40S&W…Have you seen the deals?

I just picked up an HK VP40 slide that I can now swap with the VP9 slide on the same frame. For me, it's not an either/or proposition. I enjoy shooting both, and now I can.
 
So when do the 9mm’s get replaced with.380’s?
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There's a fundamental division between the service pistol calibers and the lower energy/momentum offerings. It's not possible to get any sort of decent expansion and still manage the commonly accepted minimum required penetration performance.

Maybe one day that boundary will be moved by improved bullet technology; I don't know. I doubt it, I just don't think there's enough to work with to achieve it.
 
Vista has put out 2 LE posters and has an LE test website. The website I posted earlier. It's continued to be ignored here generating a feeling of circular bad faith arguing.

Will 380 replace 9mm? Nope. Federal 380 Deep Hydro Shock does best some 9mm JHP offerings at 13"+ and full expansion. For example, that's as good and better than some of the old 9mm JHP designs (ie, no skiving/bonding). Interestingly, Federal 380 Deep does out perform Federal 30SC HST/Gold Dot (which we knew it would given both aren't great in 380). So 30SC currently has problems. It also never falls within the total range of 9mm.

However, 380 cannot best 9mm in any category within the 9mm range. 9mm exceed penetration and expansion range of 380, non load specific. Therefore, 9mm will always "better 380.

This is the point that is being ignored. Vista 9mm falls within and at times above range of 40.

Vista, who makes Gold Dot and HST, shows the 9mm bests several 40 loads in several categories. When 40 beats 9mm, it's either 1 media alone and it's never by a significantly important amount when they both are so close.

That's the definition of range. 9mm and 40 fall within each other's range. When not by 1 category, either outperform in all.

If you don't agree to the concept of variation and range, we'll continue to circle.

9mm shape concentrates more weight behind the JHP than light 40 grained bullets like 135/155gr (ie, it's not dense). Therefore, the higher velocity low grain 40 that one could assume outperform 9mm don't. Just like Vista has recently said: lbs of energy isn't a measure of performance in handgun loads. It just is not. It's difficult to get everyone to agree, because it means most talk has been all wrong since HST and Gold Dot G2 v2.

Thanks to the same great bullet design, they both perform within each other's range. 40 never lands above the range of 9mm in every load according to Vista LE testing.

No one is saying 40 is bad. No one can point to Vista's own data and say HST/Gold Dot current defense loads in 40 is always better. It just is not.
 
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Federal 380 Deep Hydro Shock does best some 9mm JHP offerings at 13"+ and full expansion.
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The data I've seen on .380 rounds that get 12" or more of penetration show either no expansion at all, or, at best, expansion that would be considered poor in any service pistol caliber. I think there's one .380ACP round (the Federal round you mentioned) out there that manages to achieve the 12" penetration figure and still get about 1.5x expansion, the rest are much worse either on one or the other or both.

It seems like it should be pretty close to 9mm, but there's a significant step down in terms of what the ammo designers have been able to make it do in practice.
 
Exactly right. That's why will 380 replace 9mm? absolutely not.

30SC will also not replace 380 if people started looking at Federal Deep.

The LCP frame reins supreme for size.

Even niche role, an LCP size frame that can outperform a 3.5" Shield 30SC? Just want to have the 30SC at that point since it doesn't bring better to the table from the same manufacturer who created it.
 
Webleymkv said:
I suspect that many of the LE agencies that replaced their .40's with 9mm's did so at the time they did because many of the .40 S&W pistols were nearing the end of their service life and would need to be replaced soon anyway.
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You'd think so, but in my experience, it isn't so. All but one of the .40 S&W police trade-ins that I purchased only had light wear. A few years ago I purchased an unissued Glock 22 Gen 4, and many of the earliest .40 S&W police trade-ins to hit the market were marketed as such.
For whatever reason, a lot of PDs dropped .40 S&W despite having a large amount of lightly used if not completely unissued pistols in their armory.

The only exception is my California Highway Patrol 4006TSW, which the CHP only dropped because Smith & Wesson no longer produced the 4006, not even for special orders, so the CHP switch to the M&P40 in 2017. Regardless, my 4006 is nowhere near the end of its service life, and has more wear outside than it does on the inside.
 
