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Thursday, August 13, 2015

Putting Down the "Man Gun"

Pat Rogers explains at SWAT Magazine why he abandoned the .45 ACP for the 9 mm. Hint: it comes down to less recoil and larger magazine capacity.

2 comments:

  1. As Cooper has repeatedly stressed, "high capacity magazines are great because your liable to need every one of them in 9mm"!

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    1. Cooper was a fan of the .45 ACP. And he was spot on if you were comparing .45 ACP and 9 mm using ball ammo, or even the crappy hollow-points of the 1980s. The point that is being made now is that improvements in bullet design (as well as a move to heavier 124 grain or 147 grain bullets) have made the 9 mm "good enough for government work." Of course, the .45 ACP has benefited from the same improvements in bullet technology, making it even better when using quality defensive or duty ammo. Take a look at Lucky Gunner's ballistic gel tests, and several of the loads tested expanded to in excess of .70 or .80 inches, and the Winchester Ranger T-series in 230 grain expanded to 1-inch (!) while still meeting the penetration requirement of between 12 to 18 inches.

      But sometimes lots of "good enough" is better than just a small amount of "best." I think I've mentioned this before, but I was greatly impressed by an episode of the television "Monster Quest" looking at polar bear/brown bear interbreeding in Alaska, and they related a couple close encounters with bears. One was a guy hunting bear with a .375 who was only able to get one or two shots off before the bear reached him. The bear died, but not before it had mauled him a bit. The other was an Inuit hunter that was using an M-16 for deer hunting when he was charged by a bear. He was able to switch to full auto and dumped the full magazine (20-rounder if I remember correctly) into the bear dropping it mid-charge.

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