9mm ain't all that bad???

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A 9mm bullet out of a 357SIG, will give you the baseline 357Mag performance.

Plain old 9mm is much better in bursts. :)
 
stopping power

.45ACP- 230gr hydrashok vel.=850 energy=349 penetration=12" one shot stop=94%

9mm- 115gr JHP+P vel=1350 energy=466 penetration=14" one shot stop=91%

Not enough difference for me to run out and buy a .45 for protection. and I can plink all day for half the price.
 
Last range trip, I put 8 9mm in a 4 1/2" circle fast (2+ seconds) at 20'. The group was centered on the target's body center of mass.

That will get the job done!
 
45ACP- 230gr hydrashok vel.=850 energy=349 penetration=12" one shot stop=94%

9mm- 115gr JHP+P vel=1350 energy=466 penetration=14" one shot stop=91%
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I have to call Bravo Sierra on that whole one shot stop %. I've seen those figures thrown around and they are quite silly. "Stopping power" is a myth when it comes to comparing the 3 most popular pistol SD calibers.

How exactly do they get those numbers? Do they clone a person, keep him 100% still in the exact same position, shoot him in the EXACT same spot from the same distance from the same gun at the same angle, and see if he "stops"? I could also throw in a few other factors but hey. I would be more understanding if it were a 30-06 to the torso versus a .22 to the torso. I'd put my money on the 30. 9mm, 40S&W, and .45ACP are just too close that other factors weigh in far more than the caliber. Shot placement being king for starters.

Sorry to get OT for a sec there. I think 9mm is just fine. I carry a .45 but if I did carry a 9mm, I would not feel I was at any disadvantage. Both would have to have good performing JHP ammo in them of course. I like shooting 9mm but I like shooting .45ACP more.
 
Well it's late (2:00 A.M.) and I'm in the last hour of my swing shift so I'll answer you. Basically +P means the load is hotter than the industry "standard". +P+ means the load is even hotter than the +P. That's about as technical as I'm going to get.

For example the standard 115 grain 9mm load has the average barrel velocity of approximately 1150 feet per second.

The +P 115 grain load might have a barrel velocity of approximately 1250 feet per second.

The Federal +P+ 115 grain hollow point load has a barrel velocity of 1300 feet per second.

The + loads are faster and have greater pressure than the standard load. They also have a louder report, more recoil (i.e. somewhat slower recovery time to get the next round off) and I suppose more muzzle flash.

My department provides me with the Federal +P+ 115 grain hollow point round.

Those officers who carry the Glock 21 are supplied with the Federal HS +P 230 grain hollow point - also a hotter load than the standard 230 grain 45 hollow point.

If you shoot alot of the higher pressure/ higher velocity loads you can reduce the life of your handgun (internal parts, barrel rifling). But most people don't do that becasue they can't afford to expend thousands of the more expensive + loads.

Did this help?
 
Unfortunately that attitude kept me steering clear of 9mm for years. I've been an avid .40s&w guy. So I pick up my buddy's Beretta a few weeks ago and tore the center out of a target in zero.zero seconds with a 15 rnd clip. I paused for a long while and was like "where the hell have you been all my life?". Weird how your perspectives can change so readily, especially on beliefs you've had for years.
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After shooting .40S&W, I've found that shooting any 9mm or .45acp gun is a relatively "light load" and, at the least, quite easy to handle. .40S&W kicks harder than 9mm and faster than .45, so I imagine it's the result of just learning to handle a gun that jerks more, and harder.

At least, that's how I view the matter. :p

Personally, a number of factors have been mulling through my head lately over whether to get a CZ75B in 9mm or .40S&W (and as such, this can be used as a fairly objective comparison of caliber strengths regardless of platform):

Pro 9mm: cheaper ammo (and slightly cheaper gun, but hey..), higher capacity, lower recoil
Pro .40S&W: slightly better stopping power per round (arguable - shot placement is "more important" and with cheap ammo I can practice more), still only a couple (3) rounds less than the 9mm, recoil which can help me train to not even notice the recoil on a 9mm

I'm just an inch away from getting the 9mm and saying "screw it, these +p+ SD rounds are going to do the job. If not, I've practiced to make follow up shots quickly, and I'll do so." Two 9mm holes is better than one .40 cal hole. :p)

9mm, 40S&W, and .45ACP are just too close that other factors weigh in far more than the caliber.
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Yep.
 
cameron.personal:
They is all the same...
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Not hardly! This may just be my subjective way of interpreting it, but the .40S&W pathways are substantially darker. This may not have been the intent, but it would appear to me to illustrate, based on the differences in the rounds, that that darkness represents the cartridge's ability to actually damage flesh (or at least the gelatin) severely. The wound channels might be the same, but the damage is the difference between the flesh just being nudged aside and someone passing a meat grinder through (to use a little hyperbole).
 
Ya know history reveals a lot of folks died from being shot with a 9mm, including just 9mm FMJ.

Pretty simple actually how all this really works.
Gun has to feed and extract and this includes the magazines being part of the semi-auto firearm.
Bullets should go to POA/POI.
Shooter [clue here] Shooter should be practiced and skilled to use said firearm to hit what is aimed at.

