#11
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I think the "9mm is weak" thing comes from the military use of FMJ, which is pretty much useless. A modern hollowpoint (Federal HST, speer gold dot) will wreck people. Besides, hitting targets is wayyyy more important than what caliber you use.
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#12
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Well the military compensates for bullet power with training. A well trained soldier would put two to the chest and one to the head. Doesn't matter what kind of bullet.
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"There's a fine line between not listening and not caring...I like to think I walk that line everyday of my life." Blessed be the LORD, my rock, Who trains my hands for war, And my fingers for battle Psalm 144:1 “It is always wrong to use force, unless it is more wrong not to.” |
#13
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Actually, most soldier's training with a handgun tends to range from insufficient to non-existent. If you fight with small armS, you fight with a rifle (or maybe a machine gun). If you're an artilleryman or a vehicle crewman, you fight with that. Handgun training, if it happens at all, tends to be an afterthought. In both time and budget. In fact more support troops than infantryman carry pistols - an infantryman has enough shit to carry as it is, and someone who spends most of their time inside the wire does not need to spend it carrying a rifle.
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#14
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All my friends in the army and marines say they trained for "familiarization" on the m9, and then jst shoot it every once in a while for a qualifying score.
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#15
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I prefer 9mm over .45 just because of it's lower recoil.
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#16
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I don't want to derail the thread, but I'm surprised no mention has been made of the various other cartridges that attempt to combine the "best of both worlds" between high capacity and low stopping power in FMJ vs. low capacity and high stopping power in FMJ. There's plenty of these, from the .40 S&W, the .357 SIG, even the 10mm Auto, and these are just the ones with diameters between 9x19mm and .45 ACP. I'm somewhat partial to the 10mm auto myself, but its military use has been extremely limited. Search this page for "sirius" and you'll find it:
http://www.specialoperations.com/Foreign/Denmark/ I know pistols, being secondary weapons, are largely an afterthought in military operations, but I think practicing more often with them can't hurt. After all, if you were in a bad situation and had to rely on your pistol, you'd want to be damn certain you could make your shots count. |
#17
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I addressed my theory/opinion on the .40 S&Ws adoption and the 10mm's phase out in another thread:
http://www.imfdb.org/forum/showthread.php?t=756 .357 SIG is just .40 S&W bottlenecked down to 9mm caliber. Ballistically speaking they are about the same, with some .357 SIG loads being more powerful and faster, but the ammo cost, the limited choices of firearms chambered in the round, and the argument that it's a "step back" from a .40, being ballistically similar but a smaller slug, kind of kills it's reputation. Like the 10mm, I think it's a great round, but it still has major drawbacks and in the end isn't as desireable as 9mm. 10mm was really just ill-fated because the original firearm it was chambered in was quickly phased out, and it wouldn't be known today if not for the Glock 20 and the Delta Elite (and the fact that it's a decent cartridge). Still, it's no more cut out for military use than any of the other compromise or higher-powered cartridges that have been recently introduced. |
#18
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10mm is always availible around here, just a very low variety of loadings.
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#19
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Back on topic:
I hear that the Russians have overloaded the 9x19mm cartridge to achieve PDW levels of penetration--probably because they came to their senses and realized that the 9x18mm Makarov cartridge was obsolete from the moment it was designed, and decided to do the "pistol cartridge of the free world" one better. world.guns.ru mentions it here, supposedly for use with their new PP-2000 SMG, though I'm sure they could use it with their own purchased MP5s or Bizon SMGs. http://world.guns.ru/smg/smg61-e.htm Such a development strikes me as somewhat redundant, however, since the Russians already have the 9x39mm cartridge for compact and subsonic armour-piercing firearms. They also have lots of old stores of the 7.62x25 Tokarev round which has good armour-piercing potential as well as proven stopping power, and can be used in a handgun platform (which the 9x39mm round is too long to). I wonder if an "Offensive Handgun Weapon System" could be designed around this new 7N31 version of 9x19mm. I also wonder what could be done with the 10x25mm round, if the 9x19mm round could be turned into a PDW round with enough tinkering. |
#20
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9mm would be alot better if it hadn't been toned down after WW2 (too many rattletrap Luger bring-backs kB'ing)
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