10mm and Magnums?

[Dashunde]

How have those rounds been viewed lately in justified self-defense shootings?
Are there any new examples of a good guy getting burned because of his weapon choice?

I've always had the school of thought that your better off to use what your local PD does, but obviously their selection is not always based on performance but rather cost and other considerations, some being as simple as wether or not their officers can ALL qualify with it, and so on.

Is there any jurisiction or bureau that uses/issues 10mm or 357mags?

I'm considering the 10mm for a variety of uses, possibly as a occasional ccw.

[OsOk-308]

Wasn't it in the Harold Fish case in Arizona where they used the fact that he used a 10mm, to defend himself, against him? I love the 10mm, however if you don't live in a gun friendly state, and you have to use it, they may fry you in court.

http://www.haroldfishdefense.org/

[Webleymkv]

As I remember it, the fact that Fish used a 10mm was mentioned in his trial, but was far from the issue upon which his conviction hinged. As I remember it, Fish shot the man who was attacking him from a distance long enough to make self-defense questionable. Also, the attackers previous history of violent behavior was not allowed to be argued by the defense. It is also worthy of note that Fish's conviction has been reversed and he is no longer in prison.

As far as agencies using 10mm and .357 Magnum, very few currently do but both cartridges have been previously used by law enforcement. The .357 Magnum was one of the most popular law enforcement cartridges available (possibly surpassed only by .38 Special) until the 1980's and early 1990's when revolvers lost favor to semi-automatics among LE. .357 Magnum is a well-established and popular cartridge for self-defense so I doubt you'd get any grief that a good lawyer couldn't counter over it.

10mm Auto, while not as popular today, was in fact a fairly popular LE cartridge in the late 1980's and early 1990's. While use of the 10mm was never as widespread as other cartridges like 9mm, .40 S&W, or .45 ACP, it was used by some fairly large LE agencies including the FBI and Kentucky State Police.

[Jim March]

The main thing that hosed Harold Fish was that evidence was improperly withheld from the jury.

Specifically:

* The assailant charged Fish with flailing arms, screaming, after Fish fired warning shots to drive the assailant's dogs away (which was successful BTW - in a wilderness area against animals, warning shots can work well).

* The assailant was mentally unstable and had a history of doing EXACTLY THAT to anybody who objected to his dogs behavior.

* The evidence of these prior encounters should have been allowed in to help Fish show that he was telling the truth. Because Fish described exactly this same behavior to the cops, it got recorded officially, before Fish ever heard of other cases of this clown acting in the same way.

* What the judge said was "because Fish did't know about this guy's past, the guy's past couldn't be let into court". What the judge didn't understand (or much more likely, didn't agree with) is that a bad actor's past CAN be allowed in if it shows that the defender is telling the truth about actions that the defender described at the scene. That's actually a well-established principle and it's why the AZ higher courts overturned the decision.

[carguychris]

How have those rounds been viewed lately in justified self-defense shootings?

IMHO getting some training and familiarizing yourself with your home state's laws regarding proper use of deadly force is a far better use of your time than worrying about what cartridge to use. If you are justified in using deadly force, the weapon used will rarely come into question, whether it's a .44 Magnum, a .32ACP, a commonplace claw hammer, or your foot.

Most of the overwrought debate about "10mm Is Too Much" is traceable to the Harold Fish case. The primary cause of the extensive legal wrangling in the Fish case was not the gun that he used; the main issue was that Mr. Fish's actions hewed very close to the fine line between legal and illegal. Despite Mr. Fish's retrial and release, you'll still find gung-ho pro-SD "gun people" who will argue that he should still be in jail, or that his actions- while technically legal- were immoral and/or seriously ill-advised.

Are there any new examples of a good guy getting burned because of his weapon choice?

None that I'm aware of.

[OldMarksman]

Posted by Dashunde: Are there any new examples of a good guy getting burned because of his weapon choice?

If you are asking that to help make a judgment regarding the risk of choosing a particular weapon, a negative answer to the question about actual examples will unfortunately be of very little use, as discussed here.

Here are three relevant excerpts:

Posted by me:...one cannot draw any really valuable conclusions from looking at actual cases. For one thing, there aren't that many self defense cases tried, and the number of variables with the potential to influence the outcome each one prevents one from reliably ascribing the outcome to any one factor--there are just "too many unknowns and too few equations", as it were. For another, each case is decided upon the basis of the totality of the evidence, and no one can interview each and every juror in a sufficient number of trials to try to find out how and to what extent each piece of evidence may have influenced his or her judgment.

Posted by fiddletown: Historical research is helpful only if there's sufficient historical data. If the question is something like, "Is a private citizen who shoots someone and claims self defense more likely to be charged if he used a modified, or certain type of, gun or handloads compared with a stock gun or factory ammunition?", or "Is a private citizen who shoots someone and claims self defense more likely to be convicted at trial if he used a modified, or certain type of, gun or handloads compared with a stock gun or factory ammunition?", the availability of useful data depends on (1) a large enough sample of private citizens having shot someone in claimed self defense; and (2) a large enough subset of those private citizens having used a modified gun, or a certain type of gun, or handloads.

