Is the 380ACP "really" an adequate self defense gun?

[Carl the Floor Walker]

Originally Posted by silvermane_1

While sound advice there rodfac, jobs in "safe areas" aren't exactly "growing on trees" these days, if it were my daughter i would want her to carry whatever gun she shoot with decent proficiency.

Just like I love shooting the little Pocket guns, I love shooting the Snubbies. Just really makes my day and just something about them. Like the Pocket gun, I was terrible at first, but through thousands of rounds, I feel very confident in shooting them.
My favorite is a LCR9mm. Now that gun gets a heck of a lot of ammo ran through it.
And to add to my training, I shoot a LCR22.
I like putting shotgun shells or shards on the berm and letting loose especially with HYPER VELOCITY ammo. It was not long that I realized just how amazing a little 22.cal can be in the right hands. My God, 8 fast rounds into a persons neck and face! Holy crap. And someone want to tell me that a 22.cal is NOT a WEAPON? It most certainly is.
Sorry, I do not want to hear about a FBI penetration test. Focus on those all you want.
Yes, my 9mm is more effective, but also would be harder for most folks to shoot.

Both are weapons. And both can be very effective. Carrying a Pocket gun is a Habit. I carry one every day, all day. Just like bringing my Cell Phone or keys. It is there all the time. I am trained to use it and use it well. Yes, I have a Micro 9mm's and I love shooting them. But they are heavier than most people realize. About double the weight. And in the course of 365 days a year, they will not be carried like the Pocket gun. Just a fact.

And if anyone thinks a Pocket gun is not a weapon, or a serious weapon, may God have pity on you if you happen to be at the end of one. Regardless of weather you drop freight train hit you or not, you are going to have one very bad day.

Even If I do carry a 9mm, the Pocket gun is so very easy to carry along as a backup. Sometimes I actually carry two Pocket guns. The Pico which will shoot some mighty hot ammo in my Pocket and another one on my belt. Faster than carrying a extra magazine and no worry about transitioning from one gun to another. Easy to disperse the weight to both sides of the body rather than and Heavier gun on one side.

Let the daughter carry what she will be comfortable with and enjoys shooting. If she does not like to carry a heavy gun, then she will not carry, not every day. It is so Easy for her to carry a pocket gun, every day, 365 days a year.

Just be sure she knows that CCW comes at a Price. And that Price is to train often. Ammo is not cheap. Get a small 22.cal to aid in training. Shoot often and have fun with it.






Fully loaded

[silvermane_1]

Carl, whisle i don't own a "pocket gun"(i'm still kicking myself for not getting a SCCY 9mm for smoking deal a while back) i don't discourage anyone from doing so, the only caveat would be snubby magnums minus the 480 Ruger SRH Alaskan, that particular snubby actually does well performance wise for snubby.

[USNRet93]

Gee, 127 posts and this gent sums it all up in one sentence..

While sound advice there rodfac, jobs in "safe areas" aren't exactly "growing on trees" these days, if it were my daughter i would want her to carry whatever gun she shoot with decent proficiency.

[Lohman446]

The OPs question was:

"Is the 380ACP "really" an adequate self defense gun?"

The answer to the question is no and while truthful in the strictest Kantian sense of the word others would argue it is a lie of omission.

The 9MM is also not "really" an adequate self defense gun, nor is the great .45.

"But... but...." Look. I know. These calibers have been used in countless self defense uses in the past. So has the .22, the .32, the .380 and even the .25. Hell earlier this week a jogger in Colorado was attacked by a mountain lion and killed the thing with his bare hands. Famously Dale Peterson killed a grizzly without any firearm.

"But... but... you are attacking the 9MM" Not really. In any concealed carry pistol we have to balance out various things. Recoil, capacity, ease of concealment, etc. The 9MM balances out very well and for a lot of people is the choice they land on. Ask yourself, or the experts: if you KNEW you were going to be in a gun fight today what gun would you chose? If the answer is a pistol of any type I suggest you reconsider.

