Work has kept me too busy to write but I watched this video in bits and pieces. Good stuff and that Scott guy has a pretty cool job….
Full disclosure, I bought a .40 in the early 1990s, my first semi-auto handgun, in no small part because I heard all the chatter about 9mm being underpowered. It was a perfectly fine pistol but ever since pretty much every handgun I purchased was in 9mm.
With the improvements in 9mm ammunition technology and the increased carrying capacity, I have switched over almost exclusively to 9mm. I am of the opinion that being able to put rounds on target, not just the first one but subsequent shots, is critically important. If I was going to be certain to only need one round to finish any gun fight I would carry a .44 Magnum.
The guy from the FBI being interviewed certainly knows a lot more about ballistics and firearms in general than me and almost certainly more than most people I know and interact with.
Having said that feel free to tell me I am wrong in the comments.
One thing I learned about guns over the years is there is no one size fits all right answer. Fit, budget, sensitivity to recoil, cool factor aka personal taste and needs/wants vary widely.
I bought my first .40 in ’91 or so. A Glock 22. Shot the heck out of that thing and it was plenty accurate, and I discovered that I am not particularly recoil sensitive. I owned several other .40’s over the years and enjoyed them a ton, but around the time I went to work in a gun store I could see that the .40’s popularity had peaked and that the smart move was to step up to .45 or step down to 9mm. Now, all my semi’s are .45’s-except the .22’s of course.
The SMART money says go to 9mm since that’s THE military/LE handgun caliber. Honestly, in retrospect I wish that I had gone to the 10mm instead, but back when I switched to .45 ammo was pretty scarce and the 10 was pretty spendy.
That all said with hitting energies being what they are, if one wants to be WELL ARMED one has to have a long gun in hand.
With modern 9mm Larry Vickers said “the 9 vs 45 debate is settled. 9mm wins,” for the same reasons you mentioned.
If you are a hunter, you pick your firearms and cartridges/shells based on what you are planning to hunt. For those of use in the prepping community, common sense dictates firearms and ammo of the same type and caliber which are universal to the military and police forces. Plan accordingly.
I love the first shot double all other shots single action decock feature.
It holds a lot and single action has the lighter trigger pull.
Carry condition zero at all times for when the CPUSA (D) comrades start purging.
All commies are subhuman vermin.
After I taught her to shoot, my wife swiped my .40 H&K USP Compact for her carry gun. She can do head shots at 10 yards on demand so I guess I’m not going to complain about that. At least she replaced it with an H&K VP9 which I use as my “mall gun” (along with 2 spare mags).
Personally, .357 magnum is the best all-around sidearm cartridge.
My go-to is a Byrna, but if that doesn’t get it done, well: 1911 Combat Commander with Hornady .45 Auto 185 gr FTX® Critical Defense. I really don’t want to kill anyone, but I am not going to be a victim ever again.
I didn’t even own a handgun larger than .22lr until I moved southeast to Minnesota. I still keep a rifle or shotgun with slugs and buck at each door and have an AR with a half-dozen mags in a soft guitar case in the vehicle if I’m driving more than an hour and a half from my swamp.
Handguns are there to get back to your rifle and for caliber arguments. I like .300WM.
The 1986 Miami-Dade County shoot-out involving multiple FBI agents on a rolling stakeout against two wanted and violent fugitives, Platt and Matix, has been called “The OK Corral of the 20th Century,” by those who have studied it. That episode, and the deaths of two agents, were the actual reason the Bureau switched to 40 S&W over 9mm.
In its post-incident analysis, rather than admit to flaws in its doctrine and training, or errors on the part of its agents, living and dead, decided instead to focus in part on the weapons with which their agents were armed, a mix of revolvers and 9mm handguns.
The potent 10mm Auto cartridge was selected at first, but when many agents found it too much to handle, a toned-down version of it was created, namely 40 S&W.