Posted by Bartholomew Roberts: First of all, the evidence you are asking to see would be extremely difficult to collect. Most of the issues you've raised would only come up during the actual trial, so they won't show up in Westlaw or Lexis-Nexis searches that only deal with appellate cases. Second, most of the cases are prosecuted by the state rather than the Feds, which means that they won't show up in PACER either. Third, many of the issues would be motions and evidentiary issues that you could basically only find by going to the specific courthouse and searching the court records yourself.

So unless you actually happen to be working the particular case where the issue comes up or it is a case that gets intense media attention (like the Harold Fish case), you are unlikely to even hear about it or be able to find it in a database.

And even when it does appear in the database, the information you are looking for isn't always there. For example, in the Daniel Bias case, we know that handloads being excluded from evidence was an issue because Massad Ayoob worked on that case and wrote about it. However, when I put "Daniel Bias" into a database of legal opinions, all I get is State of New Jersey v. Daniel Bias, 704 A.2d 1297 (N.J. 1998). The entire contents of that case are: "Leave to appeal is granted, and the matter is summarily remanded to the trial court to set terms and conditions on bail pending appeal."

So as you can see, even though this is one of the few cases we know about where getting expert witness testimony of gunshot residue for handloaded ammo was an issue, you wouldn't necessarily know it from looking at the database.

Notwithstanding all of that, it is possible to conclude that juries may well be influenced by the type of weapon used. Here's somthing relevant from the same link:

Posted by me: But there is another way to assess the influence of equipment type on jurors' thinking: simulation. That's how strategies and methods are developed for complex systems and process where the number of actual occurrences is insufficient to enable the separation of the effects of multiple variables.

This has been done for the subject at hand as it concerns the type of weapons used, using mock juries. See this. My non-scientific synopsis is that "mean looking guns" are unlikely to benefit a defendant in court. Perhaps Glenn E. Meyer has other material on it. I believe that that kind of study is much more useful than looking for "evidence" among anecdotal accounts of court cases.

I'm considering the 10mm for a variety of uses, possibly as a occasional ccw.

I would not choose a 10MM for self defense unless I hiked or camped in bear country, but my reason has nothing to do with your question. I suggest that you avail yourself of some defensive pistol shooting training. You will find that the most essential requirement of a defensive pistol is your ability to use it to get multiple rounds into multiple targets very quickly--very quickly indeed. A handgun with too much recoil works against the shooter.

The fact is, good 9MM Parabellum, .38 Super, .357 SIG, and .40 S&W loads all have very sufficient penetration for self defense, and their greater controllability in appropriate pistols makes them superior to the 10MM for defensive purposes. Do not concern yourself with "shock" or energy transfer. That is not a discriminator in judging handgun effectiveness on human targets, as is pointed out here.

A secondary reason that would cause me to shy away from the 10MM for defensive purposes is penetration. You do not want a weapon that will shoot through too many walls, or shoot projectiles that have too much residual energy if they do go through your intended target.

I hope you find this helpful.

[MLeake]

I like 10mm as a woods carry.

For dedicated CCW in more populated areas, I tend to follow Massad Ayoob's advice to use a caliber and ammo type in common use by LE in my area. (Although I don't think too many of them are carrying .357 magnum anymore, most did in the not too distant past.)

If you are out west or down south, there are decent odds that agencies in your area may even have used the .41 magnum within the last two decades.

[Dashunde]

OldMarksman... Those excerpts are exactly what I was looking for.

My thoughts on the 10mm's viablity as a SD round in general mirror yours and always have, it has only recently been considered because of this.

Thanks again everyone, great responses.

[CowTowner]

I can't miss the opportunity to point out that while not widely accepted, the .41 Rem Mag was originally designed to be a LEO as well as a hunting cartridge. If memory serves, the Oklahoma State Police carried the .41 Rem Mag for a while.

I currently have a 1911 Commander style pistol being built for concealed carry in 10mm Auto.

[OldMarksman]

Posted by CowTowner: I can't miss the opportunity to point out that while not widely accepted, the .41 Rem Mag was originally designed to be a LEO as well as a hunting cartridge.

That is correct.

In that era, state troopers desired sufficient penetration to punch through car bodies. That kind of penetration is not desirable for civilian self defense or for urban police departments.

As a police round, the .41 Magnum was not a success. As I understand it, that was primarily because of the weight of the N-frame revolver. On the civilian market, the .41 Magnum was not really a commercial success. One reason that I have heard for that is that the .44 Magnum could be used with .44 Special loads, while there were no low powered loads available for the .41.

