Teach me about the .380 caliber

[Cal44]

If a 380 is good enough for James Bond it's good enough for us.

Only he calls it 9mm short.

We all know that Bond can shoot a running man from 100 feet away while diving for cover and hit and stop him every time.

What more could you want?

 

[oberon]

Pretty much a worthless caliber. In between 25 ACP and 9 mm. If you want a pocket gun, Keltec makes smaller guns in 9mm

This statement is false and misleading.
I would recommend an educational experience, and then, perhaps a flat, non-objective, strictly subjective statement.
Information is the key.
Experience is the teacher.

 

[jeeps]

Use Full metal jacket ball it feeds good and penetrate's enough to reach vital's. Hollow points are to light don't reach vitals. Of a half dozen shooting's are ER room never seen one full metal jacket 380 go through a torso and half were DOA. Hp are a joke in 380's,32 acp and 38spec. snubby's.

 

[shouldazagged]

Use Full metal jacket ball it feeds good and penetrate's enough to reach vital's. Hollow points are to light don't reach vitals. Of a half dozen shooting's are ER room never seen one full metal jacket 380 go through a torso and half were DOA. Hp are a joke in 380's,32 acp and 38spec. snubby's.

I've bet my life daily for a good many years that you're mistaken about hollow-points from a snub .38 Special. Decades of recorded shootings appear to validate my opinion that they are no kind of joke.

I have limited experience with .32 ACP and none with .380, but I'd much prefer not to be center-punched with a hollow-point or FMJ from either.

Just saying.

 

[Neal39]

I have a Mustang .380 that is too expensive to shoot.
It killed my chronograph with one shot.
It has a life sentence in the darkness of my gun safe for the rest of it's evil life. Neal39

 

[HeyJoe]

I hate the 380.



They are indeed a "get off me" gun. Which means you've waited too long to act.

What I mean is that for most people the gun is useless at 7 yards. The point where most of us carrying a larger service caliber gun have already started shooting.

really? 21 feet and you have started shooting? you know 21 feet away that someone is going to be a threat to your life in more than just the most unusual situation? the average self defense shooting is 6 feet or less. i hope you have a large legal defense fund and if not id start saving now.

 

[model70hunter]

I have been use to a .25 for many many years. My reason for the new .380 was more power, same size, that simple.

Besides all the "bad" you read on the .25, I never once felt "under armed" in close situations. I have many old soup cans that looked like major pin cushions, in and out and gone.

So the new .380 I cannot wait to try, being use to the .25 as a pocket rocket, the .380 should be a power house

DR

Our home town had a bully, a tall fellow. He frequented bars and picked on littler folks. He took great glee in picking on one smaller fellow. The gent got tired of being bullied, slapped and humiliated. He bought a .25 semi-auto. 7 rounds.

The bully started his clown act, the smaller gent pulled the .25 and emptied it in the stomach of the bully.

The bully rushed to the emergency room thinking he was a dead man with all of his prized organs being riddled and all.

The town Dr went into surgery thinking he was working on a soon to be dead man. Not one bullet went past the abdominal muscles.

It was deemed self defense. The smaller gent left town. The bully quit running bars, drinking, started going to church and stayed home at nights.

This happened when I was a Deputy. I knew both men.

All the LE's in our area that carried a .25 pocket back-up quit them cold.

Our summary was the .25 is good to slow a bully down and convert him to religion. Not much else though.

 

[Erich]

Wow, was that a great story, model70hunter - thanks!

 

[jeeps]

I agree with Eric FMJ in 380 and the 32acp are proven stoppers when you hit center mass. Ball will reach the vitals. Too many people think Hollow points make magic stoppers. 9mm,38,40,45 all will not stop if you can not hit center mass,gut shot is gut shot and shot in the arm or leg the same. Today most web commando's think pray and spray and bad hits will stop a fight in bigger cals. 12-16 shot fired maybe two hits in non lethal area's. I would rather have a man with 32 or 380 with ball that can stay cool and hit center mass than a web commando with a 45 that can't hit anything and have a brown mark in his unders.