Bullet hits what aimed at and folks die.
Bullets do not hit what aimed at, folks don't die.
 
According to certain standards, they under-penetrate. They have a great street record, however.
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Wait, so are you saying the fragmenting, lighter bullets have a better repute than heavy bullets for stopping power? Or for killing power? Or what?

I like the lighter stuff because it recoils less, is more likely to expand due to the higher velocity, and due to that expanding and possible fragmentation, is more likely to do damage to a greater cubic area of flesh and thereby more likely to kick the attacker's body into shock due to pain, etc. stopping them. At least, that's my reasoning.
 
I like the lighter stuff because it recoils less, is more likely to expand due to the higher velocity, and due to that expanding and possible fragmentation, is more likely to do damage to a greater cubic area of flesh and thereby more likely to kick the attacker's body into shock due to pain, etc. stopping them. At least, that's my reasoning.
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It does recoil less and it does go faster. Velocity in and of itself is pretty useless though. Lighter rounds penetrate less because of their lesser momentum. A lighter object decelerates faster when it meets resistance. As for fragmentation, if a bullet itself can fail to penetrate deep enough, imagine what small, light fragments of that bullet do. Fragmentation makes a light bullet even lighter. Fragmentation doesn't make up for lack of shot placement and in fact, can make perfect shot placement less than perfect if the now-lighter bullet fails to get deep enough into the boiler room.

Years back I did a lot of testing of handgun loads on gelatin, then took to the field and tried the same loads on live hogs (several hundred, in fact). Alot was learned. First off, I learned that gelatin is a great way to compare loads against each other, but it's a bad way to predict what they'll do in real flesh. For example, if load A penetrates 10% more than load B in gelatin, it'll generally penetrate about 10% more in flesh also. If it expands 10% more than load B in gelatin, it'll probably expand more in flesh (assuming it expands at all...flesh is more unpredictable). The fact that both loads did 10 or 12 inches in gelatin is pretty irrelavent though. Flesh penetration is often much less than gelatin penetration, but it depends on what it hits. Lungs don't offer much resistance, as they're mostly air, but skin is the equivelant of 2-4 inches of gelatin just by itself.

A few things to note about ballistic gelatin. It's tough and stretchy, but you can push a finger into it pretty easily. You can also get it to "rip" pretty easily. Try both of those the next time you're handling a roast. Cavities in gelatin and cavities in flesh are very different. Do a little hunting and that'll become evident in a hurry.

Lastly, energy and velocity in general are pretty meaningless. Let's change mindset from "stops" for a moment and take a look at failures to stop. They have happened with every cartridge from mild to wild, even multiple hits with 12 gauge. It doesn't matter if the perp took several thousand foot pounds of this mythical "energy" or not. If he didn't go down, he didn't go down. What do ALL of these reports have in common? Simple. The projectiles either missed the vitals, or they didn't penetrate deep enough to get to the vitals. That kinda disproves "energy" as any form of incapacitating mechanism and puts the burden of effectiveness on one thing; reaching the vitals. Hence why penetration is the first and foremost goal of a load. A load that both penetrates and expands is better yet, as the more the vitals are damaged, the faster the perp goes down. All the "energy" in the world is pretty useless if the vitals aren't hit. That's all been proven.

As a last observation, we're too focused on "stops" when the real thing we should be looking at is "failures". Any cartridge can produce "stops" and look good on paper. Let me explain for a moment. I doubt many people would hunt a Kodiak bear with a .22 short. Yet a few decades back, the largest Kodiak on record at the time was taken with one (kinda shows how important shot placement is). If you don't believe that, feel free to look it up yourself. Anyway, by the flawed math that is "one shot stops", that would make the .22 short a very effective Kodiak bear hunting round, since the majority of single shots taken, resulted in a stop.

I had an acquaintance many years ago that had taken 6 125 gr. .357 magnum hollowpoints dead center to the chest at point blank range during a burglary attempt on his 18 wheeler while he was asleep in it. He was able to end the threat and get himself to medical attention. He took several thousand foot pounds of "energy" yet was still able to function. Why? Because nothing immediately vital was struck. He was severely injured and it took a lot of surgery to save his life but he was able to function long enough to get help.

If we take a look at failures, things become a little clearer. A "stop" can be caused by anything from fear of being shot again, to the pain from the initial shot, or maybe he just fainted. These aren't "forced" stops. The perp simply lost interest in continuing hostilities. Yet they're counted in the statistics.

You'll never see a perp having take a serious central nervous system hit, or having their heart blown out, continue hostilities, simply because they're unable to.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that you can "fake" a stop. Hostilities can end for a number of reasons not related to the effectiveness of the round that hit the perp. You cannot, however, "fake" a failure when a round has taken out something immediately vital.

What's this got to do with the 9mm? Everything and nothing. If the bullet makes it to where it counts, it works. If it doesn't, then it doesn't. That's the same with any cartridge. I use 9mm and .45 ACP both and I don't see any major benefit of one over the other if you choose your ammo wisely. Myself, my friends, and my family ate a lot of pork over many years while I learned that lesson. A lesson that was staring me in the face all along, but I chose to put my faith in silly paper numbers instead of using my common sense.
 
