Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Would You Trust Your Life With A 380?

I would carry a 380 if it was all I had and would also carry a 25 if I had nothing else. Anything is better than nothing .

Yes

Peyton Manning used a .380 to win the record for most passing yards in his career, 71,940. It was an amazing feat considering the .380 is known to be completely worthless in close quarters use.

A .380 started WWI and killed 17 million people and wounded another 20 million.

link

Link 2

Hitler considered the .380 too powerful, so he killed himself with a .32 ACP. Link

That was before the internet

i bought a 1910 a few years ago, in a flap holster and the military bring back papers. Partially because of what you wrote, partially because of my ethnic heritage, and the fact my mother and grandparents were actually residents of the austro-hungarian empire, slavic and croatian.
on netflix, is a program sarajevo, which is quite good about the black hand, the killings, and the reasons behind it. What it presents as a conclusion i don't know if accurate. But that war made a lot of money for some people at the expense of millions.

According to Q, the .380 ACP, in comparison to the puny .32 Beretta Bond was previously carrying, hits you like a brick through a pane glass window.

I'm going to take a wild guess that you haven't shot anything with a .380 side by side with a 9mm.

I have. Nope - not a scientific study. Not people. Not gel. Various other materials. Anything that is dense enough to stop a 9mm load stops the .380 sooner.

Speaking of dense....you can just get off here.

My go to carry pistol when the 1911 isn't enough

FN made some very nice, Browning-designed, little auto pistols back in the day.

Granted, but he was shooting blanks!

Since good percentage of the responders here said they would trust the .380 in certain circumstances, with the right load, I guess we are all dense.

My chosen load in the .380 is the Hornady 90 gr. Critical Defense, which penetrates 4 layers of denim and 12" of gel. Hardly "feeble" penetration.
.380 Critical Defense
And another

When carrying something bigger is not an option, I carry my Colt Pony with that load.


YMMV

I carry the exact same load in a Kimber .380, for the same reasons.

I carry a 380 with Hydrashocks. I feel secure. My advice is never to challenge a 380. It will hurt before you die.

I have that thought every time I clean my old Colt SAA in 45 Colt, you know catching one of those 255 gr lead slugs in the chest would create a serious amount of suck.

Death would not come quick enough.

That's a nice FN.
How does it shoot ?
You don't always get your pick in Fairbanks.
I am using the Critical defense in my Ruger, I'd prefer
an XTP bullet.

The CD is a better bullet.

A 380 is better than nothing. I know a man that was shot point blank with a 4 or 6 inch 38 special in the chest. As he was shot he jerked the pistol out of the shooters hand and hit him over the head so hard that he cracked his skull. His chest hurt bad so he set down and waited on police and ambulance. The medic mashed on his chest and popped the bullet put. The bullet cracked his chest bone but did not penetrate into the chest cavity. Run into someone like him and let me know how well your 380 works.

Run into that SOB, and yes, I know who it is, and you'd best be toting light artillery.

.380s work. .38s work. .32s work. 9s work. .45s work. 44s work...

All of them work, some/most of the time. When they don't, well, it's your time.

Play the game; roll the dice; take your chances.

I had the .380 on me all day today. I took my chances. Turned out fine. Tomorrow, I might have the 9 or the .45, and it might not be fine. Just the way it goes.