I am researching the .38 and the 9mm. Why did the .38 fail so bad in the war against the tribes that were hopped up on drugs? What makes the .38 special better? How well did the .38 special work on the streets over the years?

Why did the 9mm have such a bad reputation?

The .357 seems to be glorified but it seems as if all of these are the same size projectile. I am a .45 guy so I want to learn about the smaller rounds since they are my back up gun choice.

It all comes down to velocity. the 38 colt and 38 S&W are slow, the 38 spl is faster and 357 faster still. as for 9mm having a bad rep. I'm not sure it does. It's not a 45, but it's not meant to be. It was developed as a compromise of weight and power in the Luger. The germans thought the 30 cal. was to small a caliber.
popgun

The .38 special has come a long way in 100 years! There are several Companies offering very formidable defense loads for the 38 Spl. snub nosed revolvers. Last Summer I listed my findings on this Forum when I Chronographed a bunch of .38 Special self defense loads, which you can find here by doing a search.

Buffalo Bore Ammunition offers their 158 grain LSWCHP-GC +P (Heavy) ammo that out of a 2" Model 36, 60, etc clocks an amazing 1025 to 1040 feet per second producing 379 foot pounds of energy. That is low end .357 magnum performance from a 2" revolver using the "big three" Companies 158 gr. Magnums. It is also more energy than a 230 grain Hardball .45 ACP out of a standard 5" 1911!! That's impressive.

Speer Gold Dot has a 135 grain JHP that clocks around 880 - 900 fps. from a 2" snub and is a very worthy offering also.

Double Tap and Cor-Bon also make good defense loads although I am not as familiar with them, but get very good grades on this and other Forums.

Bullet design has also improved drastically. The standard for many years was the 158 Gr. RNL bullet which had very good penetration, but never expanded. The bullets that they have come out with now are much better and reliably expand, give good penetration and expel their energy inside the body cavity, so they do their job. I think today's 38 Special ammunition choices are quite excellent and I feel very confident carrying Buffalo Bore ammunition in my Chief's Special 2" revolver.

By the way, I do believe the O/P was talking about the 38 S&W which is NOT the same as the 38 Special. That is an anemic round to say the least!

regards,
Chief38

And, remember that in the first 50 or 60 years of the .38 Colt, .38 S&W, and .38 Special, a plain RN lead bullet was standard. The .38 Long Colt held 18 grains of black powder. The .38 Special was increased to 21 grains of blackpowder. The standard bullet for almost 60 years of the 9mm was a FMJ. They were considered "good enough" for civilian police and military use at the time.

Pistol caliber stopping power was first studied in the Thompson-LaGuardia series of tests that resulted in adoption of the .45 ACP M1911. Up to that point, large-caliber pistols (.38-40, .44 American, .44 Russian, 44 Special, .44-40, .45 Colt, etc were favored in the American West, and various .32 and .38 S&W were considered adequate police calibers in the east.

All of the pistol calibers have failed to stop a bad guy at one time or another. Look at the Wiley Lynn/Crockett Long shootout. Wiley Lynn had a .38 pistol and Crockett Long had a .44 Special. Wiley hit Crockett four times, and put Crockett on the deck. Crockett hit Wiley four times with his .44 Special, and two of those in the vitals. Lynn walked away and across the street before collapsing and died the next day. Crockett Long died much sooner.
Lee Harvey Oswald was shot and killed with a single .38 Special. He hit the ground and never got up.
Again every caliber has failed to stop the bad guy, it just happens. Part of the problem was always the bullet. Those old 158 grain soft lead bullets left alot to be desired. Now we have hollowpoints and even good jacketed soft points. Personally I have nothing against a .38 Special, and have carried .357's, .41 Magnums, .41 Specials, .44 Specials, .44 Magnums, .45 ACP and .45 Colt. I believe that the best caliber is the one that you can shoot the best and most accurately. Personally I like the .357 Magnum and have always liked it for personal defense. One thing I was always taught was to learn human anatomy. Hunters learn where to place a bullet for a quick kill, for personal defense we should be no different. As the old saying goes, a hit with a .22 is better than a miss with a .44.

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Vaya con Dios

As mentioned, velocity is the missing link in your research.

