09jisaac
Regular Member
The 92 gets a lot of crap, mainly because it replaced the beloved 1911 in the U.S. military.
Can't be proven, but I do think you're right.
The 92 gets a lot of crap, mainly because it replaced the beloved 1911 in the U.S. military.
You can always consider the Taurus TP92 AF. It has a few things better than the Beretta. Lower price and a much better safety/decocker which is mounted on the frame instead of the slide.
9mm Vs .45 briefly.
Tissue trauma is what stops, and after watching many sim tests I just dont think the trauma of the .45 is so much better than a 9mm to make it such a clear choice. Dont get me wrong, love the .45. However from a totality of capability I also love the 9mm.
http://www.youtube.com/user/tnoutdoors9/featured
This guy has many sim tests with modern rounds of many calibers and it is very educational to see the wound channels from various rounds and compare the end result of bullet expansion in a fairly realistic test.
I think if you carry the right 9mm round your can place a couple rounds on target quickly, have lots of backup firepower and do comparable tissue trauma to larger rounds. I am sure some have trained to the level with the .45 they carry to be able to mostly match the speed and shot placement of the 9mm, but that is not true for me.
Seems to me .45 comes out ahead in tissue trauma by ~ 20% on average, as far as greater diameter after expansion and overall tissue damage (wound channel and expansion cavities), with the outlier data being between 10%/40% the expansion of the medium 9mm tests. (opinions, not an analysis of the hard data)
So .45 is the clear winner if all you are looking at is the tissue damage, but when I factor in how many rounds I can put on target how quickly, and how many I have available it because a much hairier choice. If all I had available was FMJ it would be a clear choice, but with modern rounds equalizing the overall expansion effects somewhat it becomes a closer analysis.
25oz 9mm with 18 rounds (Glock 17) vs a 45 oz .45 with 13 (Para hi cap), makes me go hmmmmmm.
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My own opinion of the Barreta is not a good one. You sacrifice size and weight while you gain nothing in round count over a Glock ect. Collecting it would be great, but for carry it would not be a choice for me. Maybe it was just me but when I shot one I did not seem to gain much shot to shot control from that weight either. YMMV.
A single properly placed shot with a .22lr will render any attacker neutral. The higher the caliber, the wider the target's vulnerability.
My concern with getting an M9 is it's short life expectancy. 15K rounds is what the minimum standards are supposed to be, but a decent pistol should be able to withstand more than that.
I really want to buy one for the matches I shoot, but since it sounds like the army is dumping the M9 anyway I reckon I'll wait to find out what they're going too adopt. An "inside source" suggests it will be something in a .45ACP though.
A single properly placed shot with a .22lr will render any attacker neutral. The higher the caliber, the wider the target's vulnerability.
My concern with getting an M9 is it's short life expectancy. 15K rounds is what the minimum standards are supposed to be, but a decent pistol should be able to withstand more than that.
I really want to buy one for the matches I shoot, but since it sounds like the army is dumping the M9 anyway I reckon I'll wait to find out what they're going too adopt. An "inside source" suggests it will be something in a .45ACP though.
Well, yes and no.. Despite actual street and battlefield results that have been well-documented for decades, there's all these "tests".
Fortunately outside of the military (who uses FMJ and thus the comparison is inappropriate) this is true of every person carrying. Too bad assassins dont fill out surveys, huh? << that was a joke btw.You'll notice that few of those have ever actually had to rely upon it
Excellent points in your post. I did have a minor grip with this statement. Is that documented data indicative of the modern +p defensive rounds such as the PDX1 bonded 9MM ammo?
It applies to both battlefield use (usually FMJ) and street use with modern JHP loads as well. Just because a given, "modern" round may expand a little more (key word being may ), it's still in the same weight/mass class as before, and still subject to the same physics as ever.Possibly even worse now, as the rounds that do sometimes expand now tend to do so a lot earlier, and hence- dump their energy, and stop short of the vitals.
There's a lot of advertising/ marketing hype out there. A lot of it relying on "tests" on non-human media in lab conditions. And, as usual, a lot of folks buy into this hype blindly.
Real world isnt labratories- and you dont get to say "err. didnt like that result, let's go again.. "
Emergency rooms all over the land are full of the results. If willing to sign-off on the privacy act waivers/disclaimers, anyone on here can go to the local E/R and ask to sit in and observe for a night- you can even call it for "research" purposes. Have at it, THEN, come back and take up the 9mm/.45 debate.
It's an eye-opener for sure.
I made a DRASTIC change on the pistol I was buying! lol sorry but I went and bought a Sig Sauer P220 45ACP for a new conceal carry. Its a new design generation meaning Sig made rounder and got rid of ALL the edges. I love the safety switch on the frame to put the hammer all the way foward for double action use, and then you can pull it back for a single action fire. I am also getting it dyno for better protection for the alloy frame. Never heard of the process before, but its apparently **** in a tube that you work into the frame and everything. You have to tear apart the trigger system, aka gutting the pistol. I paid $837 for the bastard, but I LOVE IT! Got me Zombie rounds and Federal Premium Hydrahshock rounds.
P.S. Don't mind the spelling errors as I am typing this on a REALLY small device!
My concern with getting an M9 is it's short life expectancy. 15K rounds is what the minimum standards are supposed to be, but a decent pistol should be able to withstand more than that.
