of Miami, the FBI and police agencies flirted with the .40 S&W for a couple of decades but ultimately it lost out because it didn't pair well with a 22 ounce polymer gun. When it was conceived, it was expected to be shot in guns similar to the Model 4506 -- at over 40 ounces. Indeed it debuted in the 4006, which was nearly 38 ounces. People came to overwhelmingly prefer the 22 ounce Glock, which is understandably better paired with the 9x19mm chambering. Trigger pulls have also gotten shorter and lighter and are compared today to the lightest single-actions whereas at first they had been marketed as "double-action only."

People want light guns -- above all the other criteria they want it to be easy to carry. Make a person carry a 45 ounce gun every day and they will soon forsake every advantage it has for a 22-ounce gun and say they are very satisfied.
People need light recoiling guns -- and when the gun has to be lightweight also, that means no .357 Magnum.
People hit better with light triggers -- and that means no double-action revolvers.


Guess why the .38 Special +P is still popular, maybe more so than ever, with civilians? You guessed it: lightweight compact revolvers like the J frames, LCR's, K6's etc. Light guns and light recoil.

It's not about capacity or reload speed. It's about lightweight and light recoil. It's why every handgun that is popular for carry or duty use is popular. It made the S&W 19 a smash-hit. It made the Glock 19 a smash-hit. It made the Ruger LCP a #1 best-seller for many years in a row. It made the G43 a hit. It made the Shield a multi-million-seller. It made the P365 a block-buster. And it will make the next big seller too.
I understand where your coming from. I do not wish however to turn the thread away from .38 to revolver vs auto we can that elsewhere just wanted to give out a bit of a comparison about similarities.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top