.45 vs 9mm

I thought this forum would be the one place safe from the great caliber war.

In short... stopping power in a pistol cartridge is a myth.... and with modern ammo, the down rage results are negligible when comparing traditional service calibers (9, .40, .45).
 
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I am in the .45 caliber camp. During the Philippine Insurrection, the Army was using .38 caliber ammo against the Moros with little success. They went to the 45 (in a revolver at the time) & achieved better results. Besides, good enough for John Moses Browning....
 
+1 to KP. I'll take 16 rounds of JHP 9mm rounds over 8 .45acp rounds any day.
 
I am in the .45 caliber camp. During the Philippine Insurrection, the Army was using .38 caliber ammo against the Moros with little success.

....because bullet technology hasn't changed in the last hundred years or anything.
 
Boy o' boy, I can understand both aspects of this great debate. Gosh, dang, I wanna say .45 acp because I'm a traditionalist and enjoy several 1911s. But then I do enjoy several 9mm in my inventory. I do have pistols and carbines that consume .45 acp and 9mm. I do reload both calibers. Its a toss up for me. But then I use a .38 LCR as a personal carry for my CCW, go figure.

Push Hard, Press Forward
 
http://www.smallarmsreview.com/display.article.cfm?idarticles=1951
Favorite part of above article:
"To equal the impact of a 9mm bullet at its muzzle velocity, a one pound weight must be dropped from a height of 5.96 feet, achieving a velocity of 19.6 fps. To equal the impact of a .45 ACP bullet, the 1-pound weight needs a velocity of 27.1 fps and must be dropped from a height of 11.4 feet. The dramatic difference between 9mm and .45 bullets in this test can be directly applied to their relative effect on the human body and partially explains why the 9x9mm is less effective than the .45 ACP for military applications when both bullets are of the FMJ variety."

  • Well the human body & these bullet dimensions are the same
  • smokeless powder, bullet design, & metallurgical advances apply to both
  • Article mentions FBI studies starting in 1990's
  • Nowadays, .45 ACP magazine capacity close to 9mm
 
Think about it, if you were really going to be shot with one or the other & you had the choice, would you really pick the .45??
 
Coast Guardsmen carry .40 stateside and 9 mm overseas (as it's a NATO round). They didn't do this because it was just so fun to have two qualifications....

If I'm carrying CCW, it's a .38 +p , because I like wheel guns.....

But I guess I have the option of also carrying a S&W 500 Magnum..... but please, tell me about stopping power....
 
I carry the same.
 
upload_2016-10-9_13-21-58.jpeg S & W Centennial-internal hammer will not catch on clothing.
 
http://www.smallarmsreview.com/display.article.cfm?idarticles=1951
9x9mm is less effective than the .45 ACP for military applications when both bullets are of the FMJ variety."

SF folks aren't using ball ammo.... and if the MHS competition is any indication the services as a whole might be headed away from ball.

@LineInTheSand The topic is modern ammo in traditional service calibers.... not .500 S&W or 5.7.

The point is that a pistol round isn't carrying enough energy to knock down a human being. Stops come from hemorrhage or from a blow to the CNS. There are situations and applications that lend themselves to a particular caliber, so I don't really care who uses what. Though assuming you're using one of the modern ammo choices available today, picking .45 because you think you're more likely to stop someone/something with one bullet doesn't make sense.
 
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Coast Guardsmen carry .40 stateside and 9 mm overseas (as it's a NATO round). They didn't do this because it was just so fun to have two qualifications....

I don't understand what you're getting at here....

Think about it, if you were really going to be shot with one or the other & you had the choice, would you really pick the .45??

In the real life application does it matter? In a gun fight the bad guy/thing isn't standing still on the 10 yard line saying "I'm gona stand nice and still but you can only shoot me once." The bad guy in the Peter Soulis incident took more a than a full glock magazine of .40 to his chest and stayed in the fight, while a Polar Bear in the Central Park Zoo dropped like a brick with a single round of .38 special. Again, notwithstanding the use of ball ammo, .45 isn't some mythical man stopper that people make it out to be.
 
Unfamiliar with both incidents. I know Central Park has high power rifles for escaped animals. Don't recall a bear being brought down by a 38 though.
 
Unfamiliar with both incidents. I know Central Park has high power rifles for escaped animals. Don't recall a bear being brought down by a 38 though.

My exposure to the tale was as a footnote in Jim Cirillo's Tales of the New York City Stakeout Squad. Super interesting read, with history that I couldn't have imagined. Cirillo was part of an NYPD unit that hid in high risk locations and stopped robberies.
 
Beyond, what are you basing your statements on? I do wonder what study says a larger round with more power behind it doesn't have more stopping power...

Time to ditch those 105 mm rounds on AC-130s.... install more 25 mm (or are they 20 mm... I forget).
 
With ball ammo, .45 is a good choice. With modern JHP, 9x19 works almost as well (with the benefit of more rounds and less felt recoil).

In any pistol cartridge fight, you should plan on making multiple hits before stopping the bad guy.
 
what are you basing your statements on? I do wonder what study says a larger round with more power behind it doesn't have more stopping power....

The FBI has done plenty of research to support that conclusion.

Energy doesn't matter. Pistol rounds don't stop bad guys with energy. Projectile expansion and appropriate penetration are what matter... so energy is only necessary to achieve those two results.
 
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