Standard pressure 38 special defensive ammo?

[mavracer]

Still in my experience with the same bullet weight, recoil increases when you increase the pressure because the velocity is increased.

While pressure and velocity are closely related, Peak pressure (what gets your pressure rating and what will cause pressure signs) often are not.
A faster powder will cause higher peak pressure with typically lower velocity than a slower one because the dwell time of the pressure is longer.
One of the problems with going to the lighter weight bullets in standard pressure 38s to reduce recoul is good old Isaac Newton shows up, Most of the lighter weight loads that expand don't carry the momentum required to penetrate

 

[riverrat38]

I use BB's 150 gr hardcast WC's for carry and practice with plated handload WC's at about the same speed.
The BB stuff gets about 860 FPS in my 2 inch S&W M640 Pro, which is Magnum rated.
The BB ammo is very accurate. Its just too expensive to practice much with. I do use about 2 boxes a year for "calibration" purposes.
BB ammo is available for shipping, something that can't be said about all ammo these days.

Best,
Rick

 

[Dave1911]

Part of that is the stupidity of selling lightweight snubbys to beginners because it's a "Lady's Gun," but the fact remains with many of my students that's the gun they have, and they can't really afford to buy something else.

Having a decent lower recoil load would give them something they could use until they can get a better gun.

Yes 15 oz 38sp have some kick with 158 grain bullets. But my son was able to shoot them at 11 and he weighed less than 90 lbs. But doubt he would have wanted to shoot a box of 50.

I recently ran across Zero brand 125 gr that are hollow points in standard pressure. They shoot very nicely out of the 642. Not sure what their stopping power is but given I can control the gun quite well, 5 in the torso at 5 yards probably stops them.

Also for the little 38 kick you mention, getting some bigger hogue rubber grips really helps a lot. The recoil out of my 15 oz 642 could tear skin with the stock hard and small grips.

 

[Bezoar]

better grips do help with recoil control in light weight guns but, the grips change the whole shape of the gun. Who wants to have to spend 100 bucks on new speed loaders because the new 12 dollar grip they got on their snub wont work with their old ones?

 

[Dave1911]

On 642 the stock grips did not work well with HKS loaders but the longer and more comfortable Hogue grips work fine. While bigger, they are not as wide where it counts. And they were cheap as I recall.