9mm +P+ vs .357 mag

[Propforce]

I don't get this obsession trying to make 9mm a be all and end all cartridge, even want to compete with the .357 magnum.

To me, if wanting to duplicate a .357 magnum in a semi-auto, I'd start with the .357 Sig. For one, it has more room to load and burn the extra powder where the 9mm does not have.

Going with this logic, I see a 45 ACP neck down to a .355 diameter bullet as the logical next step. In theory, a 124 gr. projectile fired out of a 45 ACP cartridge should double its velocity to 1,600 feet per sec, based on the conservation of momentum. I wonder which ammo company will pick up this idea and run with it.

 

[tactikel]

9mm +p+? If you really want to duplicate the power of the .357 try: .357 Sig, Super .38, .40 Corbon, 10 mm.

 

[fxvr5]

I don't get this obsession trying to make 9mm a be all and end all cartridge, even want to compete with the .357 magnum.

To me, if wanting to duplicate a .357 magnum in a semi-auto, I'd start with the .357 Sig. For one, it has more room to load and burn the extra powder where the 9mm does not have.

Going with this logic, I see a 45 ACP neck down to a .355 diameter bullet as the logical next step. In theory, a 124 gr. projectile fired out of a 45 ACP cartridge should double its velocity to 1,600 feet per sec, based on the conservation of momentum. I wonder which ammo company will pick up this idea and run with it.

http://sightm1911.com/lib/review/38-45_safestop.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.38/.45_Clerke

 

[Propforce]

Fxvr5,

Thank you!! It just goes to show you good idea was discovered in 1963!.

 

[Dibbs]

9MM is great, as it is, of and by itself, without shoe-horning it out to the capacity of .357. If you want .357 power, just get a .357.
Those 9MM+P+ rounds aren't doing your bolt, internals, and slide any favors, you know.

 

[fxvr5]

Those 9MM+P+ rounds aren't doing your bolt, internals, and slide any favors, you know.

It depends on the gun. Factory 9mm +P+ has no more recoil than a 357 Sig, 40 S&W or 45 Auto. Probably less. If the gun can handle the other rounds, it can handle the 9mm +P+ just fine.

 

[GRIZ22]

http://sightm1911.com/lib/review/38-45_safestop.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.38/.45_Clerke

The Clerk 38/45 was introduced in 1963 and its ballistics were similar to the 38 Super which was introduced about 40 years earlier.

No wonder it never caught on. It seemed one of those things "we'll do just to show we can".

 

[golden]

Dibbs,

The 9m.m. +P and +P+ loads were developed at behest of law enforcement agencies who were responding to complaints from their officers about the poor stopping of the standard pressure 9m.m. ammo. Remember, the +P loads were just standard bullets loaded to the velocity already standardized in EUROPE and NATO. The standard 9m.m. NATO load was at least a 100 fps faster than the average U.S. made hollow point. The +P+ loads were originally for specific police departments and NEVER MEANT TO BE SOLD TO THE PUBLIC. The department agreed to take the risk of using the ammo and wearing out their guns quicker.

I was issued 9m.m. +P+ for my personally owned GLOCK and SIG pistols and it was a big step up over the standard, sold to the public ammo. You could tell the difference by the blast, flash, recoil and noise every time you touched off a round. On the other hand, it did what it was supposed too and I never heard any complaints in my agency about the effectiveness of the ammo.

With the improvement in ammo effectiveness, if you buy a premium load like FEDERAL HST (my first choice), GOLDEN SABRE or GOLD DOT, I don't think that you need to use even +P ammo.
As a result, I no longer carry the +P+ or +P loads.

Jim

 

[Zaydok Allen]

Personally I treat 9mm for what it is. It’s a good defense cartridge because it can be jammed into a small gun, it’s also good because in a full size gun you can cram a lot of them in a magazine. It’s also just fun.

But its utility for me ends with defense against humans and human sized critters.

If you want to get close to 357 and not sacrifice capacity, look at 38 Super. If you want to do everything a 357 will do, look at 10mm.

 

[jmorris]

The original SAAMI spec was 43,500psi.

