Least usefull caliber.

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.25, 380, .357 sig, 10mm.

i like my .40 best of BOTH worlds between 9mm and .45acp, since i got my Sigma im looking into getting a FNP 40 soon after shooting a friends in 9mm and 40.
 
Gotta wonder how useful a .500 S&W really is. I mean useful, not cool or fun or whatever. I mean if a .44 magnum or a 45 colt, or 45 acp, or a 10mm won't do the job...don't you need a rifle or a shotgun?

The 500 along with 454 Casull, etc. I remember seeing a thing on Tv when I was a kid (yeah it was on a 5" Philco in B&W) where a guy killed an elephant with a 44 mag. He was backed up by someone else with a double rifle but he did take the elephant with an eyesocket shot with that 44 mag. If you're in Alaska or somewhere where you need a handgun capable of taking a rhino okay. I've seen guys say they were buying a 500 S&W for a CCW. That's another story.

I don't think the time has come to toss out the .25. Centerfires are more reliable than rimfires overall. Maybe not by much but they are more reliable.

The earlier Jeff Cooper quote reminded me of Skeeter Skelton's take on the 25. Far from his first choice for a gunfight but he might be able to bluff his way out. After all, nobody wants to get shot not even with a .25.
 
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I don't have much use for the .25 ACP myself.
However, let me relate an account that happened to a friend from da hood. He and his family were sitting in the living room one night watching the idiot box when their front door gets kicked in by a junkie looking for loot. My friend kept a Raven .25ACP in the coffee table drawer. Junkie gets to the living room and my friend fires one shot. FMJ round hits junkie in sternum, penetrates sternum and junkie's heart. Junkie falls in his tracks DRT. Friend was cleared as shooting was in self defense.
Not a round I'd care to use, but, it worked when it had to for him.

Now, I have to take issue with the member who believes .22 Short has no real usefulness.
I beg to differ. In my .22 levergun I can fit 23 .22 Shorts. Muzzle velocity is 1095 FPS. 100 yard velocity is 950 FPS. Pretty doggone good retained velocity if you believe the figures provided on the ammo box.
This round is lethal on every animal smaller than a German Shepard. I use it on tree rats, opossum, racoon, feral cats and I believe it would be plenty to take a fox too.
With 23 rounds in the tube, it's a downright handy cartridge to have around if your out and don't really want to carry a pocketful of ammo with you.
I hope the .22 Short stays popular enough to stay widely available.
 
.25
it's not a .22 and it's not a .32

Sort of useless.
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25 ACP is less muzzle energy than a 22 LR, and WAY more expensive.

BUT it feeds better than a 22 LR in a semi auto pocket gun, like the Baby Colts.

9mm is damned effective in an Uzi Carbine/Micro Pistol on full auto. Light, lotsa ammo in a mag, and not a heap of recoil.

I vote for the 40 S&W . . . Not quite 45 ACP. It can manage 45 ACP ballistics in some regards, but can't match the 45 ACP loaded to the max.

I hate them because I think the brass is 45 ACP and I pick it up at the range.
 
I vote the 7.62x39

the 7.62x54R can do all it can do and more!

I love my battle club Mosin Nagant M91/30!
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Load up a 1000 rds of both calibers. Now, toss them on your back and run a half mile.

See the point in lighter ammo?

Load up 75 rds of each in a mag . . . if you can find a 75 rd. mag for a 91/30. Now, take that 91/30 and the 75 rd. mag and swing it around in close quarters, like a building, heavy woods, combat utility trench . . .
 
.410 was designed as a light upland game gun you could carry all day.

Same size pattern as a 12 gauge, just fewer pellets -- which in #9 birdshot is no big deal.

Works great in handgun defense like the Taurus Judge.
 
22 short is an excellent round for plinking, teaching, varmint eradication and small game hunting.
You can learn a lot as youngster with a Sears single shot carbine and a brick of shorts. 40 years later my wife uses the very same rifle with the same load for gofers and my daughter punches paper with it.
 
9mm shotgun, seriously won't kill rabbits.

Also Swiss 7.5x55, A K-31 sat in my closet for two years while searching gun shops. No one in a 60 mile radius carried those swiss bullets. Tried to order bullets online but was declined because I didn't fax a drivers license. What a hassel. Sold it to a pawnshop for $50 and felt bad for the guy who buys it.
 
Calibers I could live without.