So the answer is no. The .380 is NOT adequate. However there is not a reasonably carried concealed pistol that really is.

[TBM900]

Originally Posted by CDW4ME

Your Assumption is incorrect, badly.
I've bowkilled over two dozen deer, killed a couple with muzzleloader, couple with rifle and one with 10mm pistol.

Wow, an example of.....one
And not even close to a common self defense caliber
My statement still stands

[TBM900]

Originally Posted by JohnKSa

You know, with all the differences of opinion when it comes to caliber selection and terminal ballistics, it's pretty remarkable that there doesn't seem to be any controversy at all amongst the experts about the value of expanding ammunition.

At what point did I state it had zero value.....?
Who are these 'experts' exactly......?
What methodology was used.....?
What were the data points.....?
Etc, etc, etc.....?

[Lohman446]

She has to close a business late at night and sometimes walks out with a money folder with the days receipt.

A bolted down locked safe (maybe even one where you can put the money in without opening it) and deposits made during daylight hours is not an unreasonable request to make of an employer. If one of my employees was putting themselves in danger, to the point where the had been any incidents, over a day's receipts without suggesting a better alternative I would not be pleased and I say that noting most of my employees have concealed carry permits.

[TBM900]

Originally Posted by Cosmodragoon

Have you done a lot of handgun hunting with so-called "marginal" calibers like .380?

Yes

Not to mention culls and euthanasia numbering more than I can even guess. I grew up on a ranch that has been in our family since before this nation was even a nation. This has given me the opportunity to get (more than) some actual experience far beyond what most folks will ever see. Same for the hog invasion, great for creating some actual performance results.

[briandg]

I'm going to go somewhere that no man really wants to go. I feel that wide diameter, and also penetration, as individual factors are both badly misunderstood. you can get both, tied together with high velocity and high bullet mass to enhance tissue disruption, and you are still going to wind up with nothing but bleeding or breaking.

Yep, that's what shooting is all about, even with a .700 NE, the plan is to break or tear things up and make them either bleed or just stop working. Damaging anything badly enough will make it stop working. It doesn't matter if you are blowing out a tire or shooting out a knee cap or large artery, all you can do is take the best shots you can with whatever you have chosen to carry and wait for God to decide. should you object to my use of god, substitute luck, fate, or whatever you prefer.

I think that you have a number of different ways to look at an expanding bullet. First, you are hoping to flatten the meplat so that displaced tissues are forced out more sharply. You want to widen the hole. You want to shred the meat a little more.

A round profile does none of the above, it slides through with minimal disruption, the fact that you get higher penetration proves that you cause less damage along the wound path.

We have the flat pointed keith bullet, and the flat point and sharp shoulder do more damage than a round point because it causes greater damage to the wound channel for several reasons. A mushroom is flat and wide and at least the current incarnation of expanding bullets create sharp and jagged profile that creates an even bloodier shredded mess.

since the thirties we have had pretty good expanding bullets available but since the fifties, we have had something more important. PICTURES.We've been inundated since that time with graphics like these that show us exactly what our bullets should do, they should form artistically perfect, nicely formed mushrooms that retained all of their weight.



Federal premium.com

Does that sound like a load of baloney?

here is a real world expanded pistol round, ugly, twisted, imperfect, and no, not perfectly and completely expanded. It could have been perfect, and expanded another 1/16th of an inch, and of course, it would have done more damage in the last few inches of penetration.

would that have mattered? would that last bit of expansion have made even a whit of difference regarding disabling or killing the target?

Ehh, probably not.



(Ammoland Shooting Sports News)

Currently we have far too much information for our own good. Back then, we bought bullets and we could count on getting the 'right one.' Get a power lokt or some such, whatever grandpa said, and you will get what experts supported. Then you had pictures to validate your decision. Now we have jello that tests and quantifies exactly what will happen when you shoot a dangerous block of jello with layered clothing, and we obsessively seek out the truth through millions of articles and blog posts, pictures, and everyone tries to take that data and make a gestalt image of what it's going to do under random real world use.

