.30supercarry

No more boutique ammo for me. I've had 32H&R Magnum, .41 Magnum, .25 WSSM, .35 Remington and a few others and the added ammo cost and difficulty to get it is just not worth it to me.
 
There you have it, folks. We can safely throw away all our textbooks and calculators.

The calculators show that the 45 Auto has 80-100 ft lbs more energy delivered to the target. Not sure what you're talking about? The calculators and eye tests are in congruence.
 
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Sure glad the bridge builders and building builders don't rely on counting on their fingers..and using the calibrated eye for their designs.

Rosewood
 
The amount of hate piled on this cartridge, by people who neither own nor shoot it, but obviously feel threatened by it in some bizarre fashion, is very amusing.

I've had the S&W Shield EZ in .30 SC since it came out. I rather like it. In function it's basically a high-pressure long-cased .32 ACP Magnum. Bullets are .312". The round requires a substantial locked-breech pistol of the same size as equivalent 9mm pistols.

I have about 500 rounds through my 30SC Shield Plus and I like it more with every range trip. As a reloader I can tell you there's more potential with this cartridge than most would believe. Started with Hodgdon's data since it's the only available and exceeded the energy of factory ammo without coming close to max charges. The carry ammo I load reaches energy levels above 360# and is extremely accurate. Mark my words, if and when BB and Underwood get into the 30SC game it's going to change the minds of a lot of die-hard 9mm fanatics. I'm waiting for it to dry up outside so I can get out and do more load testing. Working on Alliant powders at the moment. Blue-dot and Power Pistol already showing promising results.

 
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Love my Shield Plus in 30 SC, compact, almost 9mm energy and 30 rounds with two magazines. I'm sold!! On my hip 90% of the time. Saving brass to reload so not concerned about price.
 
Was in a gun store yesterday and saw that a 50 round box of Remington range/FMJ .30SC ammo was $39.99. Nearby was the same Remington range ammo, in 9mm, for $12.50. The .30SC is not long for this earth.
 
I was on a couple websites today and 30SC ammo was a lot cheaper than that. I've got more guns than I can shoot now, though.
 
I've actually been pondering this lately after being reminded of .30 Super Carry and here's my conclusion...

I believe that .30 Super Carry failed to catch on solely due to marketing... Yes, that's really what it all comes down to, and it isn't an oversimplification. Allow me to explain...

It seems evident to me that .30 Super Carry was designed for the sole purpose of appealing to marketing trends, with its very specifications being built up around statistics. Unfortunately, marketing executives have a bad habit of dehumanizing consumers and thinking of them not unlike cattle, ergo they are incapable of seeing the rhyme or reason behind marketing trends and just look at it like this; "It has been observed that this is what the animals like to eat, so if we mix all of these ingredients together, the animals will like them even better and come to our barn for feed."
What they fail to recognize is that each of those little things that are popular in the market right now have a form of rationality behind them and not all of them go together nor are they shared by everyone.

So the end result is a cartridge which lacks any tangible benefit because it's built up upon a mishmash of marketing trends which do not necessarily collectively appeal to the target demographic, nor do they offer anything new or compelling.
Nearly every one of .30 Super Carry's benefits are offset by the fact that they are shared by other cartridges.

One of the .30 Super Carry's most readily apparent benefits is High Capacity, but 9mm Parabellum already has this covered, and while .30SC does offer higher capacity, how often do you see people complaining about 9mm Pistols offering too little magazine capacity? Pretty much never, because it's the gold standard, hence why other cartridges offering higher capacity like 5.7x28 FN never really caught on.

So without that, what does it bring to the table? Pretty much nothing, because it was designed around 9mm to begin with and thusly does nothing better whatsoever. Similar sized pistols and similar muzzle energy, but without the years of service by numerous Military Factions and Law Enforcement Agencies to back it up.

