Quote:
Originally Posted by MJ  Nice photo Tom,
I'm getting the sense these days that people are really getting away from 9mm Sub Guns . . .
I talked to this one guy I met about a month ago who was working as a contractor in Iraq. He said some guys would show up with MP5s and they were told to find something that shoots a rifle round quick. |
Hi,
You know my feeling on the 9mm already. The 9mm is great against a citizen-soldier who REALLY doesn't want to fight you anymore, and for the crook who really doesn't want the fight to continue.
HOWEVER . . . against someone who really doesn't give a damn about dying and who will still come at you . . . well . . . this type of opponent will possibly kill you before they bleed out!
I'm not surprised at all for that comment in Iraq . . . for Islamic extremists don't really mind dying if they can take one or more of us with them.
The US discovered this same type of problem about 100 years ago in the Bolo Wars in the South Pacific. We'd just dropped the old Single Action Army Colt revolver in .45Colt, and replaced it with the .38 S&W round.
BAD MOVE! The .38 S&W round is an under-powered, shorter version of the later .38 special that was adopted for police work later.
AND . . . the .38 rounds are actually .36 caliber, but since that designation had already been claimed by the blackpowder handgun round of the civil war era, the marketing types upped it to call it a .38. Hekc, a .38 is ACTUALLY a .357 diameter round . . . and the 9mm is a .356 round.
That caliber (.356 & .357) isn't dramatically effective until you load it real hot with a longer cartridge . . . in .357 magnum for revolvers or .38 super for automatics. Most citizen soldiers couldn't handle the recoil of either very well . . . as a group! The 10mm, .41 mag., and .44 mag. are ok too, but each also has way too much kick for the citizen-soldiers as a group to tame.
The .45 is a GREAT round . . . and the recoil is not bad at all! However, they are heavy cartridges that are too fat to load a ton of 'em inside the allocated number of magazines a soldier must carry.
Yep . . . the M4 has a more potent round (.223) than either of those handgun rounds! It's great for killing prarie dogs, varmits . . . AND will also put down a determined Islamic extremist in a more acceptable risk, time-wise!
Some military guys and swat teams are going back to the trusty .45ACP though for handgun rounds against targets that don't mind taking you out as they die.
That's why I love the .45 as a defensive handgun round. If someone ever attacks, and it turns out they don't mind dying . . . that "big, dumb, slow bullet will thump 'em good!
T.