“Split times” are not just for gamers. I use split times, draw to fire times and target to target times in my defensive training because good shooting does not care what the target is.
Follow this logic,….Good cartridge designs expand and penetrate in calibrated gel (plain and with barriers). Firing a single round can be effective and predicted by the one stop shot data study. Firing multiple rounds greatly closes the effectiveness gap between rounds like 380 and 9x19 from rounds like 45 auto and 357 mag. Split times are your ability to deliver multiple rounds. This drives stopping the attack.

Trying to combine and generalize 9/40/45 performance is ok, but that is some really dirty data. How many times did they shoot? What was the receivers adrenaline, attitude, drug use, etc? What was hit? If nothing is hit and a round stops the attack in one shot, is it a superior round? Shots to stops is super messy considering shot reactions are all over the map. That alone is another reason to put 2-3 on target and assess. Getting 2-3 out requires good split times. Unlike cardboard, most criminals are on the move as you put rounds down range.

380 will replace 9mm when they get the bullets and powders right. The split times are better!
 
Ballistics Gel Tests are obsolete, full simulated torsos are what the Military uses and they ought to be the norm by now, but they're expensive, and as we've covered, the driving force behind the adoption of 9mm was cost per round, despite the difference being mere pennies, so like heck are the FBI going to adopt a more expensive testing media, much less one which presents results which would show that 9mm is not in fact as similar in overall performance to more powerful cartridges with greater energy/momentum.

The real game-changer isn't how tissue reacts, but rather bone. This is a difference which becomes readily apparent in tests which use full simulated torsos. Amusingly enough, this is something that hunters typically already know from experience because they've observed it themselves in the field. So yeah, all those old foggies that everyone is so quick to dismiss when they say that they only trust older, more powerful rounds like .30-06 or .45-70, or even 12 Gauge Slugs because of how they more reliably drop deer in one shot weren't just telling stories after all, and their dismissal of the latest whiz-bang ".177 Beast-Blaster" cartridges was completely warranted because they'd been through ever fad before until they realized that they were better off sticking with what they already knew worked rather than trying to cheat physics with some lightweight, low-recoiling, small caliber cartridge traveling at Mach 3 that makes a big mess out of a block of gel for the first three inches before leaving a tack-sized wound channel which goes straight through, but nothing else.
 
40S&W…Have you seen the deals?

Forte S+W said:
Ballistics Gel Tests are obsolete, full simulated torsos are what the Military uses and they ought to be the norm by now, but they're expensive, and as we've covered, the driving force behind the adoption of 9mm was cost per round, despite the difference being mere pennies, so like heck are the FBI going to adopt a more expensive testing media, much less one which presents results which would show that 9mm is not in fact as similar in overall performance to more powerful cartridges with greater energy/momentum.

The real game-changer isn't how tissue reacts, but rather bone. This is a difference which becomes readily apparent in tests which use full simulated torsos. Amusingly enough, this is something that hunters typically already know from experience because they've observed it themselves in the field. So yeah, all those old foggies that everyone is so quick to dismiss when they say that they only trust older, more powerful rounds like .30-06 or .45-70, or even 12 Gauge Slugs because of how they more reliably drop deer in one shot weren't just telling stories after all, and their dismissal of the latest whiz-bang ".177 Beast-Blaster" cartridges was completely warranted because they'd been through ever fad before until they realized that they were better off sticking with what they already knew worked rather than trying to cheat physics with some lightweight, low-recoiling, small caliber cartridge traveling at Mach 3 that makes a big mess out of a block of gel for the first three inches before leaving a tack-sized wound channel which goes straight through, but nothing else.
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My understanding is that the FBI uses ballistic gel that needs to be calibrated and is different than the typical clear ballistic gel that is cheaper and a lot more popular on YouTube. The calibrated gel is either solid or translucent, making it less camera friendly. The ballistics gel is denser than some parts of the human body, and less dense than others. It’s an averaged medium. The issue I have seen with most of the mediums that try to incorporate some kind of bones is that it doesn’t present a uniform front, which makes comparison among cartridges difficult. One round that strikes a rib directly as opposed to pushing between two ribs is going to penetrate differently. The purpose of gel is to have a basis of comparison, not to perfectly replicate the human body. I haven’t seen reports detailing what specifically the US military uses, that would be interesting.

