9mm Dislike

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No matter what guns I take to the range, a 9mm of some sort always seems to go with me, often JUST for fun. I have gone through 2600 rounds of 9mm, in addition to various amounts of .45acp, .44 Special, .44 Mag, .45 Colt, .357, .32acp, along with ammo for the rifles, all in a four month period. The 9mm's have accompanied all those other guns, and I always have a better time when the 9's get shot, too. Kind of like desert...........
 
My thoughts on two cartridges as it relates to this thread:

9mm
I never cared for it... mostly because I read a lot of Jeff Cooper in the 1980s and Cooper had me believing that it was a good-for-nothing cartridge. Now, he may never have actually said any such thing, but Cooper was known for using handguns as fighting tools and/or training for fighting tools, thus, the 9mm had no practical use for him. And in the 1980s, the 9mm wasn't a very good fighting caliber.

Since then, the 9mm has become a better fighting caliber, with bullet, propellant and ammunition technology advances. Still, I don't use it often in a defensive role. However... I did quit disliking the cartridge some time ago for a couple simple reasons.

As a handloader... I find the 9mm to be a great cartridge because components are easy to get, inexpensive, and it's an easy cartridge to load very good ammo with. Brass in particular is so plentiful, I have such a ridiculous stock of it that I never need to worry about how much of it I lose in any given range session. And component bullets are a full HALF the weight of .45 cal bullets, which gives me more bullets for my purchasing dollar. Also, when having fun blasting things on the range (I do a lot of that), it's a riot having 15-17 shots before reloading and with the 9mm, you can do that easily.

So though I never cared for the 9mm in my formative years, I have really grown to like it. And to really get myself to like it even more, I finally bought myself an accurate 9mm, which is a heckuva lot more fun than the simple "combat accurate" 9s that I had been playing with. If you look at all the 9mm-chambered pistols in all the world, you'll find that 95% of them (more?) aren't highly accurate pistols. They might be quality, durable, decent pistols... but they aren't bullseye shooters. If you put some more towards an accurate one, you might find that the 9mm is a heckuva lot of fun to own and shoot.

.40 Smith & Wesson
...is a round that I didn't particularly care for when it hit the scene and to this day, I still don't care for it. IMO, it runs too high a pressure in too small a case and worse yet, it's almost always chambered in a handgun that was originally engineered around the 9mm. So here we have a hot round with absolutely no room for any sort of error, only NOW it's being launched from a pistol that used to have a .355" hole bored through it... but with it's new .400" hole bored through it. Less metal around the entire circumference of the round. Even less room for error.

I also concur with others that don't care for the recoil pulse which is sharp. It's not that I can't handle or hate recoil (my carry gun is 10mm), it's just more of a bang-for-the-buck sort of thing. I don't care to be subjected to .40 S&W recoil for the .40 S&W performance output.

Still, the existence of the .40 S&W has had a tremendous impact in my continued ability to get a hold of .40 caliber component bullets so that I may easily feed my 10mm Auto addiction. I've been handloading the 10mm since 1992 and I have little doubt that the commercial success of the .40 S&W has done everything to ensure that I can always find .400" jacketed slugs to load up in proper 10mm ammo. ;)
 
I had a derringer once in .44 magnum. I fired it exactly one time. It
landed in the woods somewhere and I didn't look for it.
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Funny.:p

When I was a kid, my dad carried a .45. So I thought when I saw a 9mm for the first time that it was tiny. Never could understand why the Army went to the M9. "Everybody else uses it" was not a good enough argument for me. Higher capacity I could understand. Sure.

Untill I bought the wife a Glock 19. Now I own 4 pistols in 9mm. Why? Cause that's what ammo I have the most of and it fits my needs. Thinking about a 9mm carbine. Sounds like fun. I own 1 .45 cause I can't afford to feed 'em.

Thought about .380, .32 and .38 for self defense because at the time they were the best choices for CC. Now with the boom of the CC market and manufactuers making compact 9mm and .45, glad I didn't go that route.

Don't really see a need for .40. I'm not knocking it. I just don't have trouble making up my mind between 9mm and .45. That's what it seems it was designed for...an in-between round.
 
