There are folks which walk into the grocer in the summer and roll in their hands every watermelon in the bin, then go home without picking one - acknowledging that they don’t know how to compare watermelons, and conceding to leave without a watermelon because they don’t… when almost any of the watermelons in the bin were ripe and not damaged, and would have tasted just fine. I like mine sliced and salted.
I feel like that’s what we’re doing here. The proposal sounds like we’re looking for Sasquatch, but what we’re really doing is holding up two watermelons, one a little more round, the other a little darker green - either of which is perfectly ripe and will taste the same as the other, but we’re putting them both back and going home empty handed because one HAS to be better, but we don’t know how to tell which…
We feel like we can stack cards to cripple any choice - and in some cases, maybe we can. Some bullets ARE designed to have higher impact velocity, so shooting them out of a 2” barrel instead of a 4” may undermine the bullet performance. Some bullets are just better performers than others. So maybe we can’t broadly generalize that 124’s are better than 147’s, because it’s also easy to show objective conflicts because we can fabricate a bullet, load, and pistol combination which creates better performance with either weight over the other. A smaller watermelon might be better if you’re taking it on a hiking picnic with a family of 3, but obviously that’s the wrong watermelon choice for a concession stand at a water park…
I also do think the “long range trajectory” aspect of this consideration is kinda silly. Scratch that - it’s silly. 0-50 yards, we’re talking about losing 50-75fps and the dropping ~1.2” vs. ~1.5” between 124’s and 147’s… you’re holding a pair of identical watermelons and pretending one is objectively and substantially better than the other. If we start talking 100-150, or 200 yard shooting where the low BC’s of these bullets actually starts to matter, sure, let’s talk about retained impact velocity and trajectory, but this ain’t that…
I do quite a bit of shooting with both 124’s and 147’s in my defensive pistols. One of my options is an integrally suppressed pistol in which 147’s are hearing safe, but supersonic 124’s are not, so I found a load with 147grn bullets which are proven to perform and which shoots well in my pistol. Alternatively, in my unsuppressed carry pistol, I simply chose a high performing bullet which shoots well, and didn’t have to concern myself with a maximum muzzle velocity, so I shoot 124’s in it. Not a shred of doubt in my mind that my ability to deliver in the moment will have far greater influence on the outcome than my bullet choices for either pistol.