Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Colt Police Positive - safe for +P 38 ?

I have overloaded Colt Police Positives many times.
I have reamed one out to 357 mag chambers.
None have ever shot loose.
I have blown some up, but that was way past 357 mag loads.

Good points and info by all. Thanks for video TRH.

Thanks all.

there is absolutely nothing wrong with plain jane 38sp as a defensive round for most civilians. wadcutters are great.

Wadcutters seated backwards are even better.

I think that's been debunked by actual testing. Too much expansion. More effective in the correct