I worked a shooting where a guy shot through the door at a couple of cops there to serve an arrest warrant. They beat feet back to the car and the seige began. I responded as a hostage negotiator and spent a couple hours bullhorning at the house with no response, and finally the SWAT boys booted the door.


The guy was dead inside. (Hostage negotiators spend a lot of time talking to empty houses and dead people) He had stuck his Bryco .380 under his chin and pulled the trigger, probably right after he shot through the door.

He had a hole under his chin and a same-sized hole in the top of his head. I poked around and found a dent in the ceiling and a mostly pristine FMJ sitting upright on the window sill. Skulls are tough and full of stuff, but that little bullet plowed merrily through it all with a little bit of steam to spare.

I've been the lead investigator on a hundred or so shootings, and a spear-carrier on a couple hundred more. In all of those, I never had one where the bullet-catcher continued the behavior that caused him/her to receive bullets. Not one, regardless of caliber. I'm sure it has happened, but I suspect it is pretty rare.

I love to obsess over calibers, ammo, and hypothetical situations like everyone else here. But my experience has taught me caliber and ammo type are the least important factors in a shooting. I suspect a gun full of blanks would work in 90% of self defense situations.

That said, I don't carry a gun full of blanks. Mostly I carry either a .32 Pocket Hammerless or a 1940s era Detective Special, because I like them and have faith in them.

So, to the OP's actual question - no, the .380 isn't under powered.

__________________
“What you got, ain’t new.”