The .380 ACP For Self Defense

Earlier this year, I saw an article by Kat Ainsworth titled "380 ACP: Is It any Good for Self-Defense?" (Alternate site here). Well, it's better than a sharp stick, I thought to myself. But I went ahead and read it and came across this line:

According to the gunsmith and now-retired police Sergeant and US Army veteran Tim Crawford, his experiences made up his mind fast on the cartridge:

Never 380 ACP as a defensive round. I made a run one night on a guy who had been shot 7 times with a 380 ACP. It was a drug deal gone bad. [After being shot] the guy whooped the shooter’s a** and took his gun away from him. Made my mind up on it. And the guy lived.

Holy crap, Batman! That wouldn't happen with a *real* cartridge.

    Before the call that changed Timothy Gramins’ life forever, he typically carried 47 rounds of handgun ammunition on his person while on duty.

    Now, he carries 145, “every day, without fail.”

    Gramins detailed the gunfight that caused the difference in a gripping presentation at the annual conference of the Assn. of SWAT Personnel-Wisconsin in 2012.

    At the core of his desperate firefight was a murderous attacker who simply would not go down, even though he was shot 14 times with .45-cal. ammunition – six of those hits in supposedly fatal locations.

Oops. Maybe it can.

    Alrighty, so is the .380 any good? It seems to depend on who you ask. As we saw above, some people are dead set against .380 even for a concealed carry piece. Conversely, others, like Mike V. (writing at Everyday Carry Concealed), Layne Simpson (writing at Shooting Times a few years back) and Richard Mann (writing at Shooting Illustrated in 2017) thought it was perfectly capable of being a good defensive round with modern bullet designs. Others are a bit more nuanced. In his article, "Colion Noir: Should You Carry The .380 For Defense?" (which I think was secretly a rebuttal to Ainsworth's article above), Jim Davis relates:

    [Colion Noir] begins by explaining that, when he first came onto the gun scene, everyone told him to make his life fit around his gun. For some people, that’s fine, but not for Colion because although he loves guns, he does not want them to dictate his entire lifestyle.

    He carries a Ruger LCP II for self-defense sometimes when he’s going to his mailbox which is “a bit of a ways” from his house. He has to walk to it and he does so at varying times, including after dark. He likes to keep his .380 Ruger by the door so it’s convenient for him to slip into his pants or the pocket of a hoodie and “Call it a day.” He doesn’t have to go and put a holster on or jump through hoops to go out the door. In short, it’s convenient. And after all, there are times when it’s just nice to have convenience.

    That little .380 slipped into a pocket is a lot better than simply not carrying a pistol at all. It’s easy and fluidly fits Colion’s lifestyle. It works, and so he does it. I’ve done a similar thing with my .38 Airweight revolver; I might be running to the corner store and want to have something with me, so I slip the .38 into my pocket rather than gear up. I suspect that most of us who carry firearms have likely done something similar.

And:

    Colion believes that at the end of the day, having a .380 is “better than nothing. Whether it’s a .22, a .380, a .44 Magnum, whatever the case may be, it’s going to be better than nothing.” He adds that the .380 has a good reputation as a self-defense gun, and he mentions that the former governor of Texas used a .380 to kill a coyote when it attacked his dog as he was jogging a few years back. “He got the gun that fits his lifestyle, he was going for a jog, he needed something small, and so he took his Ruger LCP. I’ve even done that.”

    Colion Noir admits it is not ideal. “I’m not going to lie to you and say, ‘this is all you need’, because there are a couple things you have to think about too. There are always trade-offs…when I carry the LCP II in my pocket, I don’t have a round in the chamber because there’s nothing covering the trigger guard.” He explains that if he has to use the pistol, he must rack the slide when he draws it. As he said, definitely not ideal. Colion acknowledges that there are pocket holsters, but he does not use them because it adds too much bulk in his pocket. He admits it’s a trade-off and he will have to rack the slide to get a round in the chamber, and that’s just the reality of it.

    The LCP II is Colion’s “Going to the mailbox” gun; his “Sometimes I take it running” gun. He uses a different gun for going out, and yet another kind as his bedside gun. In short, it “depends on what your lifestyle requires”, and he uses different tools to suit the task that he has at hand. Seems like a sensible approach to me, picking the right tool for the right job. He admits that he knows people who carry the LCP .380 as their full-time defensive pistol because it fits their lifestyle.

    “At the end of the day, what it boils down to is, a gun that you always carry with you all of the time is going to be better than the biggest gun that you leave at home.”

    Greg Ellifritz has observed that with .380, you can get good penetration or decent expansion, but not both. That’s why so many gun writers have labeled the .380 cartridge as “marginal” over the years. It meets some of our standards, but not all. It will probably work fine in the “average” gunfight. But if any barriers must be defeated, if your attacker is wearing heavy clothing, or if you have to take a cross body shot that penetrates the arm before reaching the vital organs, there is a much higher incidence of failure as compared to the standard “service caliber” weapons.

    He also states that "[a]lthough the.380 ACP isn’t a ballistic powerhouse, I’m more worried about the reliability of the guns chambering this round than I am its lack of ballistic performance," and goes on to relate problems (and problem guns) he has encountered in the classes he teaches. And he ends his article with a quote from Dr. Gary Roberts' taken from a wound ballistics briefing for the FBI:

    Many small, easily concealed semi-automatic pistols which are recommended for law enforcement backup or concealed carry use fire .380 ACP or smaller bullets. While these small caliber handgun bullets can produce fatal wounds, they are less likely to produce the rapid incapacitation necessary in law enforcement or self-defense situations.

    Handguns chambered in .380 ACP are small, compact, and generally easy to carry. Unfortunately, testing has shown that they offer inadequate performance for self-defense and for law enforcement use whether on duty as a back-up weapon or for off duty carry. The terminal performance of .380 ACP JHP’s is often erratic, with inadequate penetration and inconsistent expansion being common problems, while .380 ACP FMJ’s offer adequate penetration, but no expansion. All of the .380 ACP JHP loads we have tested, including CorBon, Hornady, Federal, Remington, Speer, and Winchester exhibited inconsistent, unacceptable terminal performance for law enforcement back-up and off duty self-defense use due to inadequate penetration or inadequate expansion. Stick with FMJ for .380 ACP or better yet, don’t use it at all. The use of .380 ACP and smaller caliber weapons is really not acceptable for law enforcement use and most savvy agencies prohibit them. While both the .380 ACP and .38 spl can obviously be lethal; the .38 spl is more likely to incapacitate an attacker when used in a BUG role.

    BUG–Infrequently used, but when needed, it must be 100% reliable because of the extreme emergency situation the user is dealing with. Generally secreted in pockets, ankle holsters, body armor holsters, etc… Often covered in lint, grime, and gunk. By their very nature, usually applied to the opponent in an up close and personal encounter, many times involving contact shots. A small .38 spl revolver is more reliable in these situations than a small .380 ACP pistol, especially with contact shots or if fired from a pocket.

    Handguns, by their nature, are a trade-off between effectiveness and comfort/concealment. How far you are willing to go to achieve that comfort and/or concealment will probably dictate how small of a gun you will carry. For instance, I can't ever see myself carrying one of the tiny North American .22 revolvers for self-defense. I doubt I would ever use a .32 ACP pistol, for that matter. But I am perfectly willing to carry a small or compact sized .380 or a snub-nosed .38 Special.

[Reprinted with changes from my July 5, 2022, Docent' Memo].