.357 sig vs every other handgun ammo

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If the .357 Sig round is supposed to be so good at punching holes thru car doors and such, I don't know how wise a choice it is for Air Marshalls...planes aren't made of steel (but neither are too many car doors as of late), and at 30,000 feet are prone to severe decompression when you punch a hole in 'em...

I have to lean toward versatility...the .357 Mag handgun was made for a pretty darn good round....and if you want to save money on target shooting you can shoot .38 rounds...

Today's car door isn't much more than a wet paper bag to a good .357 Mag round...or many others...

A good .357 Magnum round will stop a charging wild boar at 10 paces...

...and a charging 250 LB perp at 10 paces...

...and probably a Dodge Charger at 10 paces...

...so it's my favorite...

...but I wouldn't go so far as to call it the best.

Maybe the .357 Sig is one of the best rounds for some folks that want a little more power in a easily portable automatic...

...but if you lived out in the woods somewhere and could only have one handgun to perform all of your different tasks you probably wouldn't choose a gun that fired .357 Sig.

...the .357 Sig is definitely the round du jour...

...but if you want to carry a deadly round you might consider something in the .22 caliber neighborhood of rounds...they've killed more people than all the others combined. (but with some of them you may need to open the car door first)
 
Well he said his uncle is a TX DPS officer and his uncle said that it would go through car doors and other obsticles that the 40S&W and 45ACP woudn't.
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That is in fact why the Texas Highway Patrol chose the .357 Sig, but do you find that you need that in daily life?

That said, my daily carry P239 is chambered in .357 Sig and I like the round very much. I got a bargain and thought I'd try it, and I'm happy.

10mm beats it every way you can measure it.
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I agree completely other than no compact carry weapon is available besides a Glock, and it's borderline "compact".
 
The 357 SIG is a hybrid of the 9mm auto pistol mechanics and .357 MAGNUM revolver ballistics. A newly designed .355 inch diameter 125 grain bullet is pushed towards the speed of the venerated and time proven .357 inch diameter .357 MAG. That round originated as a hunting load, and is overcharged as evidenced by increased performance from a carbine. The 357 SIG was downloaded to fall within design parameters that included penetrating windshield glass with enough residual energy to disable an automobile driver. The necked down .40 case was probably the result of economic necessity. It resulted in a side benefit of more dependable feeding than the 9 mm, and certainly the .40 and .45 ACP. Jamming while feeding has always been the one really, really negative drawback to semi autos. When the .357 SIG comes out in a compact model and short barrel specific ammunition is available, the caliber will take the self defense market.
 
Car doors

I think I remember seeing Box o Truth did a study (or maybe it was myth busters) on shooting into cars. Car doors were very poor cover as many handgun calibers easily penetrated one or both doors unless the window operating mechanism was hit. The doors are mostly filled with air, the mechanisms take up very little space.
 
Wasn't the .357 Sig designed with a 4" barrel in mind? Compacts are just a little shorter than that. And the .357 Sig will work on any platform that supports the .40 S&W with just a barrel change.

Don't the Air Marshalls use a Glaser type of round? So the penetration of a normal round is largely irrelevant.
 
Corbon has a 100 grain Powerball round rated at 1600 FPS/568FT-LBS ME from a 2.5 inch barrel. That ought to do the trick for self defense carry. Who is making such a gun?

It is doubtful if Air Marshalls carry anything that would penetrate a fuselage or go through a perp for obvious reasons.
 
...planes aren't made of steel (but neither are too many car doors as of late), and at 30,000 feet are prone to severe decompression when you punch a hole in 'em...
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Actually, they're not. Some air will leak out, but the fuselage will not rupture and there will be nothing approaching a catastrophe. It might be irritating for the guy who has to sit next to the whistling hole the rest of the flight but that's about it...
 
Some air will leak out, but the fuselage will not rupture and there will be nothing approaching a catastrophe.
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Didn't the mythbusters confirm this? I think that I caught the tail end of a show one time where they were playing with a fuselage and some kind of pressurization system, and more or less conclusively proved that a bullet hole would just not be a big deal. Does anyone else recall seeing this?


