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Well I tried to call it a night, but you got me to riled up.
I did not enter anything in the poll because the poll did not cover me, as I mentioned earlier.
Also because the suppositions here are wrong. There is a point to this "poll" (which isn't a poll) and the authors misunderstanding of the history of handgunning for the last few decades enters into it.
In a previous post I have pointed out the ridiculousness of these statements. Tipoc, I don’t just have the experience of being a very active shooter of self-defense pistols in the 70’s and 80’s, I was doing it around some of the most famous names in pistol shooting. I also have a library of books and magazines from the period to support my opinions.
The gun press never did hype the "45 acp over all other self-defense calibers". Repeat, they never did that as a whole.
You are just wrong. During the 1970s-1980s no caliber was more hyped in the gun press than the .45ACP for self-defense. I know this because I subscribed to all the most known general firearms related magazines and a few specialty magazines. I also have books written in that era. The order of most hyped was .45ACP, 9mm as a close second, the .357 a distant third, and all the others much more distantly.
To the extent that they did do it the round was the .357 Magnum that was the "King of the Handgun Rounds".
While it once was for a period of time it was rapidly eclipsed by the .45ACP and 9mm beginning in the 1970’s because it was used in a revolver and for several other reasons. I can elaborate on those reasons if necessary.
Jeff Cooper was never an advocate of the "One Shot Stop" theory and never advocated that one round from a .45 would "put a man down" without accurate shooting. There is a un-informed misunderstanding of Cooper's contributions.
You are the person with “a un-informed (sic) misunderstanding of Cooper’s contributions”. He most certainly believed in the “One Shot Stop” or as he termed it “Stopping Power” reliability of a a cartridge. He even created his own formula for estimating which cartridges had a greater and lessor percentages of reliability based on a points system. Of course he really only simplified Julian Hatcher’s formula then slapped the name “Cooper Short Form” on it. Cooper wrote about the .45ACP that “...for the stopping power of the original load is about 90 percent reliable, and it is very difficult - perhaps impossible - to exceed this, to any important degree, with any handgun cartridge”. Cooper is not talking about the reliability multiple hits to create stopping power. Just in case you don’t know, Cooper used the phrase stopping power extensively. But know of the above accurate statements about Cooper or your half-truths are relevant to this Poll/Thread. Nowhere have I said previously anything about Cooper advocating the “One Shot Stop” or any theory about it. You are provoking argument about a things that are not the subject of this thread and being defensive when no attack has been made.
Up until the post war period the U.S. was a nation of wheelgunners. That only began to change after the war and it did that slowly. Till the 1980's law enforcement used revolvers overwhelmingly and the 38 Spl. was the round of choice and considered "good enough". Law enforcement, with a few exceptions did not use 1911s or pistols in any caliber till the Illinois State Police adopted a S&W pistol in 9mm.
In general the .357 Magnum was the go to round and the one that the gun press advanced as the king. This began in the 1970s once Super Vel ammo hit the market with jhp ammo of 90 gr., 110 gr. and 125 gr. that actually worked and in 125 gr. could occasionally hit 1400 fps from a 4" barrel of a Model 19 or M27. Law enforcement flocked to it and it was raised as a standard against which to measure the performance of other calibers. It still does that today. (357 Sig anyone?)
Not too much inaccuracy in those statements other than by the end of the 1970’s the .357 was in decline as the king of self-defense cartridges. For the record the .357 Sig is no .357 S&W Magnum, and is not in wide use by today’s law enforcement agencies.
The 44 Magnum was immensely popular in the 1970's. More so than the 45 acp. The latter was thought of as a military round suited for the Army or bullseye work but not a good hunting gun or for self defense. (Cooper advocated it, but he was in a minority.)
Cooper most certainly did not advocate the .44 Magnum for self-defense pistols. Good grief, read his books! The number of .44 magnum revolvers and rounds of ammunition used in the 1970s was far less than .45ACP pistols and ammunition. For all the talk about how great the .44 Mag was, and it is great, it was probably the gun that had more examples of one gun being owned by multiple owners than any other. People would buy it, discover it was too much for them, and sell it. Few knowledgeable people advocated it for self-defense use.
In the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s Marshall and Sanow advocated the theory of the One Shot Stop (OSS) here too the .357 Magnum with a 125 gr. jhp ruled the roost as the "King of the OSS" with a 98% OSS rating. (They gave some loadings of the 45 acp a 96% but no one paid attention to that). They also praised the 9mm+P+ as the next most useful, before the 45acp and there many followers, well did what followers do, they did it for many years. It's only begun to fade out in the last 2-3 years. (It's being replaced by the "9mm is better than any other defensive round because it's performance is just as good and you can shoot it fast and accurately" crowd who have swum to that piece of flotsam now that OSS has sunk.)
The debate those years was light and fast vs. slow and heavy. The 9mm vs. 45 debate fell into that category.
Please stop trying, whether deliberately or not, to turn this thread into a caliber war. Please do not regurgitate stuff from M&S because at least as many and probably more people question the credibility of their stuff as people do Cooper’s stuff. There is a very good reason why M&S found that the .357 “ruled the roost” and much of that reason has nothing to do with superior stopping power reliability. BTW, I have copies of their three major books.
It's a vague insult to believe that most shooters back in those years choose a gun or a caliber based on what the gun magazines said. That folks were so gullible and easily influenced.
That is an incredibly naive statement.
I hope everyone will just stop with the “War Stories”, “The Armed Citizen” stories, and provocations to initiate a .45ACP versus whatever caliber argument. Share information on your carry history and why if you want to but please remember that nowhere in this thread have I posted anyone’s choice of caliber is a mistake. You don’t need to defend your choice.