I dont know if you guys know this but the 9mm is tapered down. Im sure most of you do, from where the bullet is seated to the end of the case it increases in diameter. This makes it one of the most reliable feeding catridges for a semi auto pistol. I really like the 9MM.
 
We had to standardize on a handgun round for our military forces. It's counterproductive to have allied forces all using different calibers.

Rob Furlong who for a time held the record for the longest sniper kill, ran out of ammunition. He had to borrow some from the Americans. This is exactly why allied forces want to have standardized munitions.
 
Exactly. Interchangable ammo with allies is intellegent and a must. There must be common rounds shared between them 7.62, 5.56, 9mm, 45ACP, 50BMG just for a few and probably many others.
 
9 or 45 or 38/357

Which one? I love all of these for different reasons. I like the 38/357 for the fact that you can shoot either cartridge, depending on what you have or your frame of mind, light or heavy. I love the .45 if it comes out of a 1911. Don't really care about other 45s myself. I like the 9mm for high capacity inexpensive shooting, platforms can vary widely. I have limited experience with the 40 S&W, but from what I do have I don't care for it or see much need for it. Just my opinion. I like what I can get ammo for easily. I am considering a 45 Colt next just for the fun of it although ammo isn't cheap.
 
Well you know what? It don't like you neither :p

In all seriousness, the 9mm is a very cost friendly and effective training and SD round IMO.
 
I've been shooting for more than
50 years and own many guns. I don't own a 9mm anything. I just have
never liked it and feel that there are better options.
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I can appreciate the fact that you don't like the 9mm cartridge but, imo, every serious shooter should own at least one. But then, I also believe that every gun looney should own at least one Winchester Model 94, a 1911 chambered in its proper caliber (.45 ACP) and a Colt sa Peacemaker. Along with...well, you get my point. ;)
 
There is nothing wrong with the 9mm, or any other cartage. I too remember Cooper doing comparisons between the 45 and 9mm (back in the 60s) the 45 was always better in his opinion. A lot of the strong feelings about this or that gun or cartage is based on the opinions of the old gun writers Keith and Cooper were both very opinionated.

This is now part of the internet forums, we all like to think our favorite is the best(and it is for us) and can't see why every one else doesn't agree. The 22lr is a cartage that a lot of people think of as good for nothing but target practice. I like and shoot a lot of different calibers, I don't hate any of them but some are better than others for a specific use. ;)
 
I wouldn't use the word "hate" or "dislike" to describe it, but there are cartridges I don't have much interest in owning. .25 ACP is one. .357 Sig is another (impossible to fine, and a relative pain in the butt to reload due to the bottleneck cartridge design).

Personally, I love 9mm. Cheap and easy to shoot, and like anything else (including the vaunted .45 ACP and 357 Magnum), shot place is still as important. It'll do the job if you do yours and keep your head screwed on when the turds fly into the fan. I don't currently own a 9mm, but I plan on adding a HiPower or CZ-75 one day.
 
.357 Sig is another (impossible to fine, and a relative pain in the butt to reload due to the bottleneck cartridge design).
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Actually, its always been pretty easy to find (its all Walmart basically had during the ammo crunch), especially in bulk on the web.

Reloading isnt a big deal either. Just one extra step with a .40 sizer die, and no lube required.

Biggest problem with it these days, its not cheap, and seems to be getting more expensive every day. Even the components to reload arent cheap.


Within the last year, I traded off a couple of cases of it for about double what I paid for them (retail value at the time was around three times) and bought a couple of 9mm pistols with the proceeds.
 
.327 Federal and .45 GAP are two I don't really like. They don't solve a real problem. The .45 ACP is another one that isn't quite my cup of tea. I just think there are better options if I'm going to carry so few rounds in a gun that heavy. It's fun to shoot, as are all guns, though. I've never shot a gun that I didn't like to shoot. That said, I've never shot the .577 T-Rex or the .50 BMG handgun.
 
I don't see much point in continuing a discussion of this nature - what caliber(s) don't you like.

Closed.
 
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