My list of calibers that could disappear tomorrow and not be missed:
.25acp (lame performance)
.22 long (neither Short nor Long Rifle)
.17 HM2 (.17HMR stays)
.45gap (a promising idea killed by its own creators)
7mm mag (30-06 performance with more recoil)
nearly all the new short/fat calibers (previously existing balistics in a new package)

Only a handfull of calibers are useful to me personally, but these seem to be of no particular benefit to anyone at all.
 
There are all the novelty rounds, like the swiss gun previously posted and the .22 BB cap oddities of old. They're pretty useless except as novelties.

I don't own a .410 or a .25, but not because they're useless. I don't own a .410 because I'm not that good with a shotgun, and it seems to me that a .410 is better for someone who is already good with a shotgun. Certainly someone like my mother is going to have an easier time lugging it up to the top of the hills to hunt grouses.

When I was a kid, lots of people in Appalachia carried .25 pocket pistols. I occasionally have to stop myself from buying one out of nostalgic impulse.
I knew of someone who killed an assailant with one. Two contact or near contact shots to the chest. Not only did the assailant die, he stopped. The guy using it was an old man, fighting a younger, bigger man. For him, it wasn't useless.

Somethings are not the most practical for self defense. Some rounds might not be the best round for a given purpose. But unless you don't own the gun they work in, hardly any of them are useless.
 
Actually, the .357 SIG IS the same platform as the 9mm and the .40 (such as the SIGARMS 229). So a gun that can handle the .357 SIG will also handle the 127grn +P+ 9mm. The velocities, tested by chronograph are so close as make any difference meaningless.
However, if a .35 caliber bullet at a certain velocity from one shell casing is useful, how can identical ballistics from a different shell casing be useless? Redundant, yes. Useless, no, unless both are useless.
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.357 Sig still gets at least another 100 fps off of it, and I'm sure by handloads you could do much better.

Also even though they are the same "platform" that does not mean that a gun in 9mm can take .357 Sig pressures. .357 Sig is meant to operate at 40,000 PSI while 9mm can only take 35,000 PSI. furthermore 9mm has less case capacity than .357 Sig which means it will reach a given pressure with less powder (and less velocity) than .357 Sig.

So loading a 9mm to .357 Sig levels (which even the Rangers are not) would be dangerous as the manufacturers will not have tested their guns to take repeated punishment at that level.
 
An extra 100fps. Color me unimpressed. You have to weight that against the lower capacity and higher (much higher) cost of the ammo.
Anyway, most useless rifle caliber is .222Remington Magnum. Useless because no one makes ammo for it, except like one guy in Montana. I knew someone with a rifle chambered in it and he couldn't shoot it.
 
I would call the .410 useless. Expensive ammo, that is no where as near as good as a 12ga with #8 shot. Completely useless.

Id say .17 hmr was pretty much useless for me, as I sold the rifle though I liked it because I could never get it to do anything a .22lr couldn't do, except cost more.

Other than that, I like all of my old obsolete calibers like 7.5x55swiss, and 762x54r, and 8mm. Useful for anything I want them to be.
 
And for the guy who said it is useful because he once deterred a crime with it, if you deterred the crime without firing a shot, then how did the cartridge have anything at all to do with it? It would have been the same result with a .50 AE or a replica airsoft gun for that matter.
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The fact that I was armed, was how the cartridge related. Pistol vs. knife, he withdrew. At the time and place, I would not have been carrying anything larger. A pocket pistol is better than no pistol.
 
I was a bit surprised that some listed the 40 S&W. I find it more useful than the 9mm and just about as good as the 45ACP. The 25, 32, and 380 ACP have really gotten a new lease on life with the renewed popularity of concealed carry. The 45 GAP is one caliber I wish I would have tried out. I liked the concept a lot. Reminded me of the 40 S&W concept.

There are lots of calibers that I would not miss which means nothing about usefulness. The 22 Long was mentioned which I would not miss. The short magnums for the most part were a solution for a problem that did not exist. Most of them will die a slow death as the manufacturers stop chambering rifles for them. The 325 always had potential for me.

As I mentioned before, I'm not a fan of the 25 ACP. I have owned pistols chambered in it however which is more than I can say about some calibers. I have only owned one 9mm and that was an Uzi carbine. I personally would not miss the 9mm but I know thousands of others would.

This has been one of the few threads of its kind that I have read every post.
 
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Could someone define "useless caliber" :confused:
Seems that just about everyone answering covered about every caliber except maybe their own.:scrutiny:
 
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