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Old 07-29-2015, 06:04 PM
Yournamehere Yournamehere is offline
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You can have the caliber debate all day but 9mm will always have the most benefits and the least detriments for most handgun uses. As AdAstra mentioned, it is the most cost effective of the big three (9mm, .45 ACP and the soon to be defunct .40S&W), it is relatively low recoiling, and it will always offer a higher capacity than other calibers in similar guns.

There are some other considerations in favor of 9mm as well, though. 9mm guns tend to have better longevity as well considering that a lot of .40 guns were scaled up from 9mm guns to accept the cartridge. There are also subsonic 147 grain 9mm loads that are cheaper than standard .45 ball which mostly negate favoring of .45 for the purpose of suppression (though .45 ACP will be more powerful, but that doesn't outweigh every other 9mm benefit). The amount of micro guns in 9mm also allow the cartridge to bleed into .380 territory and a niche that .40 and .45 can't really touch due to their pressure/size constraints.

The whole stoppin' powah discussion is moot as well, and the small variance in ballistic numbers are mostly just puff. First off, you shouldn't count on your gun to "stop" someone in a less lethal capacity, as bullets are still very very lethal if they hit the right places. The general consensus in a defensive situation where lethal force is being used upon you is to shoot to kill, but not to execute someone if they are incapacitated, which makes perfect legal and ethical sense. Still, you should never go for or count on an incapacitating hit because bullets generally don't work that way. There is a very high likelihood that an individual will not be totally incapacitated by a gunshot, so your best bet is to understand that you may very well kill someone with your bullets and act with that consideration in mind.

As an extension of that, gunshots themselves are typically only definitely lethal if they hit a vital organ (the brain or the heart for example). Otherwise, they are survivable, and according to statistics, 80 percent of gunshot victims survive regardless of the caliber with which they are shot, because the wounds are in nonfatal places. Think about every mass shooting and notice how the amount of dead people is small compared to the amount of wounded, and this stat becomes easy to understand and accept. What kills people is getting to those vital organs, and some will argue that the mass and velocity of .45 and .40 allow for that penetration easily, but so do a lot of modern 9mm loads, according to independent tests conducted with the FBI 12" penetration protocols. Again, in summation, the stopping power point is moot.

.45 ACP will never go anywhere because of the 1911 and because its weight range allows for good penetration and velocity variances for niche practices, especially hunting and competition. .40 S&W was a poor solution to an overstated problem that created a lot of other problems that are just now coming to fruition after 20 some odd years of its use. 9mm Luger, with current bullet designs (and, I would personally argue, before current bullet designs) does just about everything well enough if not exceptionally well. I find it very hard to see reason to dispute this.
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