Why is the 9mm so popular in Europe?

And, compared to the average European, the Average American is a highly trained firearms expert.
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Highly trained experts, LOL, yeah right.
Skans, sorry to bust your bubble but I find as much ignorants here in US as back home ... maybe more here since there is more people living here ...


If Europeans were free, they would utilize more calibers other than simply 9mm. I wouldn't look at what the Europeans do and try to copy it - when it comes to firearms, they are, ON AVERAGE (i.e. not everyone) ill informed and bare minimalists.
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Again, most of your posts I generally agree on but this one is not that, Skans,
this is pure rubbish.
BTW, it was Americans who copied 8mm Mauser round into 30-06 and only reason they didn't pay patent infringement was because no one could make them in early 20th century.
 
Just to show some of the ignorance about handguns and handgun calibers back then, the iconic James Bond was told to get rid of his puny .32 caliber Beretta and use the more powerful 7.65 Walther (for the unclued, that's the same caliber only in metric).
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Awwww ... You just lost the game of trival pursuit dannyb. James Bond used a .25 Beretta and then was forced to replace it with a 7.65 Walther PPK.

C'mon, don't try and con a con man! :rolleyes:
 
GoFullAuto

The problem with that is, a criminal, and even more so terrorists, are getting more aggressive and take a lot more killing. If you just wound one of these types, and they kill you and the citizens standing behind you because you just ****** him off ... who is responsible now? It not just you who is involved; if someone is robbing a store and starts killing people for whatever reason, and you have hardball ammo of a lesser caliber that fails to stop RIGHT NOW, he or she may kill a lot more innocent people. If you do nothing he will still kill, and maybe you as well, and if you do something, but not good enough, the only difference may be that he dies minutes later, but you, he, and all involved will go to the morgue together!

Personally I hate morgues, so I do my best to avoid the place as long as I can! I also do not like having some scumbag surviving and me dying because I was under armed or outsmarted. In Europe he gets out in two years on a good behavior pass, and now enjoys free health care that I worked for all of my life. That sucks!

This is NOT a good scenario to me... A .45 ACP can help sort out a lot of these problems, moreover, stop the original scene from becoming a problem in the first place!

It is better to shoot too big and not need it than to shoot too small when you need too big ... that can get you dead, and not getting dead is my best skill!
 
I read somewhere about civilian and military in Europe,,,

I searched and can't find it,,,
But I am positive it was in one of our forums.

It stated that Civilian Police and the Military were restricted by treaty/law from using the same ammunition,,,
So most police agencies use the .380 (9mm Kurz?) instead of the 9mm luger,,,
I have no idea why this would even be a concern,,,
But apparently it was to someone,,,
Maybe a NATO thing?

Can anyone elaborate on this civ-mil division?

I'm positive I read that factoid here somewhere.

Aarond
 
That certainly isn't true in Germany, where the police use the 9mm, although in the past they commonly used the .32 ACP. In Italy, however, it may be true that the police use pistols in .380 ACP, which at one time was the service cartridge used by the Italian army. In some countries the 9mm only came into use relatively recently, replacing the 9mm Makarov and .30 Tokarev, both of which are very likely to still be in use somewhere.

There actually are a variety of different cartridges in use in Europe, although civilians generally do not have firearms. The service cartridge in Norway before WWII was the .45 ACP but that changed. The service cartridge in Finland and Switzerland was the .30 Luger, but that changed. The service cartridge in France was a .30 caliber also, but I don't remember the designation and it was changed anyway. The service cartridge in Spain was a 9mm but not the 9mm Luger but it was changed. Only since about 1970 were most service cartridges 9mm Parabellum, although the changeover had begun 20 years earlier.

Typically when European police are expecting trouble they skip right over handguns and go to submachine guns.
 
Bluetrain, in Italy .32 and .380 did have some use, due to ordnance being kept in service since WWII(!). But starting from the '80s the rush to 9mm was general, old guns getting unserviceable and phased out. When 9x21 came out (late 80s), also private police groups converted massively. Now sub-9mm guns are absolute rarities.