That's also I think what one of the greatest marketing missteps of the cartridge was as well. Obviously, many prospective new buyers of firearms look towards the Military and Law Enforcement for examples of what might be a good defensive cartridge because it's comforting to know that what they carry is used by soldiers and police officers. They don't want a civilian carry cartridge, they want a duty cartridge, ergo .30 Super Carry isn't going to appeal to them. Had it been marketed as a Duty cartridge under the name; ".30 Super Duty" or ".30 Parabellum" then aggressively marketed towards Law Enforcement with absurd discounts just to get somebody to adopt it so that they could in turn market it as; "Proudly serving the Podunk Police!" with an endorsement by Deputy Barney Fife, then they might at least be able to trick newcomers into buying it.

As for those who are already into firearms for self-defense, it cannot appeal to anyone in the short term because everyone is already settled on what they trust, so unless it offers something new and compelling, nobody is going to rush out to buy it.

.30 Super Carry needed a stronger selling point, something unique to set it apart from other cartridges, then it would have stood a chance of catching on, but it wasn't designed for any particular purpose, it was merely designed to appeal to marketing trends without any understanding whatsoever of the motivations of consumers which set those trends in the first place.
 
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I didn't realize that it was dead already.

That saves me a bunch of money for reloading dies, brass cases and bullets not to mention buying a gun (or two).
 
I didn't say that it was dying...

However, seeing as it's already over a years old and so far nobody else has started manufacturing firearms chambered in it besides Smith & Wesson and Nighthawk Customs, it certainly isn't taking off, that's for sure.

Frankly, the only dead cartridges I'm aware of that are truly dead are things like Gyrojet which weren't conventional metallic cartridges at all, everything else seems to be manufactured by at least someone in at least some limited quantity. Heck even cartridges which have gone completely out of production like 7.65×25mm Borchardt can still be handloaded due to the availability of dimensionally similar brass cases, so I laugh at people who talk of cartridges "dying" and .30 Super Carry is no exception.
 
One of the .30 Super Carry's most readily apparent benefits is High Capacity, but 9mm Parabellum already has this covered, and while .30SC does offer higher capacity, how often do you see people complaining about 9mm Pistols offering too little magazine capacity? Pretty much never, because it's the gold standard, hence why other cartridges offering higher capacity like 5.7x28 FN never really caught on.

I see this quite often, usually in the form of people buying magazine extensions or extended magazines Every time a company comes out with a higher capacity magazine like the 15 round S&W mag for the Shield Plus or 17 round mag for the Sig P365 I see multiple threads about the new option with lots of people wanting to buy one.

This is more common in small guns for carry which is a big reason 5.7x28 isn't popular, the guns may be light but are bigger than what most people will carry.

I do agree that capacity grows the importance of a couple more rounds becomes less significant. If Glock made a 30 SC version of the G43 that held 8 rounds in the magazine instead of 6 it would make a bigger difference than going from 13 to 15 in a Shield Plus. But more is still more at any level.

I am a big fan of small 9mm pistols and if someone made a 30 SC version in a platform I like I would buy it. I have a Shield Plus in 9mm but am probably going to sell it because I prefer the smaller and lighter G43 and P365 I also own. It would be really surprising if Glock made a 30 SC version of the G43 but there is a slim chance Sig might make a 30 SC P365. I carry the 365 with a 10 round magazine and going to 12 would be a noticeable step up in capacity.
 
It is important to compare apples to apples but that is difficult for Gun 'riters and Internet 'xperts to do.

The 32 Magnum was designed for performance in small revolvers. When comparing the 32 Magnum to the 38 Special in the J-Frame revolver the 32 Magnum cartridge outperforms the 38 Special. In a larger revolver with a longer barrel the 32 Magnum loses it advantage as the 38 is hotrodded to +P performance.

This is the same mistake that is being made with the 30 SC. The 30 SC shines best in small frame pistols that are most likely to be carried for self-defense. Yet Gun 'riters and Internet 'xperts are comparing it's performance against the 9mm in medium and large frame semiautomatics that are unlikely to be carried for self-defense.
 
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