The 10MM was also designed as a law enforcement round. The FBI and several police departments adopted it initially, but almost all of them have abandoned it.

The reason most commonly cited for that is the recoil. No, it's not just a matter of pain, or of recoil sensitivity; it's just that a handgun that has a great deal of recoil cannot be fired anywhere near as rapidly in combat, where rapidly moving targets, multiple assailants, and the need to run while shooting make rapid fire (and a large magazine capacity) very important. This applies as much to the civilian who is almost as likely to face multiple assailants as a single attacker as t does to the sworn officer. In addition, the 10MM developed a reputation for tearing up handguns based on the 1911 design.

A demand for lighter recoiling 10MM loads led to the development of the .40 S&W, which has proven to be far superior as a police round.

There is a widespread feeling that a gun that barks loudly and kicks hard just must be more effective in stopping a "bad guy" than a less powerful handgun. That feeling is often reinforced when we try shooting different guns at water jugs. The first step to take to unlearn that misconception is to take some training, and the second is to read and study this, which puts the lie to myths about "one shot stops", myths about handgun "stopping power", and the idea that energy transfer and that old misnomer "hydrostatic shock" contribute to the effectiveness of handguns used for self defense.

Anyone who has tried a little IDPA or UPSC shooting or who has taken any defensive pistol training has realized very soon that a heavy recoiling handgun, whether a big bore magnum or a very light weight .357, puts one at a considerable disadvantage compared to those who use standard service rounds in service-size pistols. Put simply, they are just not very effective for self defense.

[Musketeer]

When I carry a full size it is a 1911 in 10mm (Delta Elite). The mag in the gun has 135 grain JHPs at > 1600 fps. That is essentially the same as the stopping power king, the 125gr 357 mag. Penetration with the round is enough to do the job but not what a heavy hunting round would do. The back up mags are 200 grain JHPs at >1200 fps. That is a very deep penetrating round with moderate expansion. Living in a state with a hi-cap mag ban the 1911 is a perfect full size solution.

I find the gun very controllable WITH PRACTICE.

As far as the legal implications, my carry ammo comes from DoubleTap and I have remaining rounds from each box set aside should they be needed. If a prosecutor wants to damn the evil caliber the fall back will be that it had at one time been the caliber of choice for the FBI. The Fish case was a mess. Bad defense will impact you far more than caliber selection.

[Bartholomew Roberts]

The Fish case was a mess. Bad defense will impact you far more than caliber selection.

The Fish case was a mess; but the defense did well with what it had. I think people have a mistaken idea that when it comes to a trial they will be able to tell their side of the story without restriction.

Unfortunately, the reality is that the jury only gets to hear what evidence the Rules and the judge allow them to hear. In Fish's case, a lot of the evidence that would have helped him never got heard. The judge apparently confused the rules of evidence and improperly barred some of this evidence.

And another factor in that case was the jury, at least one of the jurors reported to MSNBC that they thought Mr. Fish was telling the truth; but still voted to convict him. That same juror also mentioned that they were affected by the prosecutor's comments on hollowpoints.

In any case, the defense for Mr. Fish was good enough to preserve the error by the trial judge so it could be addressed on appeal. Given the jury and some of the evidentiary decisions, that may have been the best they could do.

All of which goes to show, that a lot of time it isn't only the actual self-defense shooting where the event doesn't follow the script we have set out in our heads; but the aftermath of the shooting as well.

[OsOk-308]

Sorry if my statements did anything that changed the direction of the thread. I have looked more into the case and it does seem that the 10mm being mentioned wasn't as big as I thought it may have been. That being said, the 10mm is a fantastic round. The recoil can be pretty stout, however a buddy of mine had a compensated Glock 20, and the recoil on that 10mm is less than that of some 9mm pistols I've shot.

From what I've read on the 10mm, certain loads have SIGNIFICANTLY more energy than most semi auto rounds. I've read somewhere that the energy of a 10mm is greater at 50 yards downrange than some .45 acp loads at the muzzle. I'm not saying this to start a caliber war, it's just something I've read before. If you are looking at this as a trail gun, a Glock 20 with 15 rounds of 10mm should be able to stop just about ANYTHING that would be charging you (exceptions may include grizzlies). I do not currently know of any LE that uses it however.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

I read somewhere that the Norwegians carry Glock 20s for a sidearm in bear areas.

With some special load, I think.

[mnero]

It is unfortunate, that this gentlemen was forced to shot an obviously deranged man. IMO he did everything he could to avoid it. Running would not have been an option for obvious reasons. The dogs had enough sense to retreat; what can he do when attacked by a fool who didn't? Drop his gun and hope he prevails with his fist? The fact that the jury needed to accept, is that the hands and feet are deadly weapons.

[Dashunde]

Originally Posted by mnero

...is that the hands and feet are deadly weapons.

Sure is a good argument for also hauling around a stun gun or spray.