Not if you cannot control the variables it does not.Excellent points in your post. I did have a minor grip with this statement. Is that documented data indicative of the modern +p defensive rounds such as the PDX1 bonded 9MM ammo?
It applies to both battlefield use (usually FMJ) and street use with modern JHP loads as well.
If you had the kind of granularity of data collection required to make this statement based on facts I would be surprised. The reality is that the data set you are referring to makes no distinction between FMJ and modern JHP ammo.
Which means that you cannot reach that conclusion based on that data set objectively.
It is interesting you mention physics. I am a physicist.
Here is a common comparison between these two rounds
Generic Average Example.
9 mm ft-lbf 383 joules 519
.45 ACP ft-lbf 416 joules 564
The difference is not appreciable.
F=MA, which means that you multiple mass times acceleration. The relationship between the physical properties of mass and acceleration are bound. However this does not tell the whole story, and its why appealing to physics alone is not enough, but we already agreed on that when earlier we mentioned trauma ect.
The reality is that the 9mm is fine compared to every other pistol cartridges. They all share the same limitations of limited mass and limited acceleration out of the limited amount of propellent available in the small form factor of all pistol cartridges, they all sit in a range of force from ~(350 ft-lbf to 700 ft-ibf), and ultimately all pistol rounds are underpowered if one shot kills are your goal.
So these facts then beg the question what other factors should be considered, since force and energy alone are not enough of a determining factor at this low energy range. This is why shot placement rules all when it comes to pistol cartridges. No pistol cartridge is excluded from this truism.
What causes death? What we know is this, people die when you shoot them in a vital organ. Loss of blood pressure results in cardiac arrest. Trauma to tissues causes loss of blood pressure.
^^ those are facts we can use, the real world data we cannot unless you have a way to compare apples to apples scenarios with exactly the same shot placement, with comparable rounds (JHP to JHP), with exact angle of hit, with identical physiology. ie impossible
So the best set of data to use is actually the lab data.
Objective testing gives you objective results. Does this directly correlate to the environment? No but the stats of each cartridge will correlate to the environment in comparable ways. ie the 9mm round interacts with the environment in the same way the .45 round does and this allows us to stack up the stats of each cartridge and understand more about them by doing so.
So . . . after my long ramble, my point is that as a physicist, I do not find the "real world" data sufficient to answer questions like these, becuase you cannot control for the various differences, the devil is in the details.
Now my caveat about choice.
To me it is a perfectly viable decision to say, I want to train extra hard with the .45 so that I can be equal in capability terms for shot placement as other smaller more controllable cartridges. There are plenty of "real world" examples of .45 not stopping a target when the shot hit them in the abdomen, or extremities, so as far as that goes we again have shot placement being vital regardless of pistol cartridge, and since we do not have hard data that provides a granularity of type of round, shot placement, angle of entry, bone interactions ect ect ect, we cannot really use this "real world" data to explain the totality of the set of circumstances.
When you view the stats of .45 next to 9mm for comparable cartridges you find they are in fact very similar. One travels faster, the other weighs more. They both produce similar energy profiles, one travels farther at a flatter trajectory, the other has a larger diameter. In comparable platforms one will have more rounds, the other will be slightly heavier.
I think when comparing all of the various differences of the cartridge alone, saying a .45 outperforms a 9mm by 20% is a good general estimate. However when you factor in cost, training, follow up shot speed, capacity, and ease of use you find that the two platforms have different qualities to offer without either being a clear hands down choice. I have put 15,000 rounds downrange with my Glock 34, and for me when I compare my own ability to hit a target quickly and at extended ranges I find I choose the 9mm, 10 out of 10 times. Now if I had more money to burn buying rounds for training, and had a .45 that I could carry more easily than my full size para hi cap, then Id probably carry .45.
If I feel I need more power, as I do when I am out camping, I do not choose the .45, its just not that big a step up the energy ladder. I pick a .44 mag with hot hunting rounds with large sectional densities. From 300-400 ft-lbs to 1000 is a huge jump.
So for me, power as the deciding factor in a personal defense cartridge for defending against humans, I just dont see a big enough difference (from the physics perspective it is often less than 50 ft-ilbf) in .45 to 9mm to care about that more than ease of use, training, speed, and my ability to carry the weapon.
Personally I think the entire meme of .45 vs 9mm has been overblown and when someone takes a stance that .45 has soo much more stopping power its more due to cultural bias than actual hard data with proper controls in place to do an apples to apples comparison.
Given all of that, I still think its more about personal choice, becuase the actual fundamentals are just not that different.
I was going to mention that. I've read life expectancy isn't so hot with them. For the Taurus version, at least it would have a lifetime warranty. The Beretta has a one-year warranty, and I've read many stories of lousy Beretta customer service.
Sorry j4l, but I have had guys with me in Iraq and Afghanistan that have had to use the 9mm and were not victims. I don't have preferable round so I am neutral in this debate. I will say though that in my combat experience, shot placement matters more than the size of the round. Unless of course your using .50 cal or larger. I've seen guys go down with well placed shots from a small 5.56mm round which hardly expands at all and I've seen guys take several 7.62mm's from horribly placed shots and still stay in the fight. Not all of these were long range either. Alot of shots taken in Iraq were mostly close quarters.