As to 9mm, it has a bad rap because it is a small, weak, un-American cartridge. At least that's how some view it. Anything with millimeter in the name is suspect, especially if you compare it to 45 Automatic Colt Pistol or 40 Smith and Wesson. Also, the US Army actually evaluated the P08 Luger for possible adoption. The results were unsatisfactory. Various trials and tests in the first decade of the 20th Century told them that a small cartridge was unacceptable, and they didn't want another Philippines fiasco. They wanted a big cartridge in an American-made gun, and Colt gave it to them in the 1911 and 45 ACP. If you look at the original requirements for the 45 cartridge, they are very similar to what the 45 Colt cartridge provided. No doubt senior leadership at the time had grew up in the ranks using their trusty Colt SAA firing 45 Colt cartridges, and they felt comfortable with that level of performance. Some felt unsure autoloaders to begin with, so at the least they wanted a cartridge they believed in.

Whatever has been said about projectile development in the .38 Special goes double for the 9mm. Improvements there were delayed even longer due to feeding concerns. As recently as the late 70s, when many ammo makers had fielded .38 Special JHP and JSP, about the only 9mm HP ammo that had hit the market was Super-Vel and many of the available pistols required significant 'smithing to function reliably using the stuff. 9mm FMJ is an "icepick' compared to the .45 ACP hardball's "sledgehammer" and had a well-deserved reputation for over-penetration. Market forces prevailed when the Illinois State Police and others adopted the M39 and M59 and officers demanded better ammo. Once ammo was improved the Wonder-Nine revolution was under way.

The major benefit of all this is that while they were at it the ammo manufacturers also brought out good .45 ACP JHP loads.

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I need ammo, not a ride.

There was more to the .38 S&W's failure than just it's weak performance. The tribesmen did use drugs, but they also bound their chests tightly (think as in broken ribs) which tended to compress the skin and nullify any open wound and bleeding. Had the US troops stuck with the .45 Colt in that campaign, it's possible the .45 ACP may not have become the legend it is today.

The 9mm round worked well enough for the Germans in WWI and II. I think a lot of subconscious "It's not American" distaste turns some off.

According to history the .45 was developed not b/c the .38 wasn't stopping the enemy, but b/c it was not knocking down their horses. The .45 ball was developed to do just that - and it did. Most of the myth of the immediate knock down from a .45 is just that, myth.

I think it is also beneficial to look at what European developers were doing at the same time period. Most major European armies were using large caliber DA revolvers and bolt action rifles when we were just getting around to breach loaders. The British in particular, based on their experience with "natives" around the world, were early advocates of DA training.

As was mentioned in Europe the 9x19 was considered a step up from 30 caliber semi automatic ctgs, however remember that the sidearm was a badge of rank as much as a weapon.

The 38 Colt has similar ballistics to the 36 percussion revolver. So it kind of makes sense that when US arms boards decided to follow the European trend of smaller calibers they would try a ctg version of a former military caliber, the 36.

While 36 caliber revolvers were certainly issued and carried by all branches in the Civil War, the only accounts I've ever found of revolvers fired in combat by Union troops that stated caliber mentioned the 44's. So I wonder if the 36's tended to end up with with support personnel and the 44's with combat arms. FA units seemed to particularly like them

How would the 38S&W compare to a .380? It doesnt seem like the weight of the .38 special is that much greater than the 38S&W so I am wondering why there is a ballistic difference.

I am stuck between these two loads for a j frame
Heavy .38 Special +P Pistol & Handgun Ammunition

DoubleTap Ammunition

I have heard this as well, but I don't believe it entirely. Not only stopping enemy horses, but stopping your own. If a soldier on horseback fell off his horse and his foot got caught in the stirrup, he either had to shoot the horse to stop it or be dragged to death. The 45 Colt could handle such a task and so could the 45 ACP. For reasons of nostalgia and lore I wish this were true, but a whole lot more went into the requirements for and development of the 45 ACP cartridge.

Velocity is not the missing ingredient. The 9mm has always had lots of it; nearly double that of the .38 S&W.

As to the reputation of the .357, that was the go to law enforcement round for a very long time. As such, there was a lot of round and projectile development to improve it's effectiveness on the street. As a result, it became the most documented and most effective LE revolver round. Semiautos became all the rage during the wonder nine years, and LE fell into the same belief the military had/has. More rounds down range equals more effective firepower. The nine millimeter, during that phase of development, was less effective than the older but more thoroughly developed .357. That was the reason for LE going to the 10mm, then the .40 S&W (called by some the .40 Short and Wimpy). Things have changed a ton over the last 20 years, with even the smaller rounds like the .25 and the .32 getting more attention and more development. I guess all this rambling leads to the conclusion of shoot what you like, ammo has never been better. It's more important to hit what you are aiming at with a smaller caliber than to miss every time with a hand cannon. But if you can hit with the hand cannon, more's the better!

