Which is more powerful? .45 or .357

[blujax01]

There is a paper entitled "Handgun Wounding Factors and Effectiveness" presented by the FBI Academy Firearms Training Unit.
The full text may be found here:
http://www.firearmstactical.com/pdf/fbi-hwfe.pdf

Excellent 20 minute read and the final paragraph sums it up quite nicely:
Kinetic energy does not wound. Temporary cavity does not wound. The much discussed "shock" of bullet impact is a fable and "knock down" power is a myth. The critical element is penetration. The bullet must pass through the large, blood bearing organs and be of sufficient diameter to promote rapid bleeding. Penetration less than 12 inches is too little, and, in the words of two of the participants in the 1987 Wound Ballistics Workshop, "too little penetration will get you killed." Given desirable and reliable penetration, the only way to increase bullet effectiveness is to increase the severity of the wound by increasing the size of hole made by the bullet. Any bullet which will not penetrate through vital organs from less than optimal angles is not acceptable. Of those that will penetrate, the edge is always with the bigger bullet.

 

[senecaap]

I say the .45, but across the spectrum, pistols to rifles, I am a moderate velocity heavy bullet guy. That said the .357, .45, 10mm, .44Spc & Mag are the Major league players. I like a .45 or .44 better than a .357 (for several reasons, hearing and recoil among them), but I like the .357 better than the 9mm and its ilk of bush leaguers, and as it happens I'm carrying a .357 today.
I guess what I'm saying is if I knew I was going to get into something, I would opt for a Government .45, but walking around not knowing whether anything will happen and carrying a 66 .357 doesn't bother me.

 

[xICEMANx]

There is a paper entitled "Handgun Wounding Factors and Effectiveness" presented by the FBI Academy Firearms Training Unit.
The full text may be found here:
http://www.firearmstactical.com/pdf/fbi-hwfe.pdf

Excellent 20 minute read and the final paragraph sums it up quite nicely:
Kinetic energy does not wound. Temporary cavity does not wound. The much discussed "shock" of bullet impact is a fable and "knock down" power is a myth. The critical element is penetration. The bullet must pass through the large, blood bearing organs and be of sufficient diameter to promote rapid bleeding. Penetration less than 12 inches is too little, and, in the words of two of the participants in the 1987 Wound Ballistics Workshop, "too little penetration will get you killed." Given desirable and reliable penetration, the only way to increase bullet effectiveness is to increase the severity of the wound by increasing the size of hole made by the bullet. Any bullet which will not penetrate through vital organs from less than optimal angles is not acceptable. Of those that will penetrate, the edge is always with the bigger bullet.

Doesn't .357 tend to penetrate more than .45acp? Yet .45 is a bigger bullet. HMMM. Heck alot of 9mm loads penetrate better than .40 and .45. Kinda of contradicts that last line.

 

[ColColt]

The 357 with the 125 gr bullet has an excellent track record unequaled even today from all the accounts I've read. Something like a 97% stopping power factor(not hit in the knee cap of course). Tremendous damage to tissue. Penetration is nothing like the 45 ACP with ball ammo which has been know to penetrate excessively-like 2-3 ft in ballistic gelatin compared to 13-15 inches for the 357. The 158 gr soft points or SWC's and heavier will penetrate more than the 125 gr JHP.If you can stand the noise indoors you can't beat the 357 for defense purposes. Various LE agencies carried them for years and have reported huge successes in stopping the bad guys.

 

[rjb1]

"The 357 with the 125 gr bullet has an excellent track record unequaled even today from all the accounts I've read."

That's true, but there is an aspect of those "accounts" that I noticed a number of years ago that may be worth a comment.
In one of the gun magazines a famous writer who specialized in the "caliber effectiveness" topic that has been going on for years (decades) presented a plot of "% of one-stop" kills for various calibers. One thing that struck me as an engineer was that first, the data was a bit sparse at the high end, and second, he used a polynomial fit to generate the equation that tried to "best-fit" the data. The tendency of a polynomial fit is that there is/was a fall-off of the curve at the upper end, due to the nature of the equation.
This tended to slightly overstate the effectiveness of the .357 compared to .44's and .45's.
I would have liked to see the same data curve-fitted with an exponential fit. This would have allowed the curve to gradually go up and would have a greater tendency to flatten out at the top end.
I always felt that this would be a better way of presenting the data and would not be quite as counterintuitive as to suggest that smaller is better when it come to bullets. (even accounting for velocity differences)
From personal experience, you can generate curve fits that appear at first glance to really fit the data well, but when you look at the output carefully you can have a terrible fit except at a few points.

 

[Rule3]

As I generally like to say, In the overall scheme of things does it really matter??? ( we are talking SD distance and not a 400 yard shot)

Big and slow or smaller and faster, they both penetrate and make a very nasty hole.

Either one will do the job as will other calibers.

 

[SicSemper]

Just another tool in the box for HD/SD

 

[ColColt]

I don't think in the real world anyone's concerned with polynomial fit and curves but actually accounts from police departments and highway patrol encounters and what happened and how quickly. The 357 has proven itself over the decades...what, since 1935? It all seems to me to be about velocity. The 125 gr bullet is not a very heavy bullet compared to the 45 Colt or ACP cartridge with a 230 or 255 gr bullet but is moving at quite a bit higher velocity(1350+fps) whereas the ACP might break 850 or so. Consider the 300 Weatherby. There's no doubt it's a deadly cartridge as many can attest who have hunted with it all over the world. Conversely, I doubt you would get the same results from a 30-30 that shoots a similar weight bullet. That little 125 gr bullet traveling as fast as it does disrupts a lot of tissue and damage is extreme.

