.38 Home defense

[Cosmoline]

NOTHING SHORT OF HITTING THE CNS WILL REALLY STOP ANY DETERMINED ATTACKER, and the size of the bullet that hits the CNS has not real effect on the outcome.

As the young ones say, "word."

To get a handgun that can actually start ripping off limbs and tearing bones out, you've got to move up to the hot .44 Mag or .454 Casull range. The 9x19's, .38 Specials, .45 ACPs, .32 ACPs and all the usual suspects are all essentially pea shooters that have to hit dead on the heart or CNS to drop an attacker every time.

 

[22luvr]

Have you ever thought of.....

using pre-fragmented or frangible ammo for home defense use? If you're concerned about over-penetration, magsafe ammo might be just the ticket. For distances not more than arm's length to 20 feet, .38 spcl pre-fragmented or frangible ammo packs a wallop. Just a thought.

 

[Blueduck]

Considering how modern homes are built I'm just wondering how much anything except maybe pre-fragmented shells would really reduce risk unless a stud was hit

 

[fecmech]

"Lead round nose tends to put the least amount of bullet bearing surface against the rifling for the bullet weight and is hence the least theoretically accurate round of any bullet type (although some aren't half bad)."

Jim--I would respectfully take issue with your statement, particularly in the .38. We had this discussion on the Cast Boolit board some time back and the general consensus was the rn was very accurate. The wadcutter was developed primarily to aid in scoring and lighten recoil for timed and rapid fire. I don't want to get into the terminal effects hassel but in the accuracy dept the 158 H&G rn is the most accurate bullet out of my K-38(2"@50yds), Ruger gp-100 (2.5"@50yds) and "Flatlatch" S&W36 1.5-2"@25yds. Many others on that board said much the same thing about the Lyman 158 rn. Nick

 

[Jim March]

Huh. Interesting.

Most of the round nose 38s I've encountered have been 130s. They never seemed very accurate, even by "plinking round standards". Could be a difference in bearing surface between 130s and 158s?

And we know what happens when the same concepts are applied to the 45ACP. The race-gun boys tune their stuff for semi-wads for a reason; if ball was accurate they'd use it for it's feed reliability but they don't - to get an accuracy boost.

 

[Erich]

My limited experience with 158-gr LRNs (maybe 1k rounds over 20 years) has been that they can be very accurate. Maybe not as inherently accurate as 148-gr LHBWCs, but as good as 158-gr LSWCHPs, easy. I agree that FMJ 130-grainers don't seem to do it - pity that's what Win USA loads for cheap. (At least they don't lead the bore! )

 

[Cosmoline]

I think most of the classic duty revolvers were designed to shoot the 158 RN bullets. My current Police Pos. Special and the vintage OP I owned both shot *very* well with 158 grain RN lead bullets. Accuracy fell off pretty quickly as bullets got smaller and bearing surface decreased. I had similar results with a S&W M-39 snub nose.

 

[355sigfan]

Full wadcutters have wounding power roughly halfway between a decent JHP and ball, and are very accurate.
END QUOTE

Are you talking about the permanite cavity based on penetration and expansion? From whoat I have seen good JHP's are far better.

The 38 special when fried from a 3 or 4 inch barrel is adiquate for defense. I personally prefer to have at least at 9mm with +p+ ammuntion in full sized weapons. But to each his own.
Pat

 

[Jim March]

There's a whole combination of things going on when you compare full wads versus a working (read: expanding) JHP.

First, I lean towards the school of thought that says the temporary stretch cavity isn't that important to wounding (at normal handgun ammo velocities - get past 2,000fps and it's *different*). SOME tissue excepted (liver, kidneys and brain). But when we're talking blood loss effects, it appears that all but the tiniest blood vessels are "stretchy" enough to survive even a close near-miss *most* of the time when the total energy levels are at the 9mm level or below.

That being the case, at least when we're running marginal power levels such as 38+P or 44Spl from a short barrel, a flat-faced full wadcutter will punch deeper than an expanding round, at the expense of expansion. And as an additional benefit, the wadcutter will behave that way even if it hits bone or heavy clothes or some other material that can cause a JHP to fail in a fashion that turns it into "round ball equivelent"...at which point the full wadcutter is now a BETTER wounder.

But, and it's a BIG but, most full wadcutter ammo is loaded too light to make any sort of valid comparison OR trust them for defense. I'd love to see some independent velocity data for the Village Metalworks full-wad-with-a-slot design...if it's a 148 going past 800fps, it should be respectable even if that slot does nothing (and if one petal does break off and it tumbles, now we're in a whole different ballpark - I wouldn't want to be hit by any such thing!).

The other problem: wadcutters don't feed well out of speedloaders if you're in a hurry.

In 38Spl+P, the 158 lead hollowpoints at the 825 - 875fps range from a tight 2" gun (Winchester, Remington) seem to be the best compromise. When they don't actually expand, the edge of the hollowpoint cavity does seem to "spread a bit" to about caliber bore, which means it's now just about identical to a full wad in wounding power yet has good energy behind it compared to a "target wadcutter" (148 @ 700, 750 if you're lucky).

 

[dogngun]

Use the Lead SemiWadcutter Hollow Point and you will be fine. Easy to shoot well.

Mark

 

[Vern Humphrey]

Quote:
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. . . when we're running marginal power levels such as 38+P or 44Spl from a short barrel, a flat-faced full wadcutter will punch deeper than an expanding round, at the expense of expansion.
--------------------------------

There's a corrolary to that -- a round that expands does so at the expense of penetration.

Given the marginal power levels we're dealing with, I question the value of the tradeoff -- do we WANT to reduce the penetration of this marginally powerful ammo? Can we get enough expansion to make a difference, and still get adequate penetration? Can we get it in all cases -- for example, when we hit large bones?

What experimentation I've done leads me to favor a +P load with a 148 grain wadcutter, cast of wheelweights, from a snubbie.

Now, from the 6" barrel of my Colt Model 357, it's a whole 'nother ball game.