Changes in bullet construction have gotten several cartridges "off their knees".

If you want to see how things stack up these days, have a look at this:

Handloads.Com - Stopping Power

Only by those who've never seen the results of .40s on real human beings, up close.

It was the .38 Long Colt that failed in the 1899-1902 fighting against Moro tribesmen in the Philippines, NOT the .38 S&W. (In its 146g LRN @ 685fps configuration, the .38 S&W probably would have experienced failures similar to those suffered with the 150g/770fps Colt lead bullet that was the standard US Army-issued ammo at that time.)

Without opening the "stopping power" can of worms too far, suffice it to say that a round-nosed lead bullet of small/moderate caliber, at low-medium velocities, basically drills a caliber-sized hole through a human target. It doesn't expand & it doesn't cause remote neural shock, apparently. Based on physical wounding characteristics alone, such ammo is unlikely to immediately incapacitate an attacker unless it happens to hit the central nervous system. And fanatical attackers such as some of these Moro tribesmen are exactly the type of target that doesn't quit just because they realize they've been shot, either.

The .38 Smith & Wesson Special cartridge was a slightly lengthened version of the .38 Long Colt, with a slightly different & more accurate 158g bullet design. Its police & civilian record as a "manstopper" was also spotty, although there is some indication that heavy 200g LRN bullets may have helped marginally through tumbling and almost certainly through more decisive damage to bone structures when these were hit directly. Basically, however, the development of reliable expanding bullets in the past 40 years have made the .38 Special a much more effective "fighting" cartridge.

Take a look at 38 S&W load devopment Pt. 1 for some information on the .38 S&W cartridge & its history as a US police & British military cartridge. Shorter and slower than the .38 Smith & Wesson Special, this cartridge was sometimes known as the ".38 Super Police" when loaded with a 200g LRN bullet, and the British Army of the 1930s adopted a very blunt-nosed 200g version (aka .380/200, .380 Rimmed, etc.) for general service. Subsequently, concerns about the international legality of this ammo led them to adopt a 178g FMJ bullet, which suffered a bad reputation that lasts to this day. My own amateur experimentation & research indicate that this bad rep was probably a result of three things: ammo weakened spectacularly by poor storage; the drastic accuracy limitations of the Enfield DAO revolver design; and the fact that British WWII soldiers were saddled with the slow reload inherent to a revolver, whereas their opponents & allies all carried automatic pistols as primary sidearms.

Take a look at the page link I provided and see if you agree with me that (1) properly functioning .38 S&W 178g FMJ ammo is NOT exactly a weak sister--the old stories about its inability to penetrate a German overcoat were almost certainly a result of a powder charge that had degenerated through improper storage. Other credible reports of the bullet barely leaving the muzzle of the gun point clearly to an ammo malfunction NOT attributable to design. (2) When loaded with a flat-nosed 200g bullet moving at the slow 600-ish fps velocities of the old Super Police and British Mark I ammo, the straight-line penetrative power is pretty dramatic. (6 water-filled milk jugs, straight-line thru & thru.)

Ian Skennerton's book on the Enfield .380 Revolver (again, Brit terminology for their version of the .38 S&W cartridge) cites British military tests from the 1930s that assert that the original Mk I 200g blunt-nosed ammo was equivalent in stopping power to the .455 Webley. Other Brit reports apparently stated that the testers concluded that the combination of lighter gun & smaller caliber would make it easier for hastily-trained wartime soldiers to use this weapon rather than the old, large .455 revolvers.

Until I can get my hands on these reports and read them for myself, my personal supposition remains that the latter statement was definitely true, as a .38 is more user-friendly to a novice than is a .455. The former statement would seem to be an exaggeration of some sort. . .but it may have simply reflected British experience that torso hits with either .455 or .38 non-expanding bullets were an iffy proposition when it came to stopping power, although either definitely had the ability to decisively smash bone structures they happened to hit. The Brits had used expanding bullet ammo in .455s pretty extensively, but generally used non-expanding bullets in WWI (against "civilized" opponents). They knew a lot about fighting with handguns--I imagine at least as much as did the US military--and I think that lends great credibility to their experience & testing. Again, though, until I read the reports and/or learn about the tests & the testers' backgrounds, their results must be viewed as an intriguing issue to research, not as proof of the equivalency of .455 and .38/200 (.380 Mk I).

