But don't forget all the violence during that time period. New York had the mob wars between the Jewish and the Irish mobsters before the Italians took control of the streets.
Question.How did the .32 ever make its way as a Police round ?
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DWalt
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Back when I was a wee lad, we had a neighbor who was a Detective in the local PD. All he ever carried was a Colt .25 auto in his pocket. I guess he felt that was all he needed. There wasn't much crime there anyway, being a smallish (about 30,000) Southern Ohio city.
I've heard that a lot of shooting competitions of 100 years ago were being won by .32 S&W long shooters due to the round's inherent accuracy, and that influenced NYPD's decision to go with .32 S&W long. Smaller cities wanted to be like New York, so they went with the chambering, too.
Maybe it was a case of too many stray bullets hitting too many innocent bystanders - might be more of a problem in more densely populated areas. That's just speculation on my part, though.
Maybe it was a case of too many stray bullets hitting too many innocent bystanders - might be more of a problem in more densely populated areas. That's just speculation on my part, though.
Biggfoot44
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CMJ8591 is on the right track. We can look back at the various Western and southern Apilacian gunfighting lawmen of the era with serious hardware , but that wasn't the norm for most urban LE .
It wasn't just that T. Rosevelt standardized on the .32 , but that prior to that handguns weren't even required of officers. He also initiated the first training and qualifications. As noted the primary weapons for Ofc were trunchons , saps , and brass nuckles.
LE shooting training did have a couple of earlier paradigms. The T. Rosevekt era introduced the idea of having any training at all. We have look back at one hand bullseye as not very suitable , but it was a huge leap from nothing at all. The PPC era started in the 1930's and remained little changed into at least 1980's , and still recognizable influence in mmany LE COF today. Action shooters in recent years may ridicule , but drawing from holsters , reloading , DA shooting , and using human shaped targets was revolutionary at the time.
It wasn't just that T. Rosevelt standardized on the .32 , but that prior to that handguns weren't even required of officers. He also initiated the first training and qualifications. As noted the primary weapons for Ofc were trunchons , saps , and brass nuckles.
LE shooting training did have a couple of earlier paradigms. The T. Rosevekt era introduced the idea of having any training at all. We have look back at one hand bullseye as not very suitable , but it was a huge leap from nothing at all. The PPC era started in the 1930's and remained little changed into at least 1980's , and still recognizable influence in mmany LE COF today. Action shooters in recent years may ridicule , but drawing from holsters , reloading , DA shooting , and using human shaped targets was revolutionary at the time.
Biggfoot44
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And as also noted , until relatively recently the 7.65mm (aka .32acp) was considered the "normal" police cal , like .38spl had in the US . For the most part Eurpopeans considered the handgun mostly a badge of office, not a serious weapon. And when they did feel need for more serious weapondry , they were more likely to issue carbines and smgs instead of larger handguns.
President William McKinley.
Absalom
SWCA Member, Absent Comrade
I think we tend to forget that the whole concept of "stopping power" and the obsession with terminal ballistics didn't really exist in earlier times and didn't enter the general debate among shooters (and that would include police officers) until after WW II. In terms of personal weapons, we tend to focus on the famous big guns, but even during the single action cartridge era, the actual number of Colt SAAs and S&W SA .44 and .45 revolvers was dwarfed by the gazillions of cheap, usually top-break .22, .32, and .38 pocket revolvers being churned out by countless manufacturers, which indicates there was demand and people found them adequate. Study historical photos, even of frontier towns, and try to find anyone who seems to carry a substantial handgun; movie cliche nonwithstanding, a little pocket pistol in a vest pocket was much more likely than a big .45 dangling from the belt. Even during the black powder era, by far the most widely produced Colt was not one of the .44's or even .36's, but the little Colt Pocket 1849 in .31.
Add to that the fact that most urban officers, and by the 1890s they made up the majority of American lawmen, did not carry open holsters and had to stow their gun somewhere under a stiff wool frock coat, and something compact and lightweight was very welcome.
So I don't think any officer would have seen the adoption of a .32 revolver in 1896 as a step down; except when riding with a posse into the wilderness, most officers of the law probably had been carrying something along those lines already.
Add to that the fact that most urban officers, and by the 1890s they made up the majority of American lawmen, did not carry open holsters and had to stow their gun somewhere under a stiff wool frock coat, and something compact and lightweight was very welcome.
So I don't think any officer would have seen the adoption of a .32 revolver in 1896 as a step down; except when riding with a posse into the wilderness, most officers of the law probably had been carrying something along those lines already.
Green Frog
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Weren't the Thompson-LaGarde Tests conducted sometime just prior to or just after WW I? That was the first time that stopping power or some variant thereof seems to have been studied and evaluated in a scientific manner (IIRC.) But then again, this was for military consumption, not for use on civilians by civilians.