If we get twelve inches into a human body, will an extra 1/10th of an inch in diameter give it a real advantage, or is it going to be lost in all of the other complex issues?

Myself, I have come to believe that when choosing based on jello based results charts sacrificing a couple of inches of penetration to get a wider surface for the end result isn't right. When you expend more energy pushing the wider mushroom through the tissues your penetration suffers. The question I want to ask is that when you are shooting live meat, is that extra energy that was in theory causing enhanced damage along the wound track best used that way, or would it be better used adding two more inches to the length of that wound track?

two inches more can mean breaking through the spine or the tough heart muscle.

we get far too wrapped up in talking heads, infographics, charts, stats, and oh so sexy pictures of shiney, perfectly formed jello mushrooms.

none of those things will predict performance, and maybe we should put most emphasis on how deeply it will go.

no, overpenetration and subsequent injury to bystanders isn't a concern to me. If my pistol round which is rated for fifteen instead of twelve inches should actually penetrate past the 'promised' twelve inch limit of the other gun, bummer. The bystander should consider himself lucky that i wasn't using a round with 30" penetration ability. he should also be really glad that i shot through the bad guy first, instead of just recklessly spraying bullets at his head. Life isn't fair. I was just walking around living the good life and quite unexpectedly i had to save my own life and that darned ammo misbehaved. there's plenty of places to spread blame and dozens of excuses that can be made for such an event.worry about overpenetration when the time comes,rather than handicapping yourself in advance.

[the possum]

You know, with all the differences of opinion when it comes to caliber selection and terminal ballistics, it's pretty remarkable that there doesn't seem to be any controversy at all amongst the experts about the value of expanding ammunition.

We had a real problem around our farm with raccoons tearing up everything, so we got a nuisance permit & declared war on 'em. I shot hundreds of 'em with a .45, using several different kinds of ammo, including hardball, cast lead round nose, Gold Dots (handloaded), Silver Tips, Win & Rem white box hollowpoints, Nosler HP, and others.

On the whole, over the course of blasting scores of varmints, it seemed like the hollowpoints did a little better. But there was almost no way to predict how things would go down in any one situation. Sometimes they'd be done after a round or two of hardball, and sometimes they'd still be trying to crawl away after soaking up a mag full of Gold Dots at point blank range.

I'm not trying to say this exactly how things work against humans, and I hope to never find out. I decided I'd much rather have good hollowpoints if I have the choice, to stack the deck in my favor. But I wouldn't feel unarmed with hardball, and understand there's no such thing as a magic bullet that will transform a common defensive pistol into a death ray. YMMV.

[Lohman446]

Remember stopping power is not about the end result in five minutes. Its about what happens QUICKLY enough to alter the outcome of a fight. If you are depending on your pistol to do that I think you can find many stories of pistols failing to do just that. I happen to have an easy way to access first hand accounts of deer sized animals hit with rifles.

https://thefiringline.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=599495

This is a thread in another subsection of the forum about deer hit with high powered rifles and substantial internal damage that seem to survive much longer periods of time then expected. We are talking rifles that have in the neighborhood of 3000 ft lbs of energy.

I cannot emphasis enough that the argument highlighting the differences between a .380 and 9MM seem to be highlighting the trivial

[briandg]

You know, with all the differences of opinion when it comes to caliber selection and terminal ballistics, it's pretty remarkable that there doesn't seem to be any controversy at all amongst the experts about the value of expanding ammunition.

It's possible that expansion isn't really as valuable as we think that it is.

i'm not saying this as a fact. But it should be considered.

Lets do an analysis. Let's assume that we have 150 grains of projectile at 1,000 fps, and let's assume that it is a solid bullet.

At .308 it will punch deeply and cause only minimal damage and a narrow hole. At .358 it will penetrate a little less and create a wider hole, causing a little more damage. At .45, that 150 grain bullet isn't going to penetrate well at all. Not at 1,000 fps. but it will, as promised, make a hole of .45" diameter.

What is good about an expanding bullet? it is small and allows good penetration for the first few inches and then gets wider as it penetrates to the inner organs and tissues. You don't need a .45" hole going through the skin, you need it when you are going through the heart.