The British always like big, slow bullets.......I saw an article on some MASSIVE caliber revolvers used during the Indian mutiny, and Zulu wars, etc.......percussion revolvers in .60 caliber, Tranter cartridge revolvers in something like .58 caliber, very short cartridges with huge lead bullets. British officers had to purchase their own sidearms and so they often bought big manstoppers.

.38 S&W is a weakling compared to the British 38/200 (or 380), I have fired both in my Victory revolver and there's a big difference. .38 S&W was born as a round for fragile break top pocket revolvers, the S&W and Webley can take rounds that would quickly loosen up an old S&W .38 breaktop.

The old .38 Special 158 gr. LRN was the standby for police from the 1900's-50's or so, this round is now seen as "anemic" for defensive use, now that metallurgy has advanced and .38 Special snubs can handle hotter +P rounds. Now, it seems the lightest round most people "in the know" recommend for defense in a .38 revolver is 130 gr. +P HP.

Is there any caliber that is not subject to this limitation?

CP,
Definitely not in a pistol caliber. . . .

Kip, both those loads that you provided links for are more properly considered 38/44 or light 357 Magnums, NOT as a 38 +P. BTW, the 38/44 was a specialty handload used in the large frame 38/44 revolvers and it led to the 357 Magnum. Typical 38 +P loads run about 250 ft.lbs. of muzzle energy out of a 4 inch barrel, at 350 ft.lbs. you're well above the pressure levels of a standard commercial 38 +P.

I would not consider it adviseable for use in any J frame that's only rated for a 38 +P or any K frame predating the introduction of the model 19. In a model 20 or older 38/44 it should be just fine. It will also be fine in a J frame rated for the 357 Magnum or any other 357 Magnum.

As for stopping power, you'll find failures in any caliber. These are handguns after all and handguns that can be carried conveniently and shot well lack the energy required to drop someone hyped up on drugs unless the shooter gets a good solid hit on the CNS.

The Thompson-Lagarde tests of 1904 were performed after the failure pf the 38 Long Colt in the Moro Rebellion, afaik they were the first attempt at any scientific attempts to determine what caliber was effective in handgun calibers. AFAIK I know there was very little "scientific" study of bullet shapes and effectiveness. The RNL bullet was "traditional, the wadcutter bullet caem about because target shooters wanted a bullet that left a clear hole in the target and could be easily scored. The FMJ was dictated by the Hague Convention and worked best in semiautomatic pistols. From what I have read military tests usually involve reliability tests, accuracy, ease of maintenance, stopping power really wasn't considered. Then there's the ongoing debate between the high velocity advocates and the large bore aficionados.

Actually, Thompson - LaGarde did look at different bullet profiles and attempt to determine how each behaved in target animals, and how that would translate into effective "stopping power." See Thompson-LaGarde They tried jacketed, soft lead, lead, soft-point, hollow-point, and cupped profile bullets. They also described the shapes pretty specifically.

.38 Special seemed to work pretty good until Elmer Keith came upon the scene.

Since then the old .38 just don't seem to work any more.

Agreed. That was long before the round had gotten it's street cred, and was being talked about by devout followers of Saint Cooper, the father/promoter of the 10mm. I've owned and shot many .40's and it's a fantastic round.

I'll agree with that, as soon as something "bigger and better" is out, the old rounds are now "anemic".....

The 9x19 Para has been in police and military use for well over 100 years now, seen two World Wars in pistols and SMG's, limited use in Vietnam by SF guys......but now people talk about it like it's no good for anything but a pocket size auto......9mm Para is the "new .380" so it seems. Even Ruger has the "LC9" that just came out.

.38 Special 158 gr. was THE handgun round for decades, even after .357 came out. I have a 1956 M&P that was used by East Cleveland PD, if .38 Special was good enough for a cop in East Cleveland (one of the worst cities in the nation at that time) then it's good enough for me. Now, the full size 4" .38 Special K-frame service revolver is a "relic" and .38 is now seen as only good for snub revolvers.