As for sheer power and tremendous wound potential and the proverbial "one shot stopper" as a defense round, I vote for the 357 Magnum. Having said all that, I wouldn't want to fire one indoors. That's why I keep a 4506 with 200 gr Corbon hollow points under my pillow.

 

[smithnframe]

As Elmer Keith used to say "A heavy chunk of lead where it will do the most good"

 

[eshap2]

230 grain .45 ACP vs. 158 grain .357. Which one has more stopping power? Both seem to be about the same price.

45 THE ONLY WAY

 

[OK Hog Shooter]

I don't want to get shot by either! ...for that matter, I'm not real fond of getting shot by a.22, either. Heck... I once got hit in the eye with a corn cob... during a barn corn cob fight... now THAT hurt!!! It was a country thing.

Hog

 

[ColColt]

We use to put berries from hedge bushes in our BB guns and shot at each other! I got hit in the side with no shirt on in the summer...now, that will smart!

 

[amazingflapjack]

comment-comment-comment.

 

[blujax01]

Doesn't .357 tend to penetrate more than .45acp? Yet .45 is a bigger bullet. HMMM. Heck alot of 9mm loads penetrate better than .40 and .45. Kinda of contradicts that last line.

Maybe but what I took away from it was that anything after 12" is gravy. So a .45 that will penetrate 12" will do more damage than a .357 at any depth.

As others have said though, it's all academic.

 

[blujax01]

comment-comment-comment.

mumble-mumble-mumble ...

 

[David LaPell]

I laid out the argument before, I'll stick with the .357.

The Clash of the Cartridges: .357 Magnum vs. .45 ACP - Gun News at Guns.com

 

[The Last Standing Knight]

This is the way I look at it, a 20mm cannon is useless if you can't hit anything with it. In short, it is the ability to call your shots at realistic ranges under pressure...not which is bigger or most powerful.
A Beeman Air Rifle can be just as deadly as a S&W M28 or a Colt 1911 in the right hands.

 

[brucev]

We use to put berries from hedge bushes in our BB guns and shot at each other! I got hit in the side with no shirt on in the summer...now, that will smart!

Yes! Shooting across the road taking cover in the ditches... it was really something. Later we graduated to pine cone wars (using green pine cones of course). Then came the ultimate... Whamo Wrist Rocket Slingshots using pecans. One of those things from inside 15-20 yards would really light someone up. When we all moved up to bows and arrows, we rapidly decided to stop shooting at each other There was just to much risk of injury.

 

[smithman 10]

.45 vs. .357

After reading that post from the guy in the morgue now I'm a skeered to go outside with my little J-frame .38! I'd have to shoot 'em 15 times it looks like and they still might get me.

Shoot, might just as well leave my .38 at home and plan on running as fast as my 64-year old legs can carry me.

Problem is I just can't figure out a good way to carry a great big pistol with a caliber that starts with 4.

What should I do?

Terminal ballistics as viewed in a morgue

 

[OldArcher]

It all depends...

Which are you a better shot with? What platform? Are you shooting through barriers? Oh, my, so many questions, hmmmm?

Okay, here's the long and short of it...

Placement, placement, placement...

A .44 caliber S&W revolver holds the longest record of accuracy in history- STILL... Though not "powerful" compared to round count, bullet weight, nor velocity of some of today's firearms, it still has NO equal in the most important category... Comparing the 230gr .45acp with the 158gr .38 Special, is like apples and oranges... As no handgun, that I know of, can use both calibers, it's a subjective at best...

If you were to compare, say, S&W's Governor, using .45 Colt and .45acp, out of the same weapon, comparison's could be made, and objectively so... Here, the .45LC can be loaded to exceed the pressures found in a .44 Remington Magnum. However, the use of full-moon, half-moon, and third-moon clips would be efficacious, vis-a-vis HKS' speed loaders, where you have "all, or nothing at all." The ability to use 6, 3, or even 2 rounds in combination to reload, is awesome...

Which hit's harder? .45acp over any standard velocity .38 Special. Which is more accurate? Ever see the great movie, "Any Given Sunday?" That's it, in a nutshell... Accuracy is everything...

Use what you shoot best- don't let "experts" sway you. Go to the range, and find out for yourself. THEN, practice, practice, practice, and never stop practicing...

As for speed, Wyatt Earp put it best. "Make haste, slowly..." In other words, placement/aim, making your first shot count, was paramount to survival...

OA, out...

Gee, here's where I show how OLD I am... I should have used .357, instead of .38 Special... Okay, here's where the velocity vs mass comes into play... .357 is, indeed, faster and lighter. So, too, was the 9mm. Using this as a baseline, the .45acp has stopped more people in combat, when used in the same theaters of combat as the 9mm... Same goes for the .38 Special. In police combat, there have been more kills, with .357, as not that many police or LEO organizations used .45acp. Where there was commonality, cops invariably preferred the .45acp. The most highly regarded .357 goes back to the SuperVel load of 125gr. at more than 1450fps. Dynamic results were encountered, but that was before the FBI tests developed after the Miami Massacre... Today, so many perps wear soft to hard body armor, that you NEED blunt force trauma, just to get their attention... It used to be the venerable FTS drill... Armor, helmets, shields, and face plates have obviated that... No more, two to COM, one to the head... NOW, use all three to the head, if necessary... With the .45acp, you have less chance for a small, fast bullet to curve around the skull, just inside the skin... One 230gr. SCHP, and all you need is a sponge and a squeegee...

My choice? Bigger is better... 200gr +P trumps light and fast...

OA