Wadcutters for self defense

Geo. T. said:
Factory wad cutters are a bad choice and the Texas DPS strongly advise against using hand loads in your carry pistol. There is a smaller chance of getting charges filed if you use factory ammo. The example they used was "He loaded up killer bullets and went hunting". I second the box of factory hollow points.
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:eek: 'Killer bullets', really! Somebody's been reading too much Ayoob!

This being said: Nobody produces more, 'killer bullets' than ATK's, Sports & Defense Groups; and it doesn't take a ballistics expert to figure this out. Here's an article on the, so-called, 'king of killer bullets'. (You know, the one that - by a wide margin - too many police officers to count prefer to use in their service revolvers!)

Remington 158 grain, LSWCHP +P

'Killer bullets', please! :rolleyes:
 
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If you are talking Factory 148 grain Wad Cutters - NOT a good choice IMHO. From a 2" barrel you can expect around 650 fps which is anemic at best and NOT adequate for reliable stopping power (at least to me). Hot loaded ones from BB or hand loaded - better but again, it would not be my first choice. There are so many better choices today.
 
Wadcutters make a nice clean hole, and if you don't want to hurt the victim really bad, just dip you self defense loads in Mercurochrome before putting them into your sidearm.
 
The one shooting I know of with a factory .38 wadcutter was a woman who shot her very large husband in the armpit with one. He grunted and dropped dead. The medical examiner found the undeformed slug in his pelvis, where it stopped after its farewell tour of many of his vital organs.
 
+1 on post #22;

There are no factory standard 38 special loads that should be used for SD use, unless that is all that you have or can control.
The 125gr Nyclad is no longer made, so I stand on this information.

A snub nose 38 needs a +P loading from a little 110gr to the large 158gr bullet to try to get enough penetration and bullet expansion for a SD load.

Go with the "Chicago" or NY City loads, if you can find them.
 
sigp220.45 said:
The one shooting I know of with a factory .38 wadcutter was a woman who shot her very large husband in the armpit with one. He grunted and dropped dead. The medical examiner found the undeformed slug in his pelvis, where it stopped after its farewell tour of many of his vital organs.
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I am sure there are lots of dead people from .22's as well - but still not a first choice SD round.
 
An unexpanded HP is a piss-poor defensive round, no better than RNL.

The clean hole cut by a hard cast WC bleeds freely.

Target HBWC loads for SD? No.
Hard cast WCs loaded to 800 fps or more? Absolutely.

Far too many factory wonder bullets fail to perform as advertised.
I wouldn't base my SD choices on what departmental bean counters approve. I'd go with proven loads.
The 158 grain SWCHP +P would be my first choice. IF you can get one that actually goes fast enough from a snub to expand reliably.
The BB load does that.
 
moosedog said:
The new self defense rounds in JHP just can't be outdone by a lead bullet anymore.
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Gotta disagree with ya on that one. Soft lead bullets expand more reliably across a wider velocity range than cupro-nickel jacketed bullets do.
There have been a lot of "be all, end all" SD bullets to come down the pike, and fail miserably.
Unfortunately, a handgun is a pretty piss-poor SD weapon.

Besides, we all "know" that if you try to use a gun in SD, the bad guy will just take it away from you and shoot you with it.
After all, that's what TV tells us, and we know TV is always right. Right?;)
 
That's exactly what's in my J-frame right now.
Either the Factory 148 HB wadcutter Target Ammo or a load that has a 162 grain wadcutter ( cast with a soft alloy from Lyman #358432 160 mould).

Both loads are accurate and I can quickly score multiple hits on target. I believe you should carry something you can shoot well.
And I can shoot these loads well.
Gary
 
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Florida J Frame said:
Why, when there are so many better choices? PDs that still allow .38s almost all use Speer Gold Dot SB +P. There must be a reason. Like Colt saa said buy a box of almost any modern SD ammo.
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Yeah, they are afraid of over penetration. They are more concerned with bystanders than with officer protection.
 
wogentry said:
Target wadcutters--no. Buffalo Bore Standard Pressure 150r Hard Cast Wadcutters---yes. Accurate as all get out in my snub and 4 inch Model 10s and pre-10 out to 25 yards. Hits with a solid thump. Chronograph results that I have done and others I have seen printed on this forum show velocities pretty well match whats on the box/website.

Expensive--probably. But to me well worth with. Bought a couple of cases a while back and practice with it routinely.

YMMV
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That's been my experience as well, from my 2" Colt Cobra they hit 869fps avg and just under 1000fps in my 4" mod 64 NY1.
They strike me as a good std pressure load especially from airweights and older shooters.
 
Just a thought thats a bit off topic, but this is the era of the media witch-hunt on those who dare use firearms in self defense, to wit: George Zimmerman.
If they went so far as to try to paint a guy with afro-peruvian (its true,on his mothers side, look it up lol) ancestry as a hood wearing member of the klan, its not too far fetched to me to think that they might glom on to a handload as some sort of "evidence" of your malice, should you be forced to defend yourself from one of the leftist medias "chosen".
The entire prosecution of Zimmerman was politically motivated and I bet he's very thankful that he didn't give them anything like that to "work" with.

Also, look how they went off about the "black talon" back in the 90's.

To each their own, but I don't want to give a possible malicious prosecutor and a CLEARLY biased against self defense media anything extra to breathlessly hyperventilate about if I am ever forced to defend myself with my gun.

