effective .380 ammo

shoot an attacker with 3 rounds of .380


shoot an attacker with 3 rounds of 9mm


shoot an attacker with 3 rounds of 45 ACP


how much of a difference do you really think there will be? I choose not a .380 for conceal carry but rather I chose a small subcompact that just happens to be in .380

Ruger LCP, Tarus TCP and SW Bodyguard are perfect size for pocket carry and they are all in .380. On paper 9 and 45 are better but I dont want to the bigger pistol on me to carry. Sometimes I have a 9 on my side on a holster but mainly I have my .380 concealed.

.380 is a perfectly effective self defense round at the range it's intended for
I assume the lack of customized loads is due to feed issues

www.youtube.com/watch?v=a87wHWFDBPE

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Doode I was just about to post a thread about .380

I plan on getting a Bersa Thunder .380 as my first gun. Not to hijack the thread but... Opinions?

>>28466878
I shot about 100 rounds through one, once. was accurate enough, worked like it should, and fit in my hand decently.

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>>28466878
I have one, it's good.

>>28466863
>11 inches in bare gel
This is honestly still pretty encouraging.

>>28466846
I know what you're saying, but I still think that 8-9 inches of penetration in sim tests compared to the consistently higher ones in the other two make the larger calibers a clear winner, and potentially make the .380 a poor "stopper", even if it's equally as lethal as the other two of course.

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>>28466878
i have an older version (the 383)
like it a lot, had some problems feeding until i got a new magazine, and sometimes if you smack a new mag in hard it will chamber a round without pressing the slide release

>>28466817

You're pic is the best .380 ammo I've found, provided it feeds. The next best is ball ammo. JHP in .380 has had issues expanding because of clogging according to shootingthebull410.

If you hit someone with 3 rounds of 9 or 3 rounds of .380, it'll have a similar effect. The person will no longer be coming at you unless they're a norse berserker.

>>28467010
It doesn't feed in anything I've tried. Nobody I know has had any luck with their pistols, either.

I'm convinced they made a round that performs well in 1-shot ammo tests, without proving it can feed.

Then they slap a big 'ol disclaimer about testing the ammo in your gun, so that everyone buys into their snake oil and pics up a $30 box of 20 shells, just to find out it doesn't work. But you know, they warned you it may not, so they're all fine and dandy!

And then they bank on the hundreds of people who just ignore that part completely, and stock up on it, or gun shop owners who think their customers want it.

>>28467074

>berserkers
http://youtu.be/PBUGQkpk3RE

>>28467074
Even small people are capable of running after being shot with a handgun.

True story, this literal 400lb lineman black dude dating my friend's sister took two rounds of .22 lr in the chest from a shitty bryco jennings (idk the exact gun, but that's how he described it) before it jammed, and proceeded to kick the dude's ass. He didn't know he was shot until AFTER the guy was a limp pile of mom's spaghetti, and assumed the guy had missed with the tiny little "pimp gun" as he described it. I know we're talking about slightly larger bullets and more energy with .380, but if he literally didn't know it had happened with the .22, there's a chance that someone like Jamal (no joke that was his name) could ruin my shit before he walked away and bled out, or got some hoodrat ex-doctor to sew him up.

Spoiler: Jamal ended up getting physical with my friend's sister, from what I'd heard.

ALL handguns are considered underpowered compared to long guns, with the exception of ridiculously powerful wildcat or magnum cartridges.

>>28466817
>Nothing I see on the market both expands reliably while penetrating 12" or more in .380
Then carry ball ammunition, penetration is much more important than expansion for actually stopping someone.

>>28466878
Have fun with your trigger problems.

>>28467526
What of this, "trigger problem", you speak of?

>>28468066
The trigger return spring fails regularly.

>>28468109
That sounds unpleasant. What would you suggest as a first gun then?

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>>28466817
I have a Makarov in .380
What's a "meme round?"

>>28466817
http://www.youtube.com/user/ShootingTheBull410/videos
Watch this channel and look up the .380 winners.

>>28466817
http://shootingthebull.net/blog/final-results-of-the-380-acp-ammo-quest/

I carry Precision One XTP in Ruger LCP.

>>28466817
>Is this a meme caliber?
Whatever the fuck that means.

A sailor once told me a story about a gun he bought when he lived in Norfolk. Some guy was going around robbing anyone wearing a uniform, so naturally more than a few sailors started packing heat. He was debating on what caliber he really needed when a friend told him that in all honesty, a .22 would be adequate. Of course my sailor friend didn't believe this at first, but then got a little perspective from his buddy-
>It's loud
>It's going to hurt
>if you hit him more than once he's going to run, let go, do something that breaks whatever concentration he was directing towards you
And the very next day he bought the first cheapo pocket pistol he could find. Consequently, it was a .32 acp.

