Seen people shot with various things for 60 years; I grew up from about 9 or ten in Chic Gaylords cop shop in an old Furrier locker in NYC as my uncle was a NYPD Gold Shield then and I was even at that age into guns
The .38 was considered adequate in both Special and S&W (!) guise . On and off duty that was what was carried. State Troopers did have .357s because they had to deal with vehicles and it was believed they penetrated better, which I am sure they did. Now remember if you ran away from a cop in those days you could and would be shot ! A 9mm was highly thought of as a anti personal caliber as was the king- .45 , but police of the time were generally not authorized it's use, outside the southwest
I was given my first 1911 at about 14 by a WW1 major and my father "kept" it for me until I was 18 , he was an NRA competetor and it became his hard ball gun and was worked over by Austin Behlert
. I can picture his face, he and I were close he passed about 10 years ago I think
) in NJ and later Bob Chow in SF when I got it in the 70s . I learned to shoot it well as a youth and later used the issue 1911a1 to shoot the only enemy I know I hit for sure in VN
and it worked well . I learned from conversations with Col Cooper 35 years back that sure there are more powerful rounds but the .45acp is about the limit of average human's ability to control for rapid accurate shots. He did dream about a possible .40 tho.....
I have been told the .357 works very well as an anti personnel round and it stops as well as or better than anything out there that is controllable even today! I used to be close friends with a real spook who used one in Germany after we won WW2 for cleaning up the remaining bad guys, he was the closest thing to an assassin with a license to kill I have ever heard of and he continued to use his .357 on bad people in Europe , Africa and Central America until the late 70s when he was well into his 60s. He used an 3.5" model 27 and a 5" Registered Magnum and shot lead hollowpoint ammo. He shot mostly to the head, NOBODY survived he said
. Here is a picture of my old 1911 which I still have and will be passed down.
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Here is an old 5" model 27 so there you are caliber wars !
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