.38 Special
Member
- Joined
- Sep 15, 2006
- Messages
- 7,381
Funny how a .40 vs. 10mm thread would have gotten testy. Who knew?
I'm a fan of the 10mm. I like horsepower, and I think nearly all handgun cartridges are underpowered for self-defense. The .500 Magnum, with a light, fast, frangible bullet is probably enough, though of course carrying the gun is annoying. (I do have my .500 on my permit...)
My Glock 29 carries a bit easier, and the power level is just on the right side of barely adequate, i.e. .357 Magnum levels. (That does not make it any sort of a cannon, and I don't really consider it a deer cartridge, let alone a bear one.)
The trouble is that even though handgun recoil doesn't really bother me at all (and just to prove I'm not any sort of tough guy, I'll admit that rifle recoil beyond the .243 level makes me want my mommy) it does slow my splits - and anyone who says recoil doesn't slow him down is, um, "mistaken". Recoil slows down Jerry damn Miculek, so it slows you down too. The G29 is a vicious little gun with full-power loads, and it dramatically slows my follow-up shots. It's bad enough that I've been experimenting with ultralight bullets (like the all-copper 115 grain Lehigh Defense stuff) at high velocity. That cuts down recoil enough to bring my splits back up to respectability, but only the lord knows if those bullets would work in a self-defense situation.
The other choice, of course, is to stick with standard bullet weights and cut the loads down to .40 levels, but of course that brings power down below a level with which I'm really comfortable, and also means that buying a G29 was silly.
And now that I've written all that down, I've convinced myself to go back to the .500 Magnum.
I'm a fan of the 10mm. I like horsepower, and I think nearly all handgun cartridges are underpowered for self-defense. The .500 Magnum, with a light, fast, frangible bullet is probably enough, though of course carrying the gun is annoying. (I do have my .500 on my permit...)
My Glock 29 carries a bit easier, and the power level is just on the right side of barely adequate, i.e. .357 Magnum levels. (That does not make it any sort of a cannon, and I don't really consider it a deer cartridge, let alone a bear one.)
The trouble is that even though handgun recoil doesn't really bother me at all (and just to prove I'm not any sort of tough guy, I'll admit that rifle recoil beyond the .243 level makes me want my mommy) it does slow my splits - and anyone who says recoil doesn't slow him down is, um, "mistaken". Recoil slows down Jerry damn Miculek, so it slows you down too. The G29 is a vicious little gun with full-power loads, and it dramatically slows my follow-up shots. It's bad enough that I've been experimenting with ultralight bullets (like the all-copper 115 grain Lehigh Defense stuff) at high velocity. That cuts down recoil enough to bring my splits back up to respectability, but only the lord knows if those bullets would work in a self-defense situation.
The other choice, of course, is to stick with standard bullet weights and cut the loads down to .40 levels, but of course that brings power down below a level with which I'm really comfortable, and also means that buying a G29 was silly.
And now that I've written all that down, I've convinced myself to go back to the .500 Magnum.