The differences that are seen among the rifle cartridges out there are generally much more dramatic than what is seen in handgun cartridges. This isn’t me saying the 40SW doesn’t perform better in one way or another than 9mm, it’s pointing out that rifle cartridges vary more in bullet lengths, weights, and profile and case space for powder charges.

Edit: an article talking about the differences in performance that can be seen with different gels.
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog...-not-performing-like-real-ballistics-gelatin/
 
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In a personal defense situation I would take a 40 Silver Tip @ 1,200+ FPS over any 9 or 45 ACP. Gel used for comparison leaves a lot of gray area for basing decisions on cartridge choice.
 
Gel used for comparison leaves a lot of gray area for basing decisions on cartridge choice.
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The funny thing is that the main evidence usually cited to indicate superiority of one service pistol caliber over another is gel testing. The reason is that it is easy to measure the differences and one can easily create controlled tests and generate reproducible results. The problem is that proving those differences correspond to a measurable advantage in terms of real-world shooting outcomes has, so far, proved impossible.

Anyway, I agree. There's information to be learned from gel testing, but one must be careful about concluding that because one loading/caliber looks better in gel than another, one can assume it's going to provide measurably better incapacitation times or defender survivability in real-world gunfights.
 
Forte S+W said:
You'd think so, but in my experience, it isn't so. All but one of the .40 S&W police trade-ins that I purchased only had light wear. A few years ago I purchased an unissued Glock 22 Gen 4, and many of the earliest .40 S&W police trade-ins to hit the market were marketed as such.
For whatever reason, a lot of PDs dropped .40 S&W despite having a large amount of lightly used if not completely unissued pistols in their armory.

The only exception is my California Highway Patrol 4006TSW, which the CHP only dropped because Smith & Wesson no longer produced the 4006, not even for special orders, so the CHP switch to the M&P40 in 2017. Regardless, my 4006 is nowhere near the end of its service life, and has more wear outside than it does on the inside.
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True dat. The G27 Gen 4 I got years ago looked like it had been barely shot, which after I shot it I understood why.
 
Classic research problem:

What I saw didn't work, so something else would work/something always works, so something else would never work.

This logic keeps me employed in stats :)
 
TunnelRat said:
My understanding is that the FBI uses ballistic gel that needs to be calibrated and is different than the typical clear ballistic gel that is cheaper and a lot more popular on YouTube. The calibrated gel is either solid or translucent, making it less camera friendly. The ballistics gel is denser than some parts of the human body, and less dense than others. It’s an averaged medium.
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No argument there, Clear Ballistics isn't a very good tissue simulate for flesh because it's too soft and too elastic, so bullets end up penetrating deeper and wound channels shrinking back more than they would in Organic Gel.

Simulated Torsos consist of a simulated rib cage with simulated organs, filled with simulated blood, and encased in an Organic Gel torso. This combination presents the most realistic simulation of an actual human torso currently available.

The issue I have seen with most of the mediums that try to incorporate some kind of bones is that it doesn’t present a uniform front, which makes comparison among cartridges difficult. One round that strikes a rib directly as opposed to pushing between two ribs is going to penetrate differently. The purpose of gel is to have a basis of comparison, not to perfectly replicate the human body. I haven’t seen reports detailing what specifically the US military uses, that would be interesting.
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And therein lies the issue with FBI Ballistics Gel Testing, it's too laser focused on consistency and repeatable results within the confines of a simplistic testing protocol based on dated information and theories crafted in the aftermath of the 1986 Miami-Dade Shootout.

The human body isn't a consistent medium, nor are streets a laboratory. Bullets may or may not strike bones, may or may not deviate after penetrating solid objects, ergo because combatants tend to be moving targets and gunfights occur in an environment without perfectly repeatable results, the best way to test something is through repetition, recording and documenting the results under a variety of conditions in order to better understand the nature of ballistics.