What happens when a bullet expands? a lot of energy is wasted reshaping that lead. Where a solid unexpanding round projectile may penetrate 24", an expanding bullet may be stopped at only 12". Part of that is the extra drag of the expanded bullet and part of that is the energy taken up by mutilating the bullet.

But neither of these issues answer it all. We can tweak velocity and shape, and we need to consider all sorts of other variables, rather than just setting an abitrary weight and diameter like I just did.

I like the idea of an expanding bullet for the single reason that it allows the bullet to get past the chest or abdomen wall with little loss of energy, then creating a more dangerous wound path farther into the wound channel.

[CDW4ME]

Originally Posted by TBM900

Wow, an example of.....one
And not even close to a common self defense caliber
My statement still stands

Post up your pics of deer shot with "common" defensive calibers including measurement to show how 380 does indistinguishable damage from 40 or 45 acp.

I'll say it ^ ain't happening; prove me wrong please.

Example: Here is lungs shot with 9mm HST wound measures .65 versus lungs shot with 45 HST wound is about .85

Like this:


You statement (point) is what?
If you are trying to convince me that 380 is equivalent to 9mm/40/45 it aint happening either.

In my experience some people expend a lot of effort trying to justify carrying a marginal caliber like 380 when the reality is they are unwilling (or unable due to work) to dress around something bigger than a small pocket gun, rather than admit it they rationalize the caliber.

[JERRYS.]

Originally Posted by CDW4ME

Post up your pics of deer shot with "common" defensive calibers including measurement to show how 380 does indistinguishable damage from 40 or 45 acp.

I'll say it ^ ain't happening; prove me wrong please.

Example: Here is lungs shot with 9mm HST wound measures .65 versus lungs shot with 45 HST wound is about .85

Like this:


You statement (point) is what?
If you are trying to convince me that 380 is equivalent to 9mm/40/45 it aint happening either.

In my experience some people expend a lot of effort trying to justify carrying a marginal caliber like 380 when the reality is they are unwilling (or unable due to work) to dress around something bigger than a small pocket gun, rather than admit it they rationalize the caliber.

bullet for bullet I don't think anyone is trying to say a smaller, lighter, and sometimes slower bullet it better. this thread started as an opinion seeking thread to make one feel better about something less than a .44 magnum. the size of the gun matters not only for concealability but for shootability. not everyone can dress around a large gun. not everyone can handle a larger caliber. an 8 shot .22lr LCR is better than a 5 shot .38spl LCR if the shooter can quickly and accurately hit with the first considerably better than they can with the second. no one is saying bullet for bullet the .22lr is better than the .38 spl.

[Lohman446]

In my experience some people expend a lot of effort trying to justify carrying a marginal caliber like 380 when the reality is they are unwilling (or unable due to work) to dress around something bigger than a small pocket gun, rather than admit it they rationalize the caliber.

I find something very similar and rather opposite as people try to justify their choice of a 9MM vs a .380 (or .40 or .45). The funny part is I carry a 9MM but the difference amounts to a molehill that some people try to make a mountain out of.

[SIGSHR]

No caliber is more effective than the shooter. Using a .380 within its limits, i.e. "10 feet, low light.." Think of it as a semiauto version of a 38 snub.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Here's a 380 article that is positive:

https://www.personaldefensenetwork.c...80-beat-a-9mm/

[amd6547]

I'm perfectly happy with .my G26 9mm or even my 357 GP100 for SD...
However, a couple years ago, there were Beretta 84's available, Israeli surplus, cheap.
It was always a bucketist gun, so I bought one, with no thought of putting it to serious use
I changed my mind after I shot it...
My Beretta 84F just seems to fit my hand perfectly. It points like my finger, is very accurate, and has been 100% reliable. 14 round capacity.
I load it with Underwood +P XTP's, and I feel pretty well armed with it.

