Anyway, I never particularly thought of the Colt Model of 1911, and it's .45 ACP Cartridge as having any particular 'Myth' associated with them, even if they do.
Rather, I took it that the Arm and it's Cartridge enjoyed the high esteem and good reputation they had earned, among Soldiers of all sides of those conflicts in which it was used, as well as among practical men and women of whatever walk of life, who had occasion to become familiar and practiced with them.
The .45 calibers (mainly .45 Colt and .45 ACP) were the most powerful for handguns at a time when allegedly their advantage in power over relatively weak calibers such as .38 Long Colt was needed, and they were deemed to have performed admirably. With regard to ammunition, the number "45" has taken on a mythic quality since then, but there's really nothing magical about it. If the problem was really penetrating primitive forms of body armor, then had a more powerful .38 caliber been adopted by the US Army, they would never have gone back to .45s. 9mm Parabellum also existed at the time and probably would have gotten the job done just about as well in a purely objective sense, but it was smaller in diameter, and bigger was considered better after the alleged failure of .38 Long Colt.
Or perhaps all of these calibers--including the .45s--performed about the same, which is to say poorly like all service handgun calibers in comparison to rifles, but people would only be satisfied that they were doing the best they could as long as the bullets were of the largest size. That's just an aspect of human nature. If somebody who drank the .45 Kool-Aid (and I used to be one of them), so to speak, shot an enemy soldier six times with a .45 before he went down, he'd say that the relentless enemy fought like demons, and if he shot an enemy soldier six times with a 9mm before he went down, he'd say that this stupid, puny round is ineffective against weak, skinny little (fill in the blank), and that we need to go back to the larger caliber immediately (so that the enemy can go back to fighting like demons when they absorb several pistol rounds, undoubtedly
).
A .460 for humans ? Now you're being silly.
Humans have taken worse in combat and survived--even kept shooting back sometimes.
Well then how is it I can shove somebody and knock them down without knocking myself down too???
It's easy to explain. If you move forward at all (even just a little) in order to gain enough momentum to knock a stable person down, then you must have gained far more momentum than a .45 ACP bullet could have ever gained from being shot out of a gun. Keep in mind how much more massive you are than a bullet.
The physicists amongst us are saying that if you knock someone down with a gunshot it will knock you down as well.
The implication is that the person being shot cannot resist being knocked down. Obviously if they are barely stable and don't resist, then maybe even a .22 LR bullet could knock them down, but if they try to remain standing, like most people do at all times while they're standing, then any person of any size can EASILY resist the momentum of a .45 ACP bullet, even if they didn't know that one was going to hit them.
Perhaps they never heard of taking a proper stance and bracing yourself for the impact.
Shooters brace themselves to become stable gun platforms for precise aiming, but no bracing or preparation is needed whatsoever merely to resist the puny impact of a .45 ACP bullet. Some people who are aware that they have been shot may jump backward and fall down, but this is a psychological reaction. A person standing still would barely notice the push itself, and certainly a person who is running toward the shooter, charging him for example, would not be pushed back by any noticeable amount at all, much less get knocked off his feet. A bullet that could accomplish the latter would indeed knock the shooter down, as well (if he's standing).
Of course let's also not forget that humans only stand on two long legs and have a relatively high center of gravity and really aren't that difficult to knock over.
They can be pretty easy to knock over for other humans of sufficient mass, but not for little bullets, even though they're flying at hundreds of feet per second.
Actually the myth that is being manufactured is that the 9MM is just as powerful as a .45 ACP.
9mm is definitely not as powerful or as effective per round, although it does come fairly close in both respects and has some advantages of its own that, depending on individual preferences, may or may not make it a better caliber overall.
It's being served warm all over the internet and folks are gobbling it up. Why? Because people don't want to pay for .45 ACP and can get 9MM cheap, so they need to believe the 9MM is at least the equal of the .45. (Aw heck, it's way way better!)
9mm is relatively cheap because so much of it is being manufactured, and has been for decades. If popularity means anything concerning caliber, then 9mm has been at least as successful internationally as .45 ACP has been stateside. The main reason that it is so popular with law enforcement, even in the US, is high capacity, among its other traits. Poking a larger but still rather small hole must make some difference, but the main point is always where you poke the hole, for which the difference in size makes little difference in probability, and 9mm is an excellent penetrator, too (even better than .45 ACP in some media), unlike .45 ACP's original competition in the US.
As for .45 ACP's higher cost, in addition to having to use more material, manufacturers will charge whatever the market will bear, and there are plenty of people who are willing to pay more for .45 ACP's perceived per-round performance advantage (or even its smaller real one--I wouldn't fault anybody for this, I just want the truth as I see it to be known).
Thirty years ago few would have even suggested such a thing.
I guess most people didn't know better. I didn't, either, at one point, but now I do.
I'm not saying that 9mm is better than .45 ACP in every way, and certainly not per round by the numbers, but they're pretty even in the grand scheme of things. That .45 ACP is
significantly better than any other service caliber, even per round, is just as much a myth as the original topic of this thread, its literal knockdown power.
It’s enough to shake your belief Jeff Cooper’s wisdom.