Mike
 
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Does anyone else recall seeing this?
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Didn't have to see that. My uncle is an A&I (airplane inspector).

He worked for a major airline and they regularly pressure test cabins.

He said the average airliner is leaking air out here and there, in total would equal a hole a couple inches around, it's just that the compressors can keep up with it. If for some reason they can't then the pressure slowly drops and the cabin altitude increases. At some point the O2 masks will drop from the ceiling, but the "sucked out the hole" thing only happens in movies.

Even if the pressure drops dramatically all that happens is a few earaches and the cabin altitude increases rapidly.
 
While Mythbusters did confirm the 'explosive' decompression of a small arm round is BS, one can look back to WW2 to see it was total BS. B-29s few at 30,000 feet with pressurized compartments of all ten crewmen. Jap fighters riddled the B-29s with 20mm ammo, and all the crew had to do (beside bandage up those injured) was use chewing gum to plug the holes!

The only risk airliners have from gunfire is if the bullets strike some very vital piece of avonics or somehow puncture a gas tank (very very unlikely.)
 
I bet the tanks are self-sealing.
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They are not self sealing but Jet-A (kerosene basically) has a flash point so high it doesn't matter.
There are multiple fuel compartments as well, so if one leaks out the others can be isolated.

It's not gonna burst into flames just slowly leak out.
 
I have heard many things about how the 357 Sig will penetrate through a car door where other calibers could not. I dont know because I never shot at a car door. However, the Boxotruth website clearly demonstrates that all of the popular calibers can shoot through car doors and windshields.

As well, the boxotruth website also demonstrates that other popular calibers can penetrate well through house doors. In fact, it seems both the 9 mm and the .40 could penetrate through several wall boards and wood sheets.

So choosing this round because of penetration is a mistake. The .45, .40 and 9 mm can penetrate adequately through common household objects and cars just as well as the 357 sig.

The greater advantage I believe is the 357 sig has a longer range and can be fired more accurately then others.
 
Well he said his uncle is a TX DPS officer and his uncle said that it would go through car doors and other obsticles that the 40S&W and 45ACP woudn't.
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How is this a good thing for civilian SD?
 
I'm not really sure on that one I know I don't want to ever be in a situation that I'd have to fire my weapon at or through a car door.
 
Hey, I saw in a James Bond movie how a guy was sucked out of plane window like toothpaste. Didn't that also happen in real life a couple of times?

Thus, I think the superpowerful 357 Sig is ... Never mind! :D
 
It's good in you ever have to go through a door without opening it. The DPS do have to shoot through car glass and hopefully the round will expand. But that's just one issue.

The DPS said they wanted the old 'lightning bolt' effect the 125gr .357 Magnum gave them (one shot stops were VERY HIGH with that load) and so the felt the 125gr .357 Sig would give them, a more controlable gun, lighter one, plus hold more ammo and a cocked action after the first shot. They felt while the .45 as pretty good, it just didn't drop them like the old 125gr load did.

Plus the 220 was kind of big and the chick cops and men with smaller hands complained about that to. And thus the Sig was adopted with the Sig round.
 
The greater advantage I believe is the 357 sig has a longer range and can be fired more accurately then others
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I think the advantge there is largely theoretical.
I'm sure there are many police officers that exceed qualification standards, but I don't think the average LEO does and those standards just aren't that high. From what I have seen in ranges, most people couldn't take advantage of a flatter trajectory because they are not remotely accurate at longer ranges - shooter error greatly exceeds bullet drop.
Anecdotally, the few stories that I have read where police have to shoot at 50 yards or more, the hit rates are extremely low and sometimes the suspect is untouched.
 
357 sig better at feeding?

ok, i'll get into this one, only because i like the 357 sig a lot (don't own one, just shot sig 229 as rental). is it true -- i'm asking, don't really know -- what i've heard that one of the advantages of the necked down 357 sig is lower failure to feed problems?
 
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