[kymasabe]

If you're considering a Taurus for your daughter...there are better choices. My daughters Taurus TCP didn't survive its first range visit, and took almost 16 weeks to get back from Taurus. Her S&W Bodyguard was ammo picky. She now has a Remington RM380 which has been 100% reliable with everything she's fed it, and a Beretta Nano 9mm which she loves.

[JohnKSa]

At what point did I state it had zero value.....?
Who are these 'experts' exactly......?
What methodology was used.....?
What were the data points.....?

1. I didn't say you said that it had "zero value". I didn't try to restate your comment at all.

2. Your questions are all good ones--demonstrating that you understand what is necessary to validate an assertion. Let's keep in mind that you made the initial claim about the value of expanding ammunition and therefore the burden of proof is yours.

It's not at all proper to make an assertion without providing any attempt to validate it but then demand proof from anyone who questions it.

So what methodology and data points did you use to arrive at the assertion you made about the value of expanding ammunition?

It's possible that expansion isn't really as valuable as we think that it is.

IMO, the primary value is different from what most people think it is. I think that the primary value is in unmistakably notifying the shootee that they have been shot; the wound channel effects being secondary.

A bullet wound is a combination of blunt trauma and a penetrating wound. A low-energy non-expanding handgun bullet is nearly exclusively a penetrating wound with very little blunt trauma effect. A high-energy round that expands explosively or fragments leans more heavily towards blunt trauma effect with little penetrating wound.

The thing is that you can stick an ice pick in a person who's very busy trying not to get shot and they might not notice until later. But hit them with a baseball bat and they're going to be immediately aware of the insult.

IMO, you want both. You want the penetration so that you can get deep enough to cause serious injury in case that's what is required to stop the attack. But you also want the person to know they've been hit because that can be a tremendous impetus for changing their motivation from attack to a desire for medical treatment. If I had to choose, I'd prefer to err on the side of penetration--but I can get both with the mainstream service pistol calibers. It's only when we get down into the pocket pistol calibers that you have to start compromising.

Remember stopping power is not about the end result in five minutes. Its about what happens QUICKLY enough to alter the outcome of a fight.

Right. This is where "notification" is important. Short of a CNS hit that drops the attacker instantly, you're going to need the attacker to DECIDE to stop attacking, and knowing they've been hit is a strong motivator for rational humans. Waiting for someone to bleed out, even from an untreatably fatal handgun wound can take way too long--as the FBI found out in Miami.

[Bill DeShivs]

For the umpteenth time-
The ONLY sure 100% immediate stop is a central nervous system shot. Period.
Anything else is wishful thinking. It takes minutes for someone to bleed out-even with a heart shot. Minutes is not what you want your attacker to have.
Any shot other than a CNS shot MIGHT provide an immediate stop from: surprise, fear, pain or shock.
But if the crazy 300 lb. meth crazed biker is coming at you, you'd better make the CNS shot- and it really won't matter if it's with a .25 acp or a .500 Linebaugh. The bigger caliber won't make him any deader.

[briandg]

John, I'm going to have to think about that a little while longer, but I think that you are right.

A bullet wound is a combination of blunt trauma and a penetrating wound. A low-energy non-expanding handgun bullet is nearly exclusively a penetrating wound with very little blunt trauma effect. A high-energy round that expands explosively or fragments leans more heavily towards blunt trauma effect with little penetrating wound.

There are a few things that I have talked about for years. First is how poor a round ball works as a bullet. Sectional density is what you need for deep penetration and a round ball is about as bad as bullet can get. But if you press too hard for SD, or BC, you get a needle. A ball is going to expend it's energy quickly through friction and displacement/destruction of tissues, The needle will expend it just by wearing itself out.

We can use the same weight of bullet at the same velocity, and get the same energy level, but if we fire it as a two inch long pencil thin needle we will get a surgically clean 1/4" hole. 3,000 fps with something like that in a 500 grain bullet might go through an elephant butt to tusk without stopping. I'd really rather fire a 500 grain round ball, because all of the resistance would as you said feel like a hammer. A very big hammer.