What happened to the days when if you had a Model 10 and a Rem 870 stoked with 00 you were ready for anything

Cops worked some pretty tough towns with nothing more than a .38 revolver and a pump 12 ga. in the car.......now LEO's need to go to work with more hardware in the trunk than a squad of Army Infantry.......

This is similar to the way the .300 Ultra Mag is now required to do the job that used to be performed by the .303 Brit or .30-40 Krag.

Chris (a fan of the .38 Special and the .303 Brit)

The FMJ 9mm was accepted and used by military forces around the world, and one of the considerations was it's wounding capabilities. A dead soldier is left on the field, whereas a wounded one has the potential to tie up one or two of his buddies evacuating him, temporarily taking them out of the fight.

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Rough waters ahead.

Actually they tested the Luger in 7.65 (bought 1000) not 9mm, and it was a model 1900 not a P08, then they got a couple in .45 liked them but then DWM said they were not interested in a large trail lot of .45s so Colt and Savage were the trial pistols not Colt and Luger.

Those two tools work just as well today as they always have.

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I believe in the wadcutter.

From a ballistics standpoint the 40 S&W has been around since the 1870's. It's just a modern version of the 38-40. A caliber which seemed to have a strong following among those who felt a likely hood of using their sidearm for self defense.

I'm going to toss in a little food for thought. We keep seeing a lot of statements put forth as evidence in caliber wars, but how many of these are actually accurate, or even what was originally said? There's a lot of myths out there, and a lot of stuff that keeps getting re-quoted in print. To take a non caliber-war example: the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand with a FN Browning 1900 in 1914 that touched off WWI. Apparently, it was a 1910 (it's in a museum somewhere in Europe), but the 1900 keeps being quoted. How about the "heavy" recoil of the 1911, or the "fact" that a hit in the pinkie with a .45 will spin a man around? The .357 shooting through cylinder blocks? We can all come up with some of these gems. Sometimes, a writer will honestly speculate, but by the time it gets re-quoted a few times, it's official government policy. I'll finish with one of my favorites: we've all seen the famous video where four people are shot (one hit each), with a .22, and three of them go right down. So the .22 must have a 75% one-shot stop rate, right? Anyone? Buhler?

The modern infatuation with technology would be laughable if it weren't so dangerous. Everything pertaining to firearms involves trade offs. Military, Peace Officers, CCWs, Home Owners, Target shooters, Hunters all have different priorities and limitations.
Be confident and proficient with what you have and what you know, whatever caliber it is, and you'll be heads above the next guy (drugged up leather armored moros being the rare exception!)
It appears that we have more confidence in technology than what we know works
Thats unfortunate, unless you're in the business of selling guns & ammo.

Wild Bill Hickok carried two Colt Navy .36 revolvers, and it's certainly fair to say that he tangled with some pretty rough characters until he was shot in the back of the head in 1876. AFAIK, he was still carrying the two Navies, despite the availability of .44 Armies since 1860, and S&W and Colt .45 revolvers since the early 1870s. I've never encountered evidence that he used any ammo besides round ball lead bullets. I'm no black powder guru, but a glance thru Google links shows lots of evidence that the soft lead flattens nastily in tissue. .36 "paper ballistics" apparently parallel .32ACP/.32 S&W Long. So much for being "anemic," it would seem, as an 80-ish grain round ball obviously did the job for Hickok.

Mr. Hickock was a very careful man with his pistols and his effectiveness with what was essentially a .380 ACP power level pair of revolvers was due to his excellent performance under stress (read deadly accuracy).

Hickock's routine was reportedly to fire the five rounds from one revolver every day, clean the piece and reload with fresh loads. In a black powder gun, this was extremely important as the loads deteriorated quickly, giving rise to the saying, "keep your powder dry".

He then repeated the process with the second Navy revolver. This routine gave him 10 practice shots each day, two cleaned revolvers and fresh loads in each gun. I bet a bunch of us would be pretty good if we followed that routine, too!

I always wondered why he let down so bad in Deadwood though, sitting with his back to the door, especially knowing that there was somebody out there that didn't like him.

When I was in college I worked with an elderly black man who must have been down on his luck because he was working at a very physically demanding job well past retirement age.
We worked moving furniture in a women's dormitory after the terms let out. He'd been an orphan, got booted out of the orphanage right after WW1 and enlisted in the US Cavalry and was sent to the Phillipines where he served until mustering out before the start of WW2 (thereby missing the Great Depression)
He had lots of great stories and a great affinity for the 1911 .45!