Now that advances in ammunition technology have caught up with the venerable 9x19mm, most LE organizations and the Bureau have migrated back to the 9mm Parabellum. An unstated but real reason, too, is that many female agents find annual qualification easier with 9mm than they do 40 S&W.
Tactics and hubris led to that disaster for the Famous But Incompetent. They would never admit it and blamed the caliber of their firearms. While a Peace Officer in SoCal, I and my co-workers studied every aspect of that fiasco. If you research it, you will find Miami-Dade PD was just down the block, and thought it was a shoot-out between two gangs of coke dealers. In their arrogance, they did not inform the local PD what they were up to, and it cost them. But that is typical for the FBI. They are a powerful, frightening, and corrupt organization. I witnessed their tactics in SoCal and was also warned by a good friend of mine who worked for INS at the time to avoid the FBI at all costs.
Shoot what you’re comfortable and competent with, period.
I don’t think many people would argue that being shot by a 55 grain 5.56 mm bullet at 2300+ fps (typical for 7.5″ barrel AR-15) would be more effective than any handgun rounds, regardless of whether they are 9 mm, 10 mm, or .45″. It is also pretty well know that the rifle round will go through Level IIIA body armor, a car door, a car side window, a radius/ulna, or a heavy coat, and still punch into the body (although tumbling and fragmented).
So it surprises me that more people, including the FBI, don’t look at hypervelocity pistol rounds like Liberty Civil Defense in 357 Sig. Low recoil (like 9 mm 115 gr), 2300 fps out of a 4″ barrel, all copper projectile. I’ve tested it and it will penetrate Level IIIA body armor and the base portion keeps on going. They make a 9 mm that is not quite as impressive, but still does 2200 fps out of a 5″ barrel.
Why not both?
My adopted son was a USMarine and USN SEAL.
These days, he is an investigator with Bureau Of Prisons.
Not to be trifled with.
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He got all of us hooked on FN5.7 because of zero recoil.
This’s a blessing for this geezer, because a lifetime of .45 turned my wrist achy and cranky.
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In a few weeks, I turn 74yo.
We operate a small organic teaching farm near the outskirts of Eugene Oregon.
This’s hog cougar bear territory, plus the acreage is surrounded by swamp, and that is infested with goofballs in warehouse-pallet hovels covered in blue plastic tarps.
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As a hobby, I raise and train Heelers, the herding dogs.
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Two stories:
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1)
One of the neighborhood kids got excited about the FN5.7, as well.
Part of a farming family, she is usually up before dawn and working.
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One foggy pre-dawn, she was walking to the tractor out on the acreage where she left it at quitting-time the night before.
She felt eyes watching her.
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She turned to see a cougar stalking her in the weeds along the edge of the field.
The cat approached, she drew and emptied her first magazine…
…face and near front leg, as we rehearsed.
The cat went down.
She immediately reloaded and scanned for accomplices.
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In class at the University in Corvallis, we did the necropsy.
Of the twenty rounds from her primary magazine, the moving target had nineteen hits.
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At the time, the kid was about 14yo.
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2)
We had a juvenile black bear stuck in a tree in the backyard.
Inevitably, that sort of thing attracts dozens of feral hog.
They root around the tree base, knock down the tree, and invite the black to supper.
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Can’t have that.
As Ol’ Remus was fond of saying:
* “Avoid crowds of angry hungry feral hog with delusions of superiority.”
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We dispatched the black, then used the corpse to experiment with different pistol calibers.
Nothing penetrated beyond the subcutaneous fat, some failed to penetrate beyond the fur.
Expansion was variable, but again, no pistol calibers reached deep enough to bother essential organs.
Some slugs dented the skull, most bounced off.
None were immediately fatal.
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These days, I carry a .300bo AR pistol with two twenty-rounders for ballast.
Rarely more than a couple paces away in the truck, I carry a .300bk AR rifle and thirty-rounders.
And I always have at least a couple dogs for earlier warning.
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At the command “WORK!”, they go from playing to Berserkers.
Pretty good pals.