I default to the statements above that the average cop on the beat would indeed have been more likely to resort to a truncheon/night stick or a sap as a "pacifier" and only even draw a firearm in extreme circumstances.
BTW, I read somewhere that "gun violence" was actually more prevalent in NYC than the "Wild West" (per capita) prior to the days of TR, but I can't find a source... does anyone else remember reading anything like this?
Froggie
PS Just checked out the T-L Tests on Wikipedia... they were conducted using various handgun rounds first on cattle at a slaughterhouse then on human cadavers as sort of "ballistic pendulums" later in the testing. I'm guessing that the experiences in the Philippines with the 38 Colt revolver on drugged up tribesmen may have inspired these tests.
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DWalt
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"Weren't the Thompson-LaGarde Tests conducted sometime just prior to or just after WW I? That was the first time that stopping power or some variant thereof seems to have been studied and evaluated in a scientific manner (IIRC.)"
There was very little scientific about the Thompson-LaGarde tests. In one of the older Gun Digests, there is a very complete account of exactly how the cattle tests were performed. If you read it, it becomes clear that they were making up their test program as they went along, and nothing conclusive actually resulted from it. The plan was more like "Hey, let's go out and shoot a bunch of cows and see what happens!"
There was very little scientific about the Thompson-LaGarde tests. In one of the older Gun Digests, there is a very complete account of exactly how the cattle tests were performed. If you read it, it becomes clear that they were making up their test program as they went along, and nothing conclusive actually resulted from it. The plan was more like "Hey, let's go out and shoot a bunch of cows and see what happens!"
Absalom
SWCA Member, Absent Comrade
I think you hit the key point here. Before mass market gun magazines and books discussed these topics widely, I don't think this was much on civilian gun owners' radar, and that includes cops. You shot someone, and they either dropped or they didn't, not unlike today, but there was no "public forum" where shooting incidents were analyzed for weapon effectiveness by gun writers or, more recently, gun bloggers and other "instant experts". I don't remember any of the classic accounts of the OK Corral even mentioning what guns and calibers were used except Doc's shotgun. And just like today, most officers back then probably never had occasion to shoot someone and find out how effective their caliber was.
Another example that illustrates this comes from Colt history: Colt introduced the Police Positive in .38 Police in 1907; within a year, the Police Positive Special and Army Special chambered in the much more potent .38 Special caliber were introduced, yet the original Police Positive in the weaker caliber enjoyed great popularity with major police departments for several more decades, being produced into the 1940s.
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DWalt
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Seems I remember that the NYPD didn't adopt the .38 Special as a caliber until sometime in the mid-1920s. And lots of small (and maybe even larger) city police departments didn't have much in the way of gun or caliber standards until after WWII, just whatever gun a cop wanted to carry was OK. And some rural area sheriffs, constables, etc. may still have the same "whatever" policy. I have a second home in a sparsely populated county in West Texas, and it seems no two Sheriff's deputies carry the same gun. I see .45 Autos and .44 Magnums for the most part. One carries a Desert Eagle. Heck, they don't even wear uniforms, maybe just a uniform shirt with a badge, mostly jeans, cowboy boots, and cowboy hats.
Green Frog
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Mr DWalt, if we apply modern methods to just about any fledgling study, the methods used will look pretty primitive. By definition, the Scientific Method involves making observations under controlled conditions and trying to draw conclusions from the data thus obtained. Prior to this time, the main evaluation of the efficacy of a firearm or round of ammo was whether the user survived or not, without much thought to the whys and wherefores. As a longtime science teacher (Biology - 40 years) I look at historical studies that were ground breaking for their day and can pick them apart in minutes... but they gave us a place to start.
Watson and Crick said of their DNA research, "We stood on the shoulders of giants" and much has been found on the subject in the intervening 60+ years. The same can be said of the history of firearms and ballistics research. I seem to recall the great Elmer Keith blowing up a few guns "experimenting" with high performance loads, but his end results are no less valid.
JMHO, of course and YMMV.
Froggie
Absalom
SWCA Member, Absent Comrade
Kframerbluvr
Member
.32 revolvers were, I believe, popular for plainclothes and off-duty carry as late as the '70s. My BIL was a Justice of the Peace from the mid 60's to 1973, when Virginia abolished the office and went to the magistrate system. He legally carried a 3" nickel S&W .32 that a local VSP trooper lent him. That was the first centerfire handgun I ever fired.
DWalt
Member
If you care to look at the original T-LG cattle test results and commentary, it can be found in 1he 1983 (37th) Edition of Gun Digest, in an article titled "The Holes in Stopping Power Theory" by Leon Day, p. 24. I am sure all would appreciate your analysis of the experimental design of the Thompson and LaGarde cattle study.
That's very true. Back when I was an MP in Germany during the late 70's the German Polizei all carried .32's. They all had those horrible fold over cover holsters too. They went to 9mm in the early 80's . German MP's carried P-1's in 9mm all the while though during that period.