 

[medxam]

In 4000 GSW autopsies, I have never seen a .25 cal projectile fail to penetrate the abdominal musculature. It must have been some very old bad ammo!

medxam

 

[jeeps]

A few decades ago a women with a 25 Raven killed 4 people with one magazine of ammo. John Browning did not design his ammo to wound or maim people in the early 1900's.

 

[Erich]

In 4000 GSW autopsies, I have never seen a .25 cal projectile fail to penetrate the abdominal musculature. It must have been some very old bad ammo!

medxam

Not taking issue with your results, but an infinitely more interesting number would be the number of .25 shots to the abdomen. I can say that I've worked on more than 200 handgun killings and more hundreds of shootings and I've never seen a case in which a .32 S&W Long shooting wasn't fatal, but what's more significant in that equation is that there weren't a hell of a lot of those. It would be helpful to say, "I've worked on five cases in which there were .25 FMJ wounds to the abdomen, and in every one of those cases the abdominal wall was perforated by the projectile that hit it."

 

[Florida J Frame]

Doc,
What is your opinion of the .380 as a SD round?

 

[Florida J Frame]

Erich,
I've followed your posts for several years and I would be very interested in your current position on the .380 as a defense round. Do you still like the BB +P?

 

[shouldazagged]

In 4000 GSW autopsies, I have never seen a .25 cal projectile fail to penetrate the abdominal musculature. It must have been some very old bad ammo!

medxam

It's always revealing to hear your ideas on this kind of thing, Doc. If anybody would have, you should pardon the expression, the inside scoop, it would seem to be the guy doing the post mortem exam.

That doesn't mean I'm going to trade my J-frame for a .25, but it would make me feel better if I had to pick one up and use it.

 

[Erich]

I would be very interested in your current position on the .380 as a defense round. Do you still like the BB +P?

First of all, I note that SAAMI does not recognize such a critter as a ".380+P" - the truth is that these rounds are simply overpressure. I don't recommend them for anyone, and I only shoot them myself in locked-breech .380s. I have no idea whether they're safe in any particular gun.

The Buffalo Bore .380+P 95-gr FMJ is not my first choice (though it's what I have loaded in my LCP) for a defensive round, but I can't imagine it would fail to penetrate adequately on an unarmored assailant in a regular face-to-face defensive scenario. That said, I have never seen a shooting (out of a couple dozen) case with any .380 ball round that failed to penetrate adequately (and only one possible overpenetration - of a shot to the calf of a leg, which almost doesn't count). So . . . that sort of begs the question: does a person really need more than the much cheaper and less feisty standard ball round?

I think I've mentioned here before about how I sort of feel I bought into the All-American bigger/stronger/faster/lower-drag con ( ) in buying the Buffalo Bore overpressure round . . . it's unpleasant to shoot in the LCP (think getting your hand whacked with a ping-pong paddle) and tougher to bring back on target for follow-up shots (due to the increased recoil that comes with the 200 extra fps it delivers) tho it is very accurate for me from my gun and has a remarkably low spread in velocity.

 

[Florida J Frame]

Thanks Erich. It looks like the old standby WWB flat nose FMJ is still the most logical choice.

 

[jeeps]

S&B or Fio in all pocket cals. and PPU Priva shows promise. All in FMJ of course.

 

[gdauth]

"Bond ......James Bond"........ nuff said !

It you can shoot like him, need a good tux gun then.....PPK all the way!

"Hits like a brick through a plate glass window..... the CIA swears by them [in .32apc]"

Sometimes I need the later ........wish I could claim the former.

Though a lock breach .380 like the Colt Mustang or I think the Sig 238.... has less recoil than a blow-back Walther or Beretta.

I have the Sig p238, great little pistol. Shooting is just like real estate, it is all location, location, location!

 

[Mule88]

I don't always carry a .380.....but when I do its loaded with Winchesters white box ammo that has that flat tipped fmj bullet.