The .38 Colt was a DA revolver, mechnically "high tech" compared to the old .45 SAA and certainly quicker to empty and reload, and utilized superior smokeless powder as well. It was a technological marvel of it's day along with the S&W Hand Ejector.

Apparently the Army neglected to tell the Moros about this great technology being unleashed against them, or the moros might well have surrendered or perhaps even drop dead of fright! LOL!

The troops did not have confidence in the .38 Colt. The stories about Moros may have been exaggerated up to a point (the .38 Colt is a wimpy cartridge compared to the .45 Colt after all) but the Japanese in WW2 were on the same islands and I haven't found any record that they felt pressed for more powerful handguns than the little Nambu.
The Americans however did have confidence in the old .45 SAA (even with it's quaint ways) and the later .45 1911. Having confidence plays a huge role in success.

In most of the discussions I have read about the .38 special vs. the 9mm Luger, the Luger is deemed weak and unacceptable, while the .38 is OK. One look at the ballistics shows that the 9mm with a 125 grain bullet beats the .38 with the same bullet by 200-300 FPS. Seems like that would settle the argument, but it still rages.

Post WW2 I remember hearing stories about how powerful Lugers were "but they'd jam a lot" the old boys would relate.

When I first got involved in law enforcement, .38 spl was considered wimpy, and the .357 too powerful. The agency I was with had the policy that you could carry anything you could qualify with if it was .38 Spec/9mm Parabellum or larger. Revolvers had to be DA. Most of us carried .357s &.45 ACPs. The country to the South of us went to M59s,then when those wore out they've been changing models & calibers every few years. I think most of the local agencies now carry .40s judging from the brass I see at the range.

Getting back to the Parabellum though, europeans were fond of 'Machine Pistols' and the 9 is a perfect round for that---ammo was by far lighter than the .45 and when you're spraying the landscape the size of the lead really dosen't matter(consider that 00 buck ballistically isn't too much different than Hickock's .36 cap and ball x9) Logistically the 9 parabellum makes sense in that scenario.

I "don't do" caliber wars, because I (a) enjoy fooling around with different calibers, rather than attacking one or the other, and (2) believe that a wide variety of calibers have served pretty effectively in their intended purposes, whether military, LE, SD or HD.

Few hoods of the '20s and '30s wanted to get shot with .32 or .38 S&W, much less .38 SPL, nor did GIs want to get hit with a "Schmeisser" (MP40), Luger or P38 in 9mm. They feared/respected these German weapons greatly. Obviously, however, all of these calibers also suffered failures from time to time, and the individual cop or citizen facing a psycho is also facing a different situation than most soldiers face on most battlefields, so comparisons are tenuous.

From what I have gathered over the years, the non-deforming round-nose bullets in light-to-medium calibers generally seem to suffer more failures to stop than bigger calibers and/or better expanding bullets. Still, many can indeed point to successful employment of 9mm ball, .38 SPL/S&W LRN, etc. I suspect most mere mortals are heavily influenced by their own personal experiences or those of their close acquaintances, so anyone who has seen a .38 or 9mm fail will despise it, and those who have seen it "knock someone down" think it's a howitzer.

Since I'm particularly interested in 200g bullets in .38 S&W and .38 SPL, I've run across many accounts of these bullets being highly rated, while others insist they are/were weak and ineffective. I think both are true, if that makes sense :-) And while comparisons of .38 vs. 9mm in 110-125g weights indeed show the 9mm has better velocities, the .38 is primarily designed for 158g ammo. . .and even proved adaptable to 200g bullets. Those provide a different approach to "stopping power" than the lighter/faster 9mm, and bullet types, designs, shapes, and composition tend to vary widely. Add in the fundamental distinction between the semi-auto solution and the revolver solution, and you have all the ingredients for endless discussion & disagreement. Loads of fun to be had by all!

^^^ Well said.

This is an interesting thread with many excellent posts by knowledgable forum members, with less urban legend and bullchit than we used to see in these type discussions.

You are exactly right Chief! I can only grin and shake my head when I see folks write about the more powerful and better .38 Special standard ammo loadings of 20, 30, 40, or 50 years ago. That stuff was junk compared to what is available today for the .38 Special.