>>28468144
A meme round is what you have when you own a export version of a pistol that has been chambered in a popular civilian caliber in the destination country.

>>28468180
Sweet, glad I chose the Hornady Custom
>>28468144


>>28468313
Ah, so a meme round is wanting a firearm you find attractive to also fire ammunition you can get, got it.

>>28468375
>Hornady Custom
Yeah that line of XTP loads are good. It's what I have for my Makarov in 9x18.

>>28468375
>ammunition you can get
>literally the very next post mentions using the exact same round in the pistol's true caliber
Sometimes the kek stars align this perfectly.

>>28468427
lel, I got it in a trade (traded out a Taurus 9mm) and it was already in .380. From what i understand, all I have to do is swap the barrel back to an original to convert it back.

>>28466817
considering 99% of self defense encounters will end when your gun is drawn because the perp will back down and retreat and no shots need to be fired, .380 does just fine. but yeah it's underpowered to take out high value targets on night raids in iraq, but for the average XXXL blue tshirt wearing nog, a .380 will do just fine

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>>28466817

I'm also looking for some new good defense ammo in 380.

Does anyone have a list of good options?

>>28466817
Dont bother with Hornady 90gr XTP's. From my JR carbine in 9mm I loaded some to 1550fp/s and they didn't open up on a jack rabbit I shot at 75 yards. I had to shoot that jack 3 times to kill it, 2 chest hits one in the head. Entrance and exit wounds were the same size, should have used fmj.

>>28466817
>12" of penetration meme
yes, fbi statistics are a meme.
hornady xtp is good. just get a gun that isn't shit.

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Surprisingly, Hydra-Shoks

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6he3eF4tTMc

>>28469209
>they didnt open up
>should have used fmj

You would think it would be kinda obvious that a unexpanded hollow point would perform the same as a fmj.

>>28469312
If the slugs don't open up at nearly twice the velocity of what they are out of a 380 handgun then there is a problem with the slug. That is my point.

>>28469340
I do remember reading some where that hornady makes them like that on purpose because they would not get adequate penetration if they fully opened. Some thing about the jacket having a thicker ring of copper a few milimeters back from the nose of the bullet. Which is supposed to cause it to mildy expand then tumble.

>>28469393
If it did that then there was no evidence of it. I was hoping the little buggers would basically explode. Results from >>28468180 's video impressed me. They didn't do so bad here. Wondering if i got a bad box or something.

>>28467077

That Lehigh self defense ammo is garbage anyway. There's a reason the FBI requires multiple tests to pass their standards. The 9mm version of this stuff fails so miserably in real world tests.

It's just like RIP ammo, it looks impressive in bare gel tests, but performs like absolute shit in meat tests, or even going through denim or down.

It's actually not hard to manufacture ammo that does crazy shit in bare gel tests.

HST, Gold Dot, and Critical Duty are still the only good self defense rounds for any handgun.

Has there been much study of cast lead for defensive rounds? I don't know what it would take for a cast lead slug to mushroom in tissue or gel using a pistol.

just saying all of these performance concerns would be easily solved if you stopped using 380 baby peas and stepped up to something real

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>>28466878
My first gun was a Bersa Thunder. It's a great gun for the money

>>28469645

9mm single stacks are so small now, that there's really no reason to use .380, and this is coming from someone who bought a lot of .380 funs before realizing this.

If you're going to carry a pocket pistols, then why not a small revolver? They have the same capacity and they're almost the same size, but you get way more bullet for the same real estate in your pocket.

I got burned by buying a Glock 42, which was defective and sent back to Glock three times, and is still defective, and the LCP I bought is a plastic piece of shit, same with the Bodyguard. The Kahr 380 is the only real exception to this. It's a well made gun, accurate, and is the smallest gun I own.

>>28469340
>"test" a cartridge outside of the parameters it was designed to function within
>surprised it doesn't work as intended

Ballistics is a fickle beast. Sometimes more velocity gets worse performance when it comes to handgun rounds.

>>28470058
>Sometimes more velocity gets worse performance when it comes to handgun rounds.
Yeah, that's worse performance as in the bullet expanding to much ending penetrating less or the petals curling back around resulting in a smaller frontal surface area, not complete failure to expand.

>>28470099
You shot a rabbit, not a nigger. What do you expect? Explosions on contact like HESH?

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If it's not a magnum round or something larger than a .45, it's not going to make that much of a difference. If the guy's crazed out on adrenaline and coming at you, if the round isn't literally enough to kill him outright or knock him off his feet, it doesn't matter.

tl;dr 9mm, .380 and .45 are all relatively the same, if you want to stop a fucker get .357 magnum or .44 magnum

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>>28470375
you wat nigger

.45 has three times the energy of a 38

>>28470409

>talking about handgun rounds
>posts a gif of a rifle

nigger we all know that a .45-70 or whatever the fuck hits like a truck, we're discussing pistol cartridges here.

>>28469253
thanks asshole i just managed to watch some blacksmithing channel for the last hour +

>>28467010
who cares if it clogs? at worst, it performs like ball ammo

>>28469111
just regular FMJ, no sense in hollowpoints in 380

>>28466817
>expansion
>without compromising penetration
Pick one

>>28470375
ACTUKALLY thats incorrect.

Big time incorrect 10/10 kill yourself.

See Philippine-America war against moro rebels which .38 does jack shit and 45acp was born.

600Ft/lb minimum masterrace

.45acpfag i love ya i used ti be one of ya and ill be once again once u re acquire 45acp handgun.

-wheelgunfag(.357mag)

>>28470099
Yeah... as >>28470325 said
You were also shooting something tiny, nowhere near thick enough to demonstrate proper expansion.

I'll repeat, you were using a cartridge outside of the parameters it was designed and tested for, don't act surprised when it doesn't behave normally.

>>28470375
>knock him off his feet
Don't be stupid
>muh magnums
If you want to stop him straight away, and he's going full retard on PCP mode, you need to hit him in the CNS. Having slightly larger wound channels in gel isn't going to make any measureable difference when you need to sever the spinal cord, but having significantly more rounds with significantly less recoil will.

Read some Fackler my friend.

>>28467526
Yep, because people are normally 12 inchs thick, shutup you fatfuck. Ball ammo is a horrible choice for self defense.

>>28471043
Yeah nah, you shut up. 12 inches is the bare minimum FBI standard for penetration in BALLISTIC GEL. It is 12 inches because that allows for the fact that human flesh is denser than gel, skin especially.

How about you learn the most basic principles of ballistics testing before you go running your mouth off like a retard.

>>28470409
Kek, new and improved fuddlore

44. Mag wont kill somone immediately, or knock them off their feet, you fucking idiot.
Shot placement is what kills somone instantly, if you hit somone in the brainstem with a .22 it will stop them better than a .357 to the stomach, learn to aim.

>>28471106
ACTUKALLY

>38spl 200ft/lb
>45acp 600ft/lb

>>28471106
>>28471143
Also

>44mag =~1450 ft/lb
>44cal and 50+ when expanded

Pretty sure will LITERALLY KNOCK SOME PEOPLE OFF THEIR FEET OR ON THEIR ASS SOME DEAD BEFORE THEY HIT GROUND.

>>28471159
Pretty sure you're fucking stupid
>muh knockdown
>>>/wsg/894827

>muh 44 mahgnums will kill em dead before they hit the floor!
http://gundata.org/images/fbi-handgun-ballistics.pdf

>Physiologically, a determined adversary can be stopped reliably and immediately only by a shot that
disrupts the brain or upper spinal cord. Failing a hit to the central nervous system, massive bleeding
from holes in the heart or major blood vessels of the torso causing circulatory collapse is the only other
way to force incapacitation upon an adversary, and this takes time. For example, there is sufficient
oxygen within the brain to support full, voluntary action for 10-15 seconds after the heart has been
destroyed.

> there is sufficient
oxygen within the brain to support full, voluntary action for 10-15 seconds after the heart has been
destroyed.

There is no difference between a CNS shot with .44 magnum or 9x19. Go fuck yourself.

>>28471143
>>28471159
7.62x39 is close to 1300 ft/lb
Here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x59iN4KMz4 is a video of a man getting shot point blank with a AK, guess he should be flying huh? at least according to a retarded fucking tripfag who hasn't shot anybody before.

>>28466817
Just use fmj.
Shot placement is infinitely more important.

>>28466878
HIJACKING THIS THREAD...WITH NO SURVIVORS

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>>28468180
>tfw i chose hydra shocks to go with my gfs p238 christmas present

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>>28466878
Have one. Was my carry pistol for almost ten years until I replaced it with my Sig P238. Not a bad pistol just a bit large for the caliber. I carried this in the Thunder and I still carry it in the Sig.

People talk shit about the Bersa but outside of the cheap Promag magazines I have never had an issue with it.