Next cartridge to become obsolete?

[Don't Tread On Me]

Which cartridge(s) pistol or rifle do you folks think will be obsolete soon?

I can't believe that all the cartridges we have today will remain with us till the end of firearms. Some are probably going to go, a few new ones might still come....

 

[MFL Jim McLoud]

10mm is headed there

I just got some in after four months without a single box to sell. A good round with not enough demand

 

[AirForceShooter]

.17
The solution to a non-existent problem.
JMHO

AFS

 

[LoadedDrum]

I cannot believe I am the first to say this.

45 GAP.

 

[aerod1]

.41 Magnum, which is another great cartridge with a small following. I hope I am wrong on this one.

 

[Manedwolf]

.32 NAA. Definitely one of those "curio" rounds. It was meant to solve a problem that will be more easily solved by the new Rohrbach-sized micro-9mms. Skyy is coming out with a $300 one of the same size and weight this summer, supposedly...so why would someone want a hard-to-find 380-necked-to-32 when you can have cheap, readily available 9mm in something the exact same size?

And yeah, probably .45 GAP as well. It originally came out for some still-too-chunky Glocks, and now there's much smaller, lighter standard .45 ACPs by a number of manufacturers.

With all the "wow!" development in small autos by Springfield, Kahr and Taurus, I also think Glock itself could fade a bit unless they start innovating with new designs.

 

[Gordon]

.45 GAP for sure, followed by the Winchester short mags ith no home being manufactured.

 

[stevelyn]

The Winchester Super Short Magnums.

AFS, I gotta disagree with you on the .17s. I don't think the Mach 2 will be around very long and the .17 Aguila is basically non-existent, but the .17 HMR is here to stay. Even the ones sent out to our little community are scarfed up as soon as they come in.

 

[Lupinus]

17hmr is here to stay. I personaly am not overly fond of it but it is popular.

As to what is on its way out the .45 GAP and the Win. SSM

 

[ajax]

+1 Lupinus

 

[Bwana John]

The Winchester Super Short Magnums

+1, and Im not sad.

 

[MFL Jim McLoud]

The .45 Gap Problem and...

A new cartridge only takes off if gun companies start pumping out guns to shoot them. What was Glock thinking? If I wanted a .45 short-I think I'd buy a .40

The other fantastic round to go away is the .38 Super :banghead:
I have a Colt 1911 .38 super that was made in 1952 that is unfired NIB. I hate the damn thing because I just can't shoot it,and had to buy a used one to shoot!

 

[lbmii]

What is it called 204 Ruger? How about the 480 Ruger? 357 Sig maybe. 8mm Rem Mag. 450 Marlin. The excellent combat round that should have been but never was; the 6.8mm.

 

[griz]

A few years back I would have said the 32 mag, but the cowboy shooters have saved that from oblivion. The Remington short mags are on the way out if not there already. The 17 M2 and maybe one of those 6.8 rounds will probably fade away too.

 

[Husker1911]

The new "super" magnums. The Winchester supershort mags, the Remington Ultra mags, and their ilk. They've cluttered up an already overstuffed selection of worthy cartridge selections, and their perceived improvements aren't enough to ultimately cause them to succeed.

 

[dfaugh]

I suspect a whole lot of them. But, I don't have a crystal ball, so its a tough call to say which ones. There are now SO many available chamberings, some things are gonna die.

I'll shock a few people and say there's some old diehards, that may someday fade away, or at least become less and less common. For example, .270, as alot of people are going for 7mm, or the short mags, or other similar cartridges. But, of course because of the HUGE number of .270 guns out there, it'll be a very long time before this goes away. Possible the 30-06 even, as I suspect sales of .308 are currently much higher than 30-06. But, again, we're talking a LONG time before it goes away, or become unpopular.

Some of the "new" chamberings will likely die...I think the WSMs will stay but the WSSMs may not stick around. I never understood the attraction to the .204, but so far it seems popular and will probably stick around.

The .17 HMR will probably stick around, the .17 Mach 2 may not.

 

[Pilot]

I think .357 Sig will eventually go to the scrap heap.

 

[Larry Ashcraft]

The .17 HMR is just as hot today as it was when it first came out, and with good reason.

It'll stay around.

 

[Euclidean]

.357 Sig might be relegated to hardcore shooters eventually like 10mm, but it won't be any time soon. Too many LE agencies are picking it up.

Think about it... you need new guns. The first thing that happens is the people that pay your bills ask what's wrong with your old guns. There's only two arguments you can really use that the general public will swallow: We need higher capacity, or we need harder hitting guns.

You can compare .357 Sig to any service catridge and make the argument one way or the other. Say your department issues a 9mm pistol, you can argue it doesn't have enough "knockdown power" (I am aware such a thing does not exist in reality, but this argument would wash) you need something bigger. Say you have .45 ACP sidearms, odds are pretty good you have 8 round magazines, you can argue you need 12 rounds to keep up with the bad guys. Say you have .40 S&W, you can argue that it's not as powerful or whatever. You can spin the argument any way you need to in order to get new guns.