As for wadcutters, I've contemplated them. Here's my 2 cents- any solid thats driven fast enough to be worth it may represent another problem: the thru-and-thru shot that hits the innocent passerby.

JHPs that properly expand tend to stay in the body, or else bleed off most of their energy to the point where if it punches thru it doesn't have much to hurt innocents on the other end.

I do not know if this is a risk with wadcutters, but I wouldn't load my handguns up with FMJ for this reason.

Last thing anyone should want, morally or legally, is for the projectile they fired in righteous self defense to go thru the attacker and strike anyone downrange not involved in the situation.
 
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HBWC's

Load a hbwc backwards. Accurate to 25' and tremendous expansion. Until all the new ammo started coming out it was some of the best. I fired it into wet phone books and it expanded 70cal+. I fired different types of ammo into the same medium and none of the hp's expanded as well. I know phone books aren't the best medium but 30 years ago it was what we had. After 25-30 ft it starts to tumble but won't go through several wall and take out your tax deductions. Load some to the upper safe end and checkout the expansion. Until I had to retire the wifes 38 because of arthritis I had it loaded with hbwc's. Still boils down to a hit with a light recoil bullet will stop better than an off center hit with something that kicks like a mule. The closest I thing I saw to instant dead was a man shot by his girl friend with a 22lr. He still had a cigarette in one hand, a match in the other and a smile on his face when he hit the ground. Never knew what hit him.
 
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Shooter6br said:
Never heard of a documented case of using handloads for SD as a legal problem.
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I haven't either. And neither have some noted gun writers
who surely would know if this was a potential problem for
handloaders. But...the "what if" syndrome is alive and well
and can even be contagious so beware! Don't let it invade
your thinking!
 
I, like any rational person, would not want to be shot by a wadcutter or any other type of bullet. That being said, I am amazed that people will go through the time and expense of getting a handgun for SD and then put the cheapest ammo they can find in it. I agree that $25-30 is expensive for a box of ammo, but it is not what you are going to use all of the time for practice, etc. Skip a meal out or a few trips to Starbucks and save up to buy 2 boxes. One to familiarize yourself with it and make sure it will function in the gun and one for carry. Every 6 months to a year repeat so you can stay proficient. I'm not rich by any means but my safety (I really like me), and the safety of my family (I like them too), is worth it.
 
hiddencreek said:
Any thoughts on wadcutters in snubbies for self defense?
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Recommended. Hardcast, loaded up to standard velocities. Meplat forward. Expansion is not your friend at snubbie velocities. Great for rifles, bad for snubbies.
 
shotgun693 said:
I was in 6 stand up gunfights. Hit 5 out of 6 bad guys. The JHP expanded everytime.
Click to expand...

Finally, a really meaningful post! Been there, done that, etc.

What ammo and gun? What ranges and bullet impact/placement? Sizes of opponents, etc.?

One Dallas officer supposedly used an issued M-64 with four-inch barrel and Winchester lead SWC-HP to terminate six felons. No known problems, but I don't know the size of those men or where he hit them or the ranges.

Your experience and his are the best gunfight data I've found, apart from the experience of a soldier operating in Iraq, and his experience was with 9mm and .45 ACP pistols using military ammo. Good hits equaled quick kills, but he sometimes fired more than one shot in quick succession.

I also believe a detective here who looked up info on several shootings with .357 145 grain Silvertips, which he reluctantly described as being almost too effective. I think he's a bit squeamish. But one man posting here saw a report in an FBI case where that .357 round almost removed an arm from the felon hit. That seems pretty satisfactory, but I don't know the barrel length or the range or the size of the felon.

But these cases don't address the subject of this thread: the factory supplied .38 WC round, especially from short barrels.

I do know that writers like Keith and Skelton said that .38 WC loads were good for small game that wouldn't drop reliably to RN bullets, although the WC's were slower. Ranges were probably short. The example given here of the .32 WC load employed on a big raccoon seems to bear out that the shape of the flat bullet does cut a full caliber hole and transmits more shock.

We need more men with actual experience of this ammo on live animals or men to post. Otherwise, it's all just guesswork, even if well founded and well meant.
 
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Shooter6br said:
Read this by Ed Harris Ed Harris: Revisiting The Full Charge Wadcutter. – www.GrantCunningham.com
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Makes great sense, as C. E. Harris usually does. But this requires handloading, and many of us don't.

Harris wondered why factories don't make similar loads. First, their WC bullets are usually soft swaged and will lead at high velocity. Secondly, they want to charge more to make JHP ammo, I think. And they doubt that these would sell well to the general public, which knows little about handgun ammo.

The Buffalo Bore WC ammo is quite costly, and one may as well shoot the JHP loads. But I like the idea where one is using a gun not warranted for Plus P ammo or to avoid excess wear with regular practice.

If anyone here has shot deer, coyotes, etc. with the BB wadcutters or their SWC-HP ammo, please post. With details!

Note Harris's comments about soft frame steel in blued S&W .38's made before the early 1990's. I've never seen that posted before. But it makes me even happier to use stainless guns. And note what he wrote about Ruger Six-series guns ordered by police departments where the issued load was the lead Plus P round. Very interesting! If I understood him, their .357 guns weren't affected, nor were SP or GP Rugers.

Read that linked article. It's well worth the time it'll take, which shouldn't be much.
 
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