The differences that are seen among the rifle cartridges out there are generally much more dramatic than what is seen in handgun cartridges. This isn’t me saying the 40SW doesn’t perform better in one way or another than 9mm, it’s pointing out that rifle cartridges vary more in bullet lengths, weights, and profile and case space for powder charges.
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Indeed they are, in Ballistics Gel Testing, Rifle Bullets showcase the more devastating effects of cartridges with enough energy to result in remote damage which extends beyond the diameter of the projectile itself.

However, Bones don't require nearly as much energy to critically damage, and that's where simulated torsos better illustrate the differences between handgun cartridges.

It's important to note that incapacitation isn't necessarily lethal. For example, a shot to the pelvic girdle will cause a combatant to collapse because if that support structure becomes structurally compromised, the combatant can no longer regain upright.

In addition, if bones are shattered with enough energy, then it's possible for the bone fragments to result in additional damage, and there's the kicker.

Some pistol cartridges make bones shatter more dramatically than others, and furthermore, some won't shatter bones at all.

Don't get me wrong, Ballistics Gel Testing has its place, but at this point the the results are so well documented that the testing has reached the limitations ofwhat it can tell us about Terminal Ballistics.
We know how bullets perform in tissue, but what about how bones behave when struck within that tissue. That's where this new testing comes into play.
 
40S&W…Have you seen the deals?

Forte S+W said:
No argument there, Clear Ballistics isn't a very good tissue simulate for flesh because it's too soft and too elastic, so bullets end up penetrating deeper and wound channels shrinking back more than they would in Organic Gel.

Simulated Torsos consist of a simulated rib cage with simulated organs, filled with simulated blood, and encased in an Organic Gel torso. This combination presents the most realistic simulation of an actual human torso currently available.



And therein lies the issue with FBI Ballistics Gel Testing, it's too laser focused on consistency and repeatable results within the confines of a simplistic testing protocol based on dated information and theories crafted in the aftermath of the 1986 Miami-Dade Shootout.

The human body isn't a consistent medium, nor are streets a laboratory. Bullets may or may not strike bones, may or may not deviate after penetrating solid objects, ergo because combatants tend to be moving targets and gunfights occur in an environment without perfectly repeatable results, the best way to test something is through repetition, recording and documenting the results under a variety of conditions in order to better understand the nature of ballistics.



Indeed they are, in Ballistics Gel Testing, Rifle Bullets showcase the more devastating effects of cartridges with enough energy to result in remote damage which extends beyond the diameter of the projectile itself.

However, Bones don't require nearly as much energy to critically damage, and that's where simulated torsos better illustrate the differences between handgun cartridges.

It's important to note that incapacitation isn't necessarily lethal. For example, a shot to the pelvic girdle will cause a combatant to collapse because if that support structure becomes structurally compromised, the combatant can no longer regain upright.

In addition, if bones are shattered with enough energy, then it's possible for the bone fragments to result in additional damage, and there's the kicker.

Some pistol cartridges make bones shatter more dramatically than others, and furthermore, some won't shatter bones at all.

Don't get me wrong, Ballistics Gel Testing has its place, but at this point the the results are so well documented that the testing has reached the limitations ofwhat it can tell us about Terminal Ballistics.
We know how bullets perform in tissue, but what about how bones behave when struck within that tissue. That's where this new testing comes into play.
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I’m aware of what the torsos are. I wasn’t aware that the US military had officially adopted them for their testing protocols. I asked above, but where did you read that? I find a lot of things in this space are repeated as true because someone said it, but when you actually try to find if that’s true you just get directed from person to person.

I don’t know that I see the desire for consistency as a problem per se. If you’re going to compare bullets and cartridges you need consistency, at least to some extent. I’m pretty aware that the human body itself isn’t consistent, but again the point was for comparison purposes. Even with repetition in ballistic gel there is already variation in bullet performance. Add in some of the variation associated with some of the other testing methods and you have no idea if the differences observed are from the bullets themselves or random deflection in the medium. The “streets” may not be a laboratory, but if you’re going to approach an experiment with even a basic attempt at the scientific method then controlling variables matters. You can keep repeating experiments to try to minimize the outliers, but I don’t think people credit how much data you start to need at some point.

