- Will
General Performance/Fitness Advice for all
www.BrinkZone.com
LE/Mil specific info:
https://brinkzone.com/category/swatleomilitary/
“Those who do not view armed self defense as a basic human right, ignore the mass graves of those who died on their knees at the hands of tyrants.”
I am going to be blunt. With the very small 9mm pistols in the market today, I see ZERO reason to carry a 380 for self defense. The smallest gun I ever carry is a Glock 26 with a +2 extended mag.
I have carried a fullsized pistol in shorts and T shirt and never been made. As Clint Smith says a gun is never small enough when your carrying it and never big enough if you have to fight with it. Or words to that effect.
Black River Tactical
BRT OPTIMUM Hammer Forged Chrome Lined Barrels - 11.5", 12.5", 14.5", 16"
BRT EZTUNE Preset Gas Tubes - PISTOL, CAR, MID, RIFLE
BRT Bolt Carrier Groups M4A1, M16 CHROME
BRT Covert Comps 5.56, 6X, 7.62
And to repeat, are useless, and ignore decades of well established terminal ballistics knowledge and science. Nothing about the article or graphs has real utility for making an informed choice on what to carry and why. Stopping power is not a thing.
To this day, the seminal doc on the topic is via the FBI (1), which lead to standardization of bullets designed for SD/Duty, and what all modern ammo manufacturers follow and use as their guide to developing SD/duty ammo. Specific to that and other similar articles using same methodology, "THE ALLURE OF SHOOTING INCIDENT ANALYSES" covers that in FBI doc linked below.
On .380: The reason the .380 is not included as recommended for SD/duty to this day, is that they have not been able to produce one to meet those standards of penetration and expansion, the end. It looks like they are getting closer, but none shown to be reliable, hence, for the 9,012,143 time, why FMJ is recommended for .380 and below: you will get excellent penetration but no expansion, and penetration is far more important in ending the threat.
I'm astounded this is still a topic of debate in 2022.
http://gundata.org/images/fbi-handgun-ballistics.pdf
Last edited by WillBrink; 01-11-22 at 14:03.
- Will
General Performance/Fitness Advice for all
www.BrinkZone.com
LE/Mil specific info:
https://brinkzone.com/category/swatleomilitary/
“Those who do not view armed self defense as a basic human right, ignore the mass graves of those who died on their knees at the hands of tyrants.”
So 10mm? That's what the brilliant FBI said was best.
The article / study seems to suggest that service pistol cartridge performance is a rather narrow spectrum. I.e. the "best" and "worst" are fairly close in performance. I'll bet Dr. Fackler would agree with that statement.
I do carry fmj in .380. Because "penetration is far more important in ending the threat."
Yup. Penetration is the "Power" that "Stops" the threat. 😀
I wouldn't recommend .380 as a service cartridge.
Ive seen a decent amount of 380 GSWs over the years. Im definitely a proponent of going FMJ in that cartridge. The hollow points that do expand have shown really bad penetration.
Ive told this story before but i had a victim get shot in the stomach/side with a 380 hollow point. Bullet expanded well but on penetrated maybe 6-8 inches of skin and fat. He basically got shot in the love handle and it couldn't penetrate all the way through that. I dont think adding in bones and muscle is going to help that lack of penetration at all.
From my experience the FMJ rounds had adequate penetration but still lacked the bone breaking and real deep penetration abilities of the duty rounds.
C co 1/30th Infantry Regiment
3rd Brigade 3rd Infantry Division
2002-2006
OIF 1 and 3
IraqGunz:
No dude is going to get shot in the chest at 300 yards and look down and say "What is that, a 3 MOA group?"
The issue with the 10mm is not the bullets terminal ballistics performance, as it was an is excellent as everyone knows. It was also designed with what that was known about the topic and the materials and modeling of the time, without much considerations for the size of the gun, recoil etc. Knowledge of bullet design since that time has improved by leaps and bounds, and to repeat, the ammo you carry as does everyone else, all fed orgs, all PDs, etc are based on the FBI protocols that were developed.
What Fackler would say, as does his student and terminal ballistics researcher and tester who used to post here would say is, all pistol loads in common duty loads are poor man stoppers, and using those that meet the known recs for best outcomes, as outlined via the FBI and ALL major ammo manufacturers, is best practices. Anything else is just unnecessarily reducing your chances of stopping the threat before has the chance to harm you. The differences between best and worst, that fall within the recs are so narrow, that's why feds, PDs,. etc went back to 9mm. I can't even imagine how many times this has been covered here now. .380, still a bad choice.
I wouldn't recommend it for anything considering it's poor performance on terminal ballistics testing and many options of very small 9mm pistols that exist.
Last edited by WillBrink; 01-11-22 at 15:08.
- Will
General Performance/Fitness Advice for all
www.BrinkZone.com
LE/Mil specific info:
https://brinkzone.com/category/swatleomilitary/
“Those who do not view armed self defense as a basic human right, ignore the mass graves of those who died on their knees at the hands of tyrants.”
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