Many of the field personnel carried 32's during WW2 though . My Father in Law kept the one he had carried till he died a few years ago. I'm also pretty sure they let him carry that same gun all the years he worked as a police officer after the war right until he retired. The stupid thing was he couldn't get any rounds for it after he retired so I got him a box from the Munich Rod And Gun Club on McGraw Kasserne.
Absalom
SWCA Member, Absent Comrade
That was true in Europe in general. And both the great compact 20th centrury auto pistol designs, Browning's FN 1910 and Walther's PP/PPK, were available in both .32 and .380 right from the start. Yet virtually ALL police and other agency orders from the 1920s through the 1970s were for the .32 version, even though the .380 does offer significantly better ballistics in an identically sized gun.
But lest we think that was some weird European thing, the same applied to the two most popular American pocket autos, from Colt and Savage. The Colt 1903 Hammerless in .32 outsold the 1908 version in .380 by a factor of about 4 to 1. People just didn't think about stopping power the way we do now.
Green Frog
Member
To begin with, I am writing this in response to what I consider to be a polite and sincere question, and intend to respond in kind. OK, where to begin? First, we can all agree that these tests were done about a century ago, without the benefit of any of the equipment commonly available today for measuring and evaluating results? They were sort of at the Commodore 64™ stage while we all now have the benefit MacBook Pros™.
It would appear that they 1) depended on a limited number of samples, and 2) added information from hearsay (anecdotal) evidence… I don't know about all of what was in the original commentary and conclusions of the study as all the article in question provides is part of the data with their own commentary interspersed with very brief excerpts from the report itself. The article in question does not give much of the original study except the data and then the author's own feelings about the study… I would have to read T&L's own commentary on the whys and wherefores and their specific conclusions and recommendations before I could draw my own informed conclusion. I actually agree with most of the actual quotes (having to do with shot placement, etc.) from T&L.
The principals of the study (Thompson and LaGarde) may well have had an "axe to grind" but truth to tell most researchers have at least some preconception of what they will find, otherwise why would they look? An indication of integrity of the data is that another researcher can look at all that is reported and see all of what was done, not just what the original writer wanted to display in support of his hypothesis.
I'm willing to accept that there were flaws in the research methods… I said so in my earlier post, but the fact remains that this was a fledgling attempt at a scientific study of stopping power, and the first of its kind of which I am aware. Does anyone know of an earlier one?
In his final paragraph, the author of the article in question makes a telling revelation (note the time frame of the article which was about the time the US Military was adopting the Beretta 9mm service weapon) when he accuses T&L of having "a lot to do with that delay" because now we have (had) a flat-point 9 mm bullet that was "very like the one tested in 1904." Speaking of axes to grind. Oh, and how is that changeover working out with all the big government testing that led to its adoption? It would appear that the military is trending back toward the 45... another "full circle," perhaps?
Now let's get back to the original reason for this thread. The 32 S&W Long (in the US) and 32 ACP (in Europe) were apparently considered by police officers and their superiors to be sufficient for civilian encounters of a criminal nature… as already stated, the use of one's handgun was usually fairly far down the list of strategies, after truncheons, saps, etc. The inventors of the 9 mm Parabellum ("for war") round had that purpose in mind, not civilian encounters, and with certain exceptions (mostly in the "Wild West") the carrying of 45s in the US by civilians including civilian police was apparently pretty rare. BTW, lest I be accused of being a knuckle dragging Neanderthal with a 1911 on each hip, my EDC is a 32 S&W Long snubbie, which T&L didn't even see fit to evaluate! That's why I read this thread in the first place.
Respectfully,
the Green Frog
Horn
Member
Weren't American LE
The 32 pistols were common for European law enforcement for
many years. My thoughts on this are they would not be engaged
in shootouts with criminals. Criminals and the public in Europe were seldom armed with a gun of any sort.
The 38 special pretty well was the general (there are always exceptions) caliber carried by American police after the "cowboy"
guns seemed to large (I guess) with police uniforms.
What's always puzzled me is why so many of my fellow detectives
carried these S&W 38 special snubby air weights! (Five shot)
We furnished our own firearms. (Mandated 38 special) But, once I became a detective I bought and carried the S&W Model 39.
It was a shooter!
"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."
-- George Orwell
The 32 pistols were common for European law enforcement for
many years. My thoughts on this are they would not be engaged
in shootouts with criminals. Criminals and the public in Europe were seldom armed with a gun of any sort.
The 38 special pretty well was the general (there are always exceptions) caliber carried by American police after the "cowboy"
guns seemed to large (I guess) with police uniforms.
What's always puzzled me is why so many of my fellow detectives
carried these S&W 38 special snubby air weights! (Five shot)
We furnished our own firearms. (Mandated 38 special) But, once I became a detective I bought and carried the S&W Model 39.
It was a shooter!
"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."
-- George Orwell
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