And yes, the main weapon for any police or Carabinieri 2-man team is a sub-gun, obviously using the military logic of "same ammo" with pistols. Here they use the Beretta PM-12, which enjoys a very high reputation. Euro-pressure loads from the longer barrel reach quasi 357 mag speeds on FMJ roundnose, on a weapon capable of keeping a good stream on a running (or ramming...) car, for instance.

Again, no short battle rifles, nor shotguns. I think for the aforementioned cultural tradition (the classic pump gun is seen as an American movie icon, rather than a sensible choice in ordnance).

Again, this also comes from the much lower level of violence (on average). Gunfights are rare, extremely short, and seem to be over as soon as BG gets hit. He'll try to flee, not to fight till drop.

By
GfA
 
Not many submachine guns in .380 in use anywhere, same with .32 ACP, though they certainly exist. Some were chambered in 9mm Largo. Even some Thompsons were made in .38 Super but that was ages ago.

Shotguns are hardly an illogical choice and they are still in use in the US Army. Oddly enough, I have photos of both my son (around 2005) and my father (around 1942), both in the US Army and both armed with shotguns. Even more odd, is that my son was a tanker and the photo of him with the shotgun is with him standing in front of his tank. I never did get the full story about that.

Submachine guns were somewhat common at one time in American police departments, back when they wore white shirts and carried revolvers with 6-inch barrels in swivel holsters. I'm from a small town and I can remember seeing the gun cabinet in the police station in the 1950s. It contained at least one submachine gun and was visible when the garage door front was open in the summer.

These days AR-15 rifles are probably more common but submachine guns, newer ones, that is, are hanging on. Some local departments have a shotgun in each patrol car.
 
And, compared to the average European, the Average American is a highly trained firearms expert.

Highly trained experts, LOL, yeah right.
Skans, sorry to bust your bubble but I find as much ignorants here in US as back home ... maybe more here since there is more people living here ...

Quote:
If Europeans were free, they would utilize more calibers other than simply 9mm. I wouldn't look at what the Europeans do and try to copy it - when it comes to firearms, they are, ON AVERAGE (i.e. not everyone) ill informed and bare minimalists. Again, most of your posts I generally agree on but this one is not that, Skans,
this is pure rubbish.
BTW, it was Americans who copied 8mm Mauser round into 30-06 and only reason they didn't pay patent infringement was because no one could make them in early 20th century.
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Vladan, I have to respectfully dissagree with you on most counts. First, lets start with the demographics. The US has about 300,000,000 people; Europe has more than twice that with 850,000,000. So, I think there are a lot more people "there", in Eurpoe than "here" in the US. About one-third to one-half of American households have at least one gun. So, where there may be about 10M-20M of private gun owners in all of Europe, there are somewhere in the area of 200M gun owners in the US, and each US gun owner is likely to have multiple times more guns than their European counterpart.

So, I do believe that it is fair to say that, on average, Americans are far more expert when it comes to firearms than their European counterparts. This does not mean that among the few select Europeans who own a gun(s) that there are not some very knowledgeable people. But do they reload their own ammo? Do they have access to the number of guns Americans do? Can they modify, build and customize guns like Americans can? No, they can't. In the United States, we are blessed - because of our freedom and our Constitution we do in fact collectively share a far greater understanding of firearms than Europeans.
 
As a European, I'd say the difference is in sheer number. Guns can't be a light, trip-out-in-the-woods pastime with our laws and bureaucracy: either you are very keen on them (and therefore go through all the hassles, red tape, taxes, etc. to own and operate them) or you just leave them alone. Here, you need pass a 40-Euro medical check and do red tape JUST to be entitled to attend a shooting range (guns hired there, ammo bought and spent there, you own nothing). If you want to buy and keep your own hardware, there's a lot more to come. And of course, be prepared to be seen as a freak by all your friends... as soon as they realize you CAN do that (often they believe it's outright forbidden to own guns and go shooting! They go like "That is a pellet gun right? What? A REAL gun? You mean shooting real bullets? You CAN do that? Really?"). Then they "accept" you as their freaky friend who is a good guy but likes to play with the stuff "normally" used by criminals and forcefully but unwillingly used by police.

