Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Army wants a harder hitting handgun

bullet placement is the key to handgun stopping power

Yep...practice, practice, practice...then more practice. A new (harder hitting) handgun isn't gonna solve the problem...

Well, training first, then practice, practice practice...

People gotta be given good basic training in handgun fundamentals. Unfortunately, I see a lot of ex-military guys who apparently weren't taught good handgun fundamentals. Practicing bad technique ain't gonna get the problem solved.

Second thing, if you don't know which parts of the bad guy to shoot with your blaster, you're much less likely to get an incapacitating hit.

Insufficient training is, always has, and always will be the biggest problem in any military.

Sufficient training trumps all else. Arguing whether a Glock is better than a Beretta or a Sig is worse than a Glock is a complete waste of fugging time.

And anybody that blames the handgun for their inability to shoot well, can't shoot.

Period.



Travis

I�ve never seen it, and I don�t believe it. At long range, heavy clothing can hinder the bullet, but inside 100 yards, no clothing is stopping or significantly slowing a .30 Carbine FMJ. I�ve heard that story repeated countless times, but I�ve never seen any official military report or test to substantiate it. There was some conjecture in some military reports that said that �could� be a factor, that�s all I�ve seen. I say failures to stop were due to either highly motivated enemy soldiers, or shots at ranges beyond the intent of the M1 Carbine.

The M1 Carbine has sights graduated for 300 yards, and I can hit out to that distance with my carbine. But the cartridge is really a 150 yard round. Beyond that range and you should expect that effectiveness goes down pretty quick. So I say that those failures were due to longer shots. Until I see some substantial testing that shows otherwise, that�s what I�ll choose to believe. Most tests I�ve seen show the M1 Carbine out-penetrating the 5.56 out to 150 yards. So I maintain that within the rifle�s intended purpose, it was not only adequate for the job, but damn near ideal.

Dammm good choice sir. The M1 Carbine is a super reliable rifle, and so easy to shoot that with just 10 minutes of training, you can have a brand new shooter connecting consistently at 100 yards. The only problem with the cartridge has been cartridge development, the power is there if you load it right. The best round I�m aware of is the Cor-Bon with the Barnes 100 grain X bullet. Inside of 200 yards I�ll confidently say it will put anyone down with much more authority than a 5.56 FMJ. And a .30 Carbine soft point will also put people down with great authority inside of 150 yards. As long as barrier penetration isn�t too much of a concern, the Winchester 110 grain JHP is just devastating. At 100 yards it hits like a .357 magnum at the muzzle.

Even FMJ�s are pretty effective out to about 150 yards, and the .30 Carbine FMJ is really very good at barrier penetration. I shot a round THROUGH a small 12� pine tree at about 50 yards.

I share your enthusiasm. My GI Carbine is the one rifle everyone in the house not only knows how to use, but they�re both confident and competent with it. Good choice my friend.

Late 60's, 11-B-10 A.I.T. (light infantry training), I recall maybe a couple of hours at most, all in only one day, of basic general familiarization - disassembly/cleaning/reassembly - and firing a few clips through the 1911. No qualification requirements whatsoever. The 1911's we used for training were no telling how old and for the most part all but wore out.

This myth apparently will never die. An M-1 Carbine military ball load will penetrate Level III soft body armor, which is thicker than the armor typically worn by law enforcement officers.

Maybe we should issue quilted Chinese Army winter coats to all of our police departments instead of Kevlar vests.

The only way an M-1 Carbine bullet will fail to penetrate a quilted winter coat (and the person who is wearing it) is if it doesn't HIT the quilted winter coat.

What's that old saying about the army is always preparing for the previous war...?

I'd want a semi auto in 308 and something like an HK in 45 ACP.

Practice and train all you want.

But the game changes when you are shooting at a real man who most likely is shooting back at you or has some other weapon that can kill you and can move in three dimensions while you are trying to shoot him.

How do you practice that?

Some of these ex-military guys with bad fundamentals are still here. I'm sure many of them that have seen action must know something about how to survive a real gun fight.

Just sayin...

I admit, it's hard to practice that.

But you can train for it. I've been involved in multiple such training events. Force-on-force training with Airsoft or SIMUNITION does wonders for preparing people to shoot much, much better in subsequent deadly force situations. Combine that with computer simulator training and solid square-range handgun fundamentals, and you can produce some pretty good officer-involved shooting results. I know of a good number of agencies that have done exactly that with their cops' inservice training, and their hit ratios in real street shootings have dramatically improved.

Going from 20% hit ratios to 90%+ hit ratios is pretty convincing proof of the value of reality based training, in my view.

That's also why some folks (like me) can kill a bull moose with a 270.

I attended a CQB course put on by Northern Red back in August. The lead istructor, Tom Spooner, is a retired US Army Detachment D operator. I specifically asked him what "the unit" uses and he said pretty much to the man, Glock and M&P. They used the M9 then converted to 1911, which were unreliable, then adopted the Glocks and Smiths. I love my 1911s but I carry a 220 everyday. Apart from it being a boat anchor, it never not feeds or goes bang.

Until you had to carry it all.

Dad had me laughing about issued weapons when he told the story of his carbine. As a skilled mechanic they kept him in England during WWII, keeping B17's in the air. At some point someone noticed he still had his 03 Springfield, which he liked and used to qualify Expert. His Springfield was requisitioned, and he was issued an M1 carbine, which annoyed the hell out of him. In his words, he "pulled rank" (he was a Master Sergeant by then) with the armorer and claimed a Thompson SMG. He liked the Thompson.

Thompson's are a heavy chunk of steel to lug around.

Why are they even bothering? They still won't learn how carry or use them correctly.

So who said you'd be so dumb as to be IN the tunnel when you tossed the frag, hmm?

yep, since he was in England, I'd have made them give me a pistol, instead of a longarm. Why lug around either the carbine or the tsmg.? What are you scared of, some drunken Limeys?

Dam Boy...........

My question was also rhetorical (Jorge). Never mind that Sigs have been one of two ( ok, I'll give you three) of the best rated pistols ever produced. And the SEALS don't usually choose a sidearm based on it's coddling requirements.

Based on that, I've had a P220 or P226 for years. Never once has either tripped over a line.