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Discussion Starter · #1 ·
This is an old debate but good to get people stired up....I prefer the 45acp...too many Jeff Cooper articals as a kid I guess. My wife likes her 9mm and I belive with HP and not FMJ this is a good self defense platform.....but Im intrested in the 40 cal...I dont know Jack about the 40 so I'll ask....Is the 40 as good as the 45acp for self defense? Better than the 45? or just some freakey new fly by noght round?
 

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I am a fan of the 45ACP pver anything else (for self defense). I carry 40SW on duty due to dept policy. I like the 155gr Speer Golddot JHP. I prefer the faster medium weight rounds over the slower heavier rounds in the 40SW. That's a whole 'nuther argument in itself though.

My wife carries 9mm. Bottom line, hit your target!
 
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Just abuot every stat I have ever seen shows the .45 as king. Most articles dealing with this start out with: Is the .XXcal or Xmm as good as the .45. Everything tries to be "as good as" the .45. Big, slow bullets just work better against live, unprotected targets.
 

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I like the 10mm or the .41 Magnum. Either has it all over the .45 ACP, the .40 and the 9mm, except for over penetration. All the way out to 200 yards both have as much, or more knockdown power than the .45 does at 25 yards. I carried the .45 ACP Remington Rand, and it never failed me. I like the .45 ACP and the .40, but they are not as powerful as the 10mm or the .41 Magnum, and I always felt I should never send a boy to do a mans' job.

Yes, I do have 2 .45 ACP's, 3 .45 Colt's (Long Colt to the uninitiated), a .40, and 2 9mm's. The ones I favor, are the 10mm and the .41 Magnum, and neither is the handfull that everybody claims. I can fire either one with either hand, or both at the same time one in each hand. Yes, I like my .44 Magnums too, but they are not the subject of this discussion any more that the 10mm and the .41 Magnum.

Since you are debating the .40 vs the .45, the .40 is supposed to be a little better, but you need to shoot it to figure it out for yourself. What is one mans' junk is another mans' treasure. All of these people shooting .45 ACP's, for fun or Competition, didn't happen by accident!
 

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Of the three, Doglips, I go right down the line with .45 first, .40 second (although I've never fired one), and then 9mm. I've seriously considered getting a .40 S&W auto at times (there was a nice Beretta in .40 S&W in the gun shop several months ago....), but I'm comfortable with the .45 so I really have no reason to do that (except for fun). I have a 9mm that will outshoot my .45 any day, but if I could only have one, it would be the .45.

It's great to hear from someone (oneastrix) who really knows what they're talking about for caliber comparisons and day to day carry and use. There's a lot to be said for being confident and comfortable with your choice of pistol. The other big part, as oneastrix stated, is that caliber has no meaning if you don't hit the target.
 

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Discussion Starter · #6 ·
Should have made the reason for the ?? a little clearer....hopefully in Feb...if the overtime Gods continue to bless me...I'm planing to upgrade the wife's and mine primary pistol for home/self defense. She has a 9mm (Star B) and I tend towards my 454 with 45LC or the CZ 52...also a high point 45 beater gun in the car. Plan is to go towards Glocks or HK level pistols for us. I like the 45acp and think the 9mm is accpetable but the low end..even with gold dot ammo. Getting a 40cal for her is my line of thought but that depends if she likes it (shes strange about what she will shoot) and if the 40 is much better than the 9mm.
Gyrene has a point about the 10mm but the ammo cost keep practice down...lets face it 45 and 9mm surplus stuff is cheep to train with.... 1* pointed out the Police tend to use 40cals...the cape secuirty uses 9mm. So Im back to the 45/40/9mm debate...yes only hits count and FMJ is diffrent than HP or the super duper fragmentable ammo...but if these pistols ever have to be used on a real threat I would rather not be hopeing to stop the perp.
 

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Doglips - Check out the .45 ACP Springfield V something or other. My EX loved to shoot it, and she never liked a gun that kicked much. In fact before the Springfield she never liked anything bigger than a .22 LR. The .45 ACP Springfield V something or other, is ported, and it makes a tremendous difference especially since it is a small pistol. She needs to fire all of them to see what she can hit with, and what feels comfortable to her.
 

