I feel equally safe with .380 as 9mm as .45acp", then juxtaposed a similarly outlandish
Can you really say it's outlandish for someone to FEEL they are equally safe carrying one firearm versus another?
So far, it doesn't seem that anyone has yet come up with a system that reliably measures "Safety Protection Feel" emitted by one type of handgun versus another. But I guess we are assuming that the .45 has a higher "safety protection feel" versus a .380 though?
One of the links I posted eariler showed that, of the number of police officer killed between 1993-2002, more of them died from being shot with a .380 than from shots with a .45. And that almost 4 times as many were killed with the "weanie europellet" 9mm parabeullum than were killed with a .45.
Yeah...I know...that just means the criminal underclass doesn't buy .45s. They use what they've got. True enough...but interestingly to me is the statistics on the police officers who were wearing body armor at the time they were killed. 24 police officers were wearing body armor when killed by a .45. Coincidentally, 24 police officers were wearing body armor when killed by .380.
An equal lethality rate....and of course both .380 and .45 are blown out of the water by 9mm Parabellum. 4 times as much. (Most interestingly were the 2 cases of police officers killed with their own weapons....TWENTY-TWO CALIBERS!!! I'm assuming back up weapons.)
One of the other links I posted was about a police department that was having problems with .40 caliber ammunition penetrating through winter clothing?! Pistols rounds are weak. That's the truth of it.
Comparing the lethality rates of a .45ACP versus something like a .308 rifle
might show a clear advantage for the .308.
Comparing .45 to 9mm is like comparing apples...with apples. Neither one of them is significantly larger than the other or moving significantly faster to make wounds that are obviously more incapacitating than the other. It's 100 grains difference in weight. It's a couple of hundred feet per second difference in speed. The size of the holes are either .35 or .45.(and more fuzzy than that with hollowpoint ammo.) Measure that on a ruler...it's not that different.
Pistols are just not that qualitatively different in lethality. Above a certain point...let's say .380 size and speed...you only see incremental differences in stopping power. Until you hit the rifle cartridges...THEN you see a big swoop upward in lethality.
So I don't think it can be argued that the .45 is inherently more lethal than a .380. And that's before you argue anything else about carrying a heavy gun, or round capacity. Just the bullets themselves aren't THAT different when it comes to what they do to people.