gglass
Member
MikeNice
The ultimate in average is not what I want to hear. This is a tool for protecting the life of not just me but my family. Average is not what I want.
I would trust my life to it if that is what I had on hand. You can kill with any caliber of hand gun. The question is, how confident are you in your ability to place the shot when it counts? If you feel more confident putting a .38spl+P on target than a 9mm or a .40S&W then it is the best gun to trust.
I have owned a .38spl and I believe that it would stop a bad guy in most situations. I just wouldn't count on using less than three shots.
I think that your definition of average is slightly different from the author's or mine for that matter. In this case of stopping power, "average" is still stopped or in many cases, dead. Will the .38 Special open the largest hole? No... Does the .38 Special have the highest velocity, energy or penetration? No... What it does have is an outstanding track record of stopping men. Besides the ubiquitous .22 LR, no other bullet has stopped as many men in the last 100 years in the US. Not a bad track record for "average".
More and more, LEO's and civilians are replacing the .38 Special with semi-auto calibers like the 9mm and the 40 S&W, and in terms of the next 100 years, these calibers will likely supplant the average .38 Special in total number of men stopped. This will not necessarily be due to their vastly superior stopping ability, but due to a shift in what is popular to carry. In the FBI table below, we can see that from 1999 to 2008 the .38 Special was responsible for the 3rd highest number of officers killed while wearing body armor. These statistics don't necessarily show one caliber's effectiveness over another, but rather what people are more commonly carrying. It does however show that the so-called "average" .38 Special is still right in the front of the pack for man-stoppers... Even if its size, speed and energy are just "average".
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/killed/2008/data/table_39.html
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