I can't explain the exact circumstances anymore, but there was a workplace accident here a few years back. A guy had a machine opened and he had about sixteen inches of 1/8" steel wire stock punched through his abdomen and out of his shoulder. Barely noticed it.

If he had actually been hit by the carrier, a half inch chuck, he'd have noticed it, right? Like being hit by a hammer.

We throw around the ideas of energy expenditure and fixate on the KE available, but how that energy is expended and used is so important. We want that energy to tear, crush, displace, and if possible convert directly to pain and death.

An idea that just came to me is simple. there is no mathematical or scientific correlation or connection between a bullet's energy and the amount of damage it will do, right? The shape and form of the bullet can alter that effect drastically.

Likewise there is no scientific or mathematical connection between that bullet and injury or death. any round can bumble it's way through a body and cause no lasting harm.

Lastly, there's no connection at all between the qualities of the bullet and weapon and the results when it is fired. You have to have that last step, getting it where it belongs.

Hope that made sense, it's late, i'm tired, and I want to go to bed.

[JohnKSa]

there is no mathematical or scientific correlation or connection between a bullet's energy and the amount of damage it will do, right? The shape and form of the bullet can alter that effect drastically.

There is a direct relationship between a projectile's kinetic energy and the amount of work it has the potential to do on the target medium.

In other words, physics says that the potential of a projectile to do damage to something it hits is measured by its kinetic energy.

Things are simpler when a non-deforming projectile hits a target that can't stretch but can only break or deform or tear, but when a projectile that can deform (like an expanding bullet) hits a target that can stretch in addition to breaking, tearing or deforming (like the human body) it can get very complicated.

The shape of the bullet and how it behaves on impact determines how much of that energy is expended on the target medium and how it is expended and that can make a huge difference in whether or not a projectile "lives up" to its full potential and whether the damage done helps us achieve our goals.

And of course, where a bullet hits makes an even more important difference. A single tiny, slow-moving non-expanding pistol bullet that hits exactly in the right spot can stop an attack instantly while several large caliber expanding rifle rounds that hit nothing important could have no practical effect at all.

Likewise, the mindset of the attacker is an important factor that has nothing at all to do with the physics of bullets.

Understanding kinetic energy helps to understand the overall problem a little bit better, but it's far too complicated a problem to boil down to a single number, or even a few numbers. There are a lot of factors that relate to whether a bullet stops an attack, and some of the most important ones have nothing at all to do with physics.

Imagine that we all lived in a world where the density of water varied randomly over a wide range and we needed to determine if an object would float in water. We could measure all kinds of things about the object and we could gain some insight into the problem, but ultimately, the randomness of the density of water would limit our ability to come up with a solid answer except when we went to extremes that got us outside possible range of water density variation. That's kind of where we are now. We have some insights into things that contribute, but ultimately there is a lot of randomness and unless we go to extremes it's very difficult to make accurate predictions.

[shurshot]

Bill stated "For the umpteenth time-
The ONLY sure 100% immediate stop is a central nervous system shot. Period."

Yup, that covers it.

[TBM900]

Originally Posted by CDW4ME

Post up your pics of deer shot with "common" defensive calibers including measurement to show how 380 does indistinguishable damage from 40 or 45 acp.

First, you show me where I made any such statement....or even implied it

I'll say it ^ ain't happening; prove me wrong please.

Waiting on that cite ^ I'll say it ain't happening; prove me wrong please

You statement (point) is what?

My point has been stated clearly and concisely several times already in this thread (as well as others), maybe you should go back and re-read it a few times.

If you are trying to convince me that 380 is equivalent to 9mm/40/45 it aint happening either.

See above

In my experience some people expend a lot of effort trying to justify carrying a marginal caliber like 380 when the reality is they are unwilling (or unable due to work) to dress around something bigger than a small pocket gun, rather than admit it they rationalize the caliber.

In my experience some people expend a lot of emotion trying to justify their chosen caliber due to lack of actual experience as well an insecurity in their own skills and ability. Rather than admit it, they wrap themselves up in gel 'tests' and fractions of inches ;-)