So, Euro-enthusiasts tend to be just that - enthusiasts. Customizing, handlaoding and so on.
In the US you have a lot more enthusiasts (by the million), who actually lead the pace worldwide: all new ideas, all new trends, in the private firearm usership and industry come from the US, no question on that. Here we visibly tend to imitate you people, sometimes exaggerately ("acting" American, you know ;)).

But then the easy access to guns draws up also a number of people who just play with guns 'cos it's cool. Just to add that more excitement to the weekend trip in the woods or desert. Nothing wrong with that (I sometimes read complaints on US-gun forums on some cases of carelessness, but they might be 1%, I don't know). I have no idea how much % of the total US owners these are, all I can say is, this "mass consumer shooter" is non-existent here. Alas. :(

By
GfA
 
I think a better question would be, "Why is the .40 S&W so popular in the United States, and nonexistent just about anywhere else?"
 
Lumping all Europe in a single sack is a bit like generalizing about all the Americas. The Swiss are a nation of marksmen. There's a whole lot of hunters in Spain.

So, why is the 9mm so popular in Europe? The simple answer would be: Why wouldn't it be? It is also popular in the rest of the world.
 
Perhaps because its name, LUGER, comes from a famous GERMAN arms maker GEORG LUGER and Germany is and was a prominent EUROPEAN arms builder and designer. Even parabellum is Latin I believe for "for war".

Since the round pre dated the 40, and many other rounds, it also has that advantage, in addition to the points everyone else made. Its a logically popular round when you think about it.
 
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I only wish where I lived wasn't so crowded that I couldn't go plinking in the woods behind the house. There are about 1,300,000 people in the county where I live, yet deer are a common sight and now I've been seen foxes frequently, probably the same one. There are beaver here, too, but you don't see them.

Now the irony here is why European guns are so common here. There's Glock, CZ, Sig, FN, Walther, Beretta, and so on.
 
The 9mm has been a standard military caliber in most European countries. In several countries the federal police force (gendarmerie, guardia civil, carabinieri, …) have/had a strong military link. They often depend(ed) from the Ministry of Defense and thus had the same weapons as the army.

The local police forces often had a more diverse variety of calibers (the .38 revolver was actually quite common). When (in the last few decades) these local police forces needed to replace their sidearm the ‘proven’ (a.i. it works for the federal police and military) 9mm became an obvious choice.
 
Now the irony here is why European guns are so common here.
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The answer to that one is simple, we can, and do buy them! No where else in the world is there a market like ours. Most of the world's citizens are extremely resticted by laws as to what, how much, and how often they can buy when it comes to guns.

I would be willing to bet that if you only looked at sales to private citizens, worldwide, the US would be the top customer nation on everybodys list.

What I am waiting for is the laser pistol that only requires batteries and not tons of lead ammunition
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Dream on. Today's lasers (for sights), and other electronice gear used by our military already requires tons of batteries! One friend of mine, who has spent considerable time in the sandbox tells of how the locals can always tell when our guys are getting ready for an op, by the batteries we throw away!
 
There is another angle on this as well...

Only England and the U.S. were using big bore revolvers for their military at the end of the 1800's (Russia used some but not many compared to the size of the Tzarist Army). England due to it's colonies and battles there and the U.S. as a part of the expansion westward and battles with the Sioux, Apache and many others had a tradition of using big bore wheelguns. After a bit of a diversion to the .38 Long Colt by the U.S. the 45 Colt was brought back and when the military was ready for the transition to semis the 45acp was brought in with similar ballistics to the 45 Colt.

Most of Europe had no such traditions. The colonies Spain, Portugal, the Dutch, France and Italy had, had been conquered either before handguns were common or with them playing little role.

In European armies by the end of the 1800s the revolver was out and the pistol was the wave of the future. The Borchard and the Mauser and later the Lugar in 9mm were the order of the day. In a semi the 9mm had all most Europen nations needed. By the late 1930s the Lugar 08, the Radom Vis, the Browning HP and the Walther P38 dominated the battlefields of Europe, Asia and Africa.

The U.S. was late to the semi auto game. S&W did not make a duty sized semi till the 1950s and when it did it made it in 9mm. Till after the second WW the U.S. was a nation of wheelgunners and small hideout semis in .25 acp, .32 acp and 380acp.

tipoc
 
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