I don’t know that how bones react to getting shot by bullets within tissue is not understood. We have at this point decades of trauma medicine from military actions and domestic shootings. The cartridges in discussion here are in many cases older than anyone here. None of this is really new.

People often point to the limitations of ballistic gel testing. I find it’s next to impossible to find someone unbiased on this. The people that agree with the results support them, those that don’t suggest the testing protocol is deficient. Again, I myself admitted limitations with it. What I don’t understand is if it is so limited and if it is not indicative of actual real world results, as some here suggest, then why is it still used? Is it a function of a mass delusion, that we couldn’t come up with anything better, or that we are under the sway of the 9mm Illuminati who are hiding the truth from us? In all the decades it has been used, no one has been able to come up with something better than ballistic gel? Heck, even the ballistic gel torsos are a sort of extension of shooting pigs or meat carcasses as was done in the past and they still rely on using gel. Again, this isn’t new.

John has asked for people to show results definitively concluding differently at multiple times through this thread, and I haven’t seen one person address the request. Can someone point me to one documented example where the relative differences between ballistic performance of 2 or more cartridges in ballistic gel are shown to be largely false by another type of test? Where is the evidence that penetration of bullets to at least a certain extent in gel covered by layers of denim is “dated”? I’m not saying it’s unfathomable, I’m asking where is the document or organization putting in writing what the masses seemingly already know?
 
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What I don’t understand is if it is so limited and if it is not indicative of actual real world results, as some here suggest, then why is it still used?
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Because it provides reproducible results that are easily measured and compared.

It's as simple as that.

I'm not saying that gel results are invalid. They provide information that is useful, especially in comparing different loadings. The problem comes when there's an attempt to take those comparisons, those easily measured differences, and say that they translate to a difference in the outcomes of real world shootings. That this extra expansion, this extra penetration, this larger temporary cavity is going to provide a measurable/significant advantage if one ever gets into a shooting using caliber X vs caliber Y.

That is why the FBI eventually went back to the 9mm. Not because it performs better in gel, nor even because it performs the same, but because it meets their pass/fail criteria and they can't prove that a more "powerful" cartridge that performs better in gel is buying their agents anything if they get into a gunfight.

I'm sure that people think I'm trying to be a jerk for pointing out the lack of evidence, but it's really just logical. If no one can prove X is better than Y in terms of actual practical benefit, then what makes more sense? Assume that X is better than Y and that it's significantly better? Or assume that IF X really is better than Y, it can't be that much better or someone would have been able to show that it's better after all the time and effort that's been expended in the attempt?

To me, it's an obvious choice given the current situation.
 
JohnKSa said:
Because it provides reproducible results that are easily measured and compared.

It's as simple as that.

I'm not saying that gel results are invalid. They provide information that is useful, especially in comparing different loadings. The problem comes when there's an attempt to take those comparisons, those easily measured differences, and say that they translate to a difference in the outcomes of real world shootings. That this extra expansion, this extra penetration, this larger temporary cavity is going to provide a measurable/significant advantage if one ever gets into a shooting using caliber X vs caliber Y.

That is why the FBI eventually went back to the 9mm. Not because it performs better in gel, nor even because it performs the same, but because it meets their pass/fail criteria and they can't prove that a more "powerful" cartridge that performs better in gel is buying their agents anything if they get into a gunfight.

I'm sure that people think I'm trying to be a jerk for pointing out the lack of evidence, but it's really just logical. If no one can prove X is better than Y in terms of actual practical benefit, then what makes more sense? Assume that X is better than Y and that it's significantly better? Or assume that IF X really is better than Y, it can't be that much better or someone would have been able to show that it's better after all the time and effort that's been expended in the attempt?

To me, it's an obvious choice given the current situation.
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Which is why what I wrote in the rest of that post gets to my point and was included. If someone has some evidence otherwise, even limited, then present it.
 
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