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For carry purposes I carry my Sig 45 but of course depending on my mood I may carry the 9mm or a 40. Now I am not going to get big into this debate but as we all know the 45 is the original man stopper and the other issue we all know is that any well aimed shot will stop the target.
 

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Well guys, here we go again
The best way I have found to describe the differnces is to retell
The actual History of how these bullets came in to exisistance
See, .45acp .40S&W and 9MM parabelum are all made by people
And they where selected for specific reasons
These reasons where important to the persons concerned
First
Lets start with the 9mm Parabellum which means[for war]
originally used in the Luger pistol in 1908
The original caliber the Luger was in was .30 luger
This was enlarger to 9mm
The reason that the dimensions are what they are is that the .30 luger cartrige has the same head size and the case was just expanded to 9mm makeing a near straight wall case
.30 luger being bottleneck
This was easier to do since there was less machine tools to change.
The .30 luger is a rather poor performing pistol cartrige
The 9mm performed better.
IMHO
Second
.40 S&W this is a cut down 10mm requested by the FBI
Their Idea was to get better than 9mm performance and higher that .45 acp capacity in a full size duty weapon
So ya go from 15 to 18 rounds with 9mm
To 10 to 14 rounds with 40s&w
as apposed to 7 to 9 rounds of .45 acp [back then with the pistols avalible in that day] The 10mm cartrige was to hard on the guns and hard for new shooters to master
Third
The .45 acp [auto colt pistol]
This cartrige [bullet/velocity/diameter/weight combo was
Tested empirically by U.S. army ordinance engineers at the turn of the century in the slaughterhouses of Chicago Illonois
They would fire different sized bullets of differing weights at differing velocitys into liveing animals then cut open the animals and observe the differences in actual damage to muscle,bone, and softer structures in the bodies of the test subjects.
What they found was that a 230 grain .45 cal bullet traveling at approxamatly 800 fps will consistantly cause the most damage in liveing tissue.
As you can guess a testing regamin such as described would be far to politically sensative in modern times.
Yet we dont have to go back and Re test the results are still the same now as they where a hundred years ago.
even longer if you count the old .45 long colt
see, I guess the cowboys had it right all along
A .45 cal bullet at aproxamatley 800 fps still works best
This of course is all just my humble opinion and recollection of what I have read and my personal experience.
It has taken me a while to realize that perfection in firearms was reached about a century ago.
There really hasnt been anything new other than construction materials in about a hundred years.
When you look at What a firearm actually does nothing has changed
I have a 1903 colt autoloader that works just as good today as it did 99years ago
It also works just as good today as the newest design pocket pistol does.
see there isnt anything new and probably wont be until guns start going ZAP instead of BANG!
IMHO
 

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I have a 1911a 45. good round hits hard as we all know, but when your butts on the line 14 rounds from a 9mm, gets them all,thats why the army introduced the 9mm, good knock down power, maybe a little weak, but you can carry more rounds, and the baretta wont jam, you can run a truck over it, put in water, bang the crap out of it, and it will still shoot
 

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When we were ordered to turn in our old, rattling, well worn, but trusty .45 autos and draw those new Beretta 92SFs, I was opening defiant and critical about going to a 9mm combat pistol.

After the next qualification round at the pistol range, I became a believer in the Beretta as an excellent combat pistol; however, I was never fully confident in the results that I could expect from the first 9mm round in the chest of an enemy. I figure that you've got a pretty good chance, in most cases, of putting the first round close to where it needs to be. I'd just like to be a little more confident in that first round than what I "feel" the 9mm will do.

When I first saw a Beretta in .40 S&W, I was very interested in that combination of a fine weapon chambered for a better cartridge. If I ever have the (financial) opportunity, I might just have to try one. In the mean time, the ol .45 will do just fine.
 

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No No No they gotta use the powerlines the electricity will work
yea shock im to death.
What about the oxygen bomb? cant they use that?
I think Gammera the spinning turtle should be on Godzillas side then they can be friends later and give little kids rides on their backs and stuff
 

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Thanks Dennis; this raises an interesting question about the very first Godzilla movie. Why did the bomb designed to deplete oxygen corrode the Big Guy down to his reptilian skeleton?

Godzilla is a Senior, dude. He would never hang out with a greenie like Gamera...
 
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