Seems like when I started loading 357 magnum they didn’t use PSI, everything was CUP.

I was never interested enough to try and figure out why there was no mathematical correlation between pounds per square inch and copper units of pressure, until today .

http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com...hats-the-difference-in-pressure-measurements/

I am going to guess measuring PSI today is a more reliable and accurate measure. Even if today’s loads have been watered down by decades of lawyers.

 

[ATLDave]

I am going to guess measuring PSI today is a more reliable and accurate measure. Even if today’s loads have been watered down by decades of lawyers.

I seriously doubt lawyers have anything to do with it, unless, perhaps, they advise their engineer clients to rely upon the most current and accurate measurement methods.

NOT LEGAL ADVICE: Because of the inherent risk of reloading (as all the manuals prominently state), the risk exposure to a publisher of information is quite low. If the data is tested appropriately and conforms to the stated specifications, the risk exposure is really low. It would be very, very difficult to successfully maintain a suit under most states' laws against a publisher who had data that was backed with state-of-the-art testing. The causation issues alone (e.g., eliminating an overcharge by the handloader) would make it just about impossible. I think it is simply implausible that the in-house lawyers or outside counsel of powder companies or other publishers are telling them to back off any arbitrary percentage from what the data and the engineers' judgment supports.

Everyone likes to blame lawyers for all kinds of things, and sometimes they are right - I do not think changes in load data is something that lawyers have had any material effect on. At all. Testing methods have improved, and can now detect phenomena that the older test methods missed. Numerous industry folks have stated that.

Question: "Oh, but how can [old load] have been unsafe, I fired hundreds of those things and never blew up my gun!?"

Answer: Because properly-designed guns have a safety margin built into them, just as other engineered products do. If you build an elevator to handle 4000lb loads, only a reckless moron would design it so that the cable snaps at 4001lbs. There's a safety margin built in.

Similarly, a gun intended to fire a 35k PSI round should not blow up just because it gets to 36k PSI. Indeed, firearms in many countries are subjected to "proof load" testing, where ammunition that is a specified amount over pressure limits is fired in the gun to make sure it doesn't blow up. But that doesn't mean that firing proof loads continuously won't blow up the gun or otherwise damage it (or the shooter). You generally want to keep the safety margin as that - a safety margin.

There are some old published loads that were tested with old methods that live in the safety margin. Which leaves an unknown-but-reduced level of margin for anything else, such as a slightly hotter batch of powder or primer, or a bullet that gets set back a touch or jams the rifling a touch, or a lead-fouled throat, or a .1gr overcharge, or....

 

[jmorris]

I seriously doubt lawyers have anything to do with it, unless, perhaps, they advise their engineer clients to rely upon the most current and accurate measurement methods.

You might be right, things are more litigious these days than in the past. When I started reloading if you spilled your coffee on yourself you were a nucklehead these days you just need to hire the right lawyer and get paid.

I do know for a fact that my old manuals have more robust load data than new ones. That said they also have different data for the same powders, like 296/H110 or HP-38/231.

Who knows maybe the guy writing them just got and changed his ways. When I was a kid I worked up 357 loads that were knocking on the door of 41 magnum loads, these days I download a 44 magnum instead.

 

[Jack B.]

A steady diet of 9mm+P will ruin that semi-auto after awhile.

 

[Jim Watson]

But it won't ruin the other one. 9mm Major is a common choice for USPSA Open raceguns. The guns are well fitted but they are no different in design or material from service pistols. And those guys shoot a lot.

 

[ATLDave]

You might be right, things are more litigious these days than in the past. When I started reloading if you spilled your coffee on yourself you were a nucklehead these days you just need to hire the right lawyer and get paid.

You say that. What is that based on? What settlements against/with/by reloading data publishers are you aware of?

If the comment is about the famous McDonald's hot coffee case: 1) people talk about that case a lot, but are rarely familiar with the actual facts and what happened during the appeals process; and 2) that's not really relevant to reloading. Many people would have an expectation that getting coffee is a relatively "safe" activity (you and I might think differently, but that's going to be a common view). Most people would view making your own ammunition as being inherently risky and dangerous (you and I might think they would grossly overestimate the risk - or, rather, the degree to which the risk can be mitigated/controlled through good processes and attention). That has a huge impact on how product liability cases get decided.