Shoot 9mm out of a longer barrel...

...like from a G17L and you get near .357 magnum ballistics from a 115 gr projectile (or so I have read) without the recoil.
 
9mm are accurate and controlable the wife and I have 5 between us a tauri 905,sig 226,BHP,walther p1 and ruger p89. all 5 are reliable. the p89 and 226 are boring garbage disposals(put 15 in mag one in pipe pull trigger 16 times put 16 holes in target repeat until you know where freezes) the p1 is a just wanted one it shoots fine but I've not shot it much.the BHP has a bar-sto bbl and a tight chamber will not go into battery with reloads once in a while and the 905 will have sticky extraction with +p.ultimatly I trust the 9mm to do its job just as well as any of my other guns. after all its the software not the hardware
 
My father keeps pestering me to get something in .40 - but I keep saying no. In the event that the gun has to be used 'for real,' I see no realistic difference in effectiveness between SD rounds, and for range/practice/plinking/IDPA, why would I go with the more expensive round?

.45acp has some history (and .45 Colt moreso), so I enjoy shooting those for fun, but even in a carry gun I would feel no more or less comfortable with eight rounds of .45 vs. nine rounds of 9mm in a single-stack/cap-limited situation.
 
I have a Ruger P89 and PC9 carbine to match. I've had the P89 for about 12 years or so, the PC9 for about two months. I've shot standard pressure and +P rounds out of both (a few hundred through the PC9, a few thousand through the P89) I would not hesitate to trust the 9mm to do it's job if I do mine.

I have owned a .40 and couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with it. That's a bit of an overstatement, but my 7 yard groups looked like 25 yard buckshot patterns. Not something I would necessarily trust my life to. I don't know if it was more the round or more the platform (Sigma 40V), but I never got comfortable enough with it to trust it like I do the 9mm.

I also own a .45ACP and trust it implicitly as well. It is a Ruger P90 (I like the idea of sticking with one particular platform).

I was at the range about a month or so ago and there was a young fellow (early 20's) next door to me. He stepped over and started a conversation. He was shooting a Ruger P345 poorly. We struck up a conversation and he offered to let me fire a few rounds from it. I took him up on the offer as I am very interested in purchasing one. I put two mags in the 10 ring with it at 7 yards. He then started asking for shooting advice. I let him fire my P90 and watched his technique. Gave him some grip and trigger control advice, which helped him some. But then I pulled out the P89 and let him shoot it. Night and day. After a few mags he was chewing the 10 ring up. He went back to shooting his P345 and was finally getting the results he was looking for.

Now part of his problem was poor technique that he'd never learned to get over. Another part, I believe, was that he was not experienced enough with handguns to jump right to the .45ACP. He had developed a bit of flinch and the P89 session cleared it up. Once he went back to his own gun it seemed to stay cleared up.

I guess the point of this long post is that the 9 is just fine........
 
When I got serious about shooting pistols a few years ago I was coming from years of hunting, mostly deer with a .243 Winchester Model 70. I had no illusions about the stopping power of a hand gun versus a rifle. I've shot a bunch of birds as well, and understand my 12 gauge is going to do a lot more damage than any hand gun. I learned to shoot with Dad's early edition Ruger .22 and a Winchester bolt .22.

I started with 9mm and .22. CZ75BD with the Kadet Kit. Great combo. I bought a variety of 9mm's and a few .40s. I avoided the .45 because those guys seemed a bit odd. This past year I became odd as well.:eek:

I still have the 9mm CZ P-01 within reach most of the time, and feel very well protected for a hand gun. I love the 45s for range work and games, and would want one of them if I had any long range pistol work to do.

When I was about six years old, about 50 years ago now, Dad shot the Ruger into a piece of plywood. I'm not sure how thick it was or how far away it was, but the bullet went almost all the way through and was sticking out of the back of the board. He held up the board and showed my sister and I the layers of plywood and noted that the bullet would have gone through all three of our heads if each layer was a side of our skull.

I remember that to this day. I also shoot .22s at 25 yards into 8" plates. Put one of those up over your face and ask how many times you'd like me to hit the plate. At our club we treat the .22s just like all the other real guns for a very good reason.
 
So, Plink, can you post the numbers on your hog and gel experiments? :-D

Thanks for that post, it was instructive. Gives a bit more credence to the Mozambique drill, I think.
 
I ask all the pistoleros that make fun of my 9mms if they'd volunteer to stand downrange and hold the target in front of them, and to date; No Takers.
 
I know Fed agents who wnet BACK to the 9mm once there were hot loads with +P ability.

I saw a pile of folks shot in Vietnam and some from .45's or 9mm and they ALL fell down. That was with mil BALL which is the absolute worst SD round on Earth.

All you can ask from a pistol is to give you time and room to get away from the threat. 9mm's will do that for you.
 
Let the TRUTH staND

Quote: I ask all the pistoleros that make fun of my 9mms if they'd volunteer to stand downrange and hold the target in front of them, and to date; No Takers.
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LMAO ~ a thousand flys cannot be wrong ~


LS
 
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