Truthfully we can argue this with any service catridge vs any other service cartridge and we do it, all the time. It's the most infamous debate in these circles. But this time the difference is the .357 Sig is relatively new, and odds are excellent any given agency has not issued it before.

The police are not buying into this cartridge because it's good (and it is), they're getting into it because it's new and shiny and a great excuse to replace their sad looking 15 year old deparment issued pistolas.

The fact is if your agency has already gone from the .38 Special to the .357 Magnum to the .45 ACP to the 9mm to the .40 S&W, you are running out of cartridges, and that is the "excuse" you must leverage to justify a new service pistol.

It might fade out here after 2 or 3 cycles of these agencies buying new service pistols, but I wonder if it won't actually increase in popularity for the next 10-20 years before it begins to fade.

 

[mrmeval]

Can .357sig be rebarreled to 9mm/40/45 in most cases? The guns may be out there but the round may die.

 

[mp510]

I believe that the .17 rimfire series will go obselete. The Winchester WSM's and WSSM's will go obselete. The .45 GAP and .357 SIG will stay around, for a little while.

With some guns, you can interchange barrels between .357 sig and .40 S&W. The .357 sig is a .40 necked down to .357.

 

[Matt G]

The .357 Sig will be here a long, long time. Interchangability with .40 makes it a versatile pistol, and the figures on paper wow admin types.

Keep in mind the title of the thread: "Next cartridge to become obsolete?"

I would have to agree that the Remington short magnums are going, if not gone, as they have even less popularity than the Winchester short magnums, which have questionable survivability.

The .32 NAA is still hard for me to classify as a production round, as it's only made by specialty makers like Corbon, and I still think of it as a wildcat. But it's definitely a contender.

Every once in awhile I think that the .257 Roberts is on its way out, but it's hanging on. (good.) Same goes for the 16ga. shotshell.

The .250 Savage is hanging on by the skin of its teeth, but that's mostly because of diehards. (Gawd bless 'em.)

The .38 S&W is a pretty sickly round, and is fired exclusively in old guns that are out of production, and which are usually every bit as big as thouse chambering more powerful rounds like the .38 Special.

The .38 Special has experienced a rather impressive comeback over the last 15 years, due to the huge selection of snubbies available for it. Good deal. Our grandkids will still know that old round.

The .41 Long Colt, however, is gone. Utterly gone. 3 years ago, I bought a box from Old Western Scrounger for over $50. These days, it'd run even higher, if you could find it. This round fell precisely because the .38 Special became some popular. With practically identical ballistics at the heavy end and more options and an inside-lubricated bullet on the .38 Special side, the .41 didn't have a chance.

I don't expect the .480 Ruger to last long. With the .454 Cassul still going strong and with the .50 S&W the big boy at the bicycle rack, the .480 Ruger really doesn't have the appeal of popularity or "biggest" to anyone anymore. Expect it to fade out.

The .300 Norma Mag (while a good round) really doesn't have much of a place, does it? Likewise the H&H? (shrug) But then, we've been betting on one to fall out for over 20 years, with nothing doing, and still more .30 mags entering the fray.

I frankly see no reason why, in a world with so much redundancy, we couldn't keep the GAP round. (Do I want one? Not really, no. )

The .17 HMR is a cute rimfire that's not going away for a long time. I know too many guys that rave about it and shoot it by the caseload.

The .204 Ruger appeals to the "Faster Is Better" crowd, without offending them with recoil. Just yesterday at the range my 86-year-old great uncle was raving about it, and couldn't wait to show his off to me. It'll be around for awhile.



It's a fun game. Frankly, it's one of my favorite games in my hobby of firearms. Isn't variety wonderful?

 

[Justin]

The .38 S&W is a pretty sickly round, and is fired exclusively in old guns that are out of production, and which are usually every bit as big as thouse chambering more powerful rounds like the .38 Special.

I was at the local Gonne Shoppe about three weeks ago, and a fellow came looking to buy some ammunition for a revolver he had. I don't recall the exact name of the gun, but it had "Banker" in it, like "Banker's Special" or something like that. It was chambered for a .38 round, but not .38 Spl.

Since you brought that oddball round up, I have to wonder if it was .38 S&W.

 

[usp9]

.32NAA

offers nothing new and is very expensive.

 

[ewb45acp]

What makes a particular cartridge obsolete? A patched round ball, over a charge of black powder will still get the job done. This is more a discussion of what cartridges will dissapear due to lack of interest. I think we'll have all of these rounds with us for a very long time. Even if your "obsolete" chambering only captures a small niche market. A fraction of a % of 80,000,000 gun owners is still alot of guns and ammo sold.

The .38 Super is a good example. There are many cartridges out there that are better than the super. Yet here we are 70 years later. Colt, Kimber, and Springfield still cranking out pistols. The .41mag should have been gone long ago, and still it has it's small cult that see what the rest of us don't. I've been hearing how the 10MM is finished since Colt gave up on the Deltas.

Now, with the internet it is much easier to reach out (as a manufacturer and as a customer) and find the niche markets. Heck, You can still buy .41 rimfire ammo if you need it.