Moreover, if someone is going to blow up a gun and sue the publisher, they're going to do that regardless of whether the data is actual SAAMI-max or SAAMI-max-minus-5%. Because, as you and I both know, a 5% over-pressure isn't likely to blow up the gun. A double charge, or a pistol powder in a rifle case, or a squib with another round fired afterward - those are things that blow up guns. Knocking 3% or 5% off the load data isn't going to impact the litigation risk profile from a legal perspective. So it would make no sense, from a lawyering perspective, to come in and overrule engineers and knock an arbitrary amount off.

I think the load data changes are down to better measurement (and some powder formulation changes). Nothing to do with lawyers.

 

[ATLDave]

But it won't ruin the other one. 9mm Major is a common choice for USPSA Open raceguns. The guns are well fitted but they are no different in design or material from service pistols. And those guys shoot a lot.

Uh, except they have a compensator on the front which greatly retards slide velocity. I suspect it may also slow unlocking, but I know it slows down the slide a lot. A lot.

 

[murf]

but am I to understand that all things being equal, I should expect similar performance from similar projectiles?

no. check out the chrony data for the 110 gn and 125 gn corbon loads: http://ballisticsbytheinch.com/357mag.html scroll down to the data shot from actual firearms.

while the 125 gn load is much higher than your American gunner load, the 110 gn load is surprisingly lower in all guns, shorter barrel guns show higher velocities and the python data is just strange.

there is no way to form generalized opinions on any of this. different guns perform differently with different ammo.

luck,

murf

 

[Rexster]

Some thoughts, from one who has carried both 9mm +P+ and .357 Magnum defensive handguns:

I have always seen +P+ 9mm as roughly equivalent to .357 Magnum, and doubt that a bad guy, on the terminal end of the ballistics, would be able to tell the difference, unless the .357 were to be the old-school stuff that throws a larger fireball.

Not many manufacturers have seemed to really “push” their .357 Mag ammo, lately.

Some .357 revolvers have longer barrels, enabling more velocity, and, of course, 9mm bullet weights top-out at 147 grains, or so. If I were to take a walk into an area where really large bears roam the earth, I can load 180-grain Federal Castcore, which I have found to be controllable, even from an SP101.

No handgun, at least in factory form, performs as well in my hands, in a wide range of conditions, as a Ruger GP100, which I find concealable, in enough scenarios, so, personally, the question has been answered, for me, before we even get to the ammo debate. I have Glocks G17 and G19, and a railed 3913 TSW, just in case I feel like a flatter weapon, but only the G17 is comfortable for my aging hands to shoot.

 

[Typetwelve]

Not many manufacturers have seemed to really “push” their .357 Mag ammo, lately.

Just a dumb thought, but is .357 suffering from the same thing 45-70 does?

I'll admit that I don't know a ton about 45-70, but I've been told many times that a vast majority of factory ammo is rather weak in the knees compared to what it can be and that's due to it having to be ran through a variety of firearms, some of which are pretty old and don't like the hot stuff.

I see .357 used in some pretty lightweight, thin revolvers, perhaps companies are not loading their stuff so hot because they can be ran though these revolvers?

 

[murf]

the 45-70 rifle cartridge was adopted by the u.s. military in 1873. it was, originally, a black powder (14,000 lpsi) cartridge. so, manufacturers still load it to black powder specifications because there are still a few springfield trapdoor rifles floating around.

now, the 357 magnum cartridge is a totally different animal. there are a lot of 357 magnum chambered revolvers in use that would be totally unusable if maximum pressure loads were used in those (mostly light-weight) guns. the gun can handle the load, the shooter cannot! manufacturers have to make money, so if the shooter cannot shoot their ammo, the manufacturer loses.

if you want full-power 357 magnum loads, go to the specialty manufacturers like buffalo bore or underwood ammo. if not, go with the generic ammo manufacturers. either way, the 357 magnum revolvers produced today are fully capable of handling any ammo manufactured by anyone that stays within saami specs.

murf

 

[silvermane_1]

I don't get this obsession trying to make 9mm a be all and end all cartridge, even want to compete with the .357 magnum.

To me, if wanting to duplicate a .357 magnum in a semi-auto, I'd start with the .357 Sig. For one, it has more room to load and burn the extra powder where the 9mm does not have.

Going with this logic, I see a 45 ACP neck down to a .355 diameter bullet as the logical next step. In theory, a 124 gr. projectile fired out of a 45 ACP cartridge should double its velocity to 1,600 feet per sec, based on the conservation of momentum. I wonder which ammo company will pick up this idea and run with it.

There is already one Propforce, the 38/45 Clerke (pronounced Clark).

 

[TRX]

Keep in mind that a 9mm +P+ is not a standard load..

...and comparing to SAAMI .357 is a waste of time.

If they're going to try to pass off "9mm Titanium Ninja Death Razor +P+++" as "9mm", I ought to at least be able to use some Buffalo Bore .357. BB says its 125 grain load will chrono 1707fps in a 5.6" barrel or 1603fps in a 2.4" barrel.

Once you step outside NATO or SAAMI specs, your only limits are "how much powder can we cram in there" and product liability...

 

[fxvr5]

...and comparing to SAAMI .357 is a waste of time.

If they're going to try to pass off "9mm Titanium Ninja Death Razor +P+++" as "9mm", I ought to at least be able to use some Buffalo Bore .357. BB says its 125 grain load will chrono 1707fps in a 5.6" barrel or 1603fps in a 2.4" barrel.

Once you step outside NATO or SAAMI specs, your only limits are "how much powder can we cram in there" and product liability...

No. They says it runs 1707 fps from a 6" Ruger GP 1000, and 1603 fps from a 4" S&W L frame Mt. gun.
https://www.buffalobore.com/index.php?l=product_detail&p=103

Distorting the facts damages your reputation. It's your reputation, and you can ruin it if you like, but why would you do that?

 

[MikeInOr]

For the most part I don't see much use for bottle neck cases in a carry handgun. The cross sectional area of a bullet increases exponentially as the diameter increase which also increases the wound channel at a similar power level. Personally I will take the extra cross sectional area of the parent cartridge at a similar power level than the necked down case with its associated smaller wound channel. One of the advantages of smaller diameter cases in a carry gun is the ability to carry more rounds in a similar or smaller package. So if I want to carry .40 diameter cartridges I will carry the larger .40 dia bullet instead of the smaller .355 dia bullet. If I wanted to make a 9mm shoot at .357 power levels I would either purchase and carry a .357 or purchase a .38 super or 9x25mm Dillon. I would not accept the lower reliability of trying to push a 9x19mm cartridge and the associated firearm way past the pressure level either were designed to handle when my life relies on its reliability.

The place where bottle neck cases do have an advantage over their parent cartridges is speed. To me the reasoning for a faster smaller bullet would be either less deviation on long shots or better penetration of surfaces like body armor. For a carry gun I do not see myself getting involved in a long range shootout where less bullet drop would make a difference. If the perp is so far away from me that I have to worry about bullet drop why would I be shooting at them instead of running away looking for cover??? (Yes, I know this goes against everything the Hollywood has taught us). I also try to stay away from places where armed troops with full body armor are likely to raid. I suppose it is possible that someone wearing body armor might mug me... but will a 357 Sig make any difference than a .40 S&W on body armor?

I do own a .762 Tokarov with its bottle neck case and it is a hoot to shoot! Someday I will also pick up a .22 TCM... but really only for range fun. So I am not saying bottle neck pistol cases do not have a place, I just have a hard time justifying their place in a carry gun. I do understand the advantage a smaller faster cartridges have over bigger slower cartridges in long range competition shooting... like silhouette shooting. But I am unable to rationalize this advantage in a carry gun.

 

[DustyGmt]

The reputation of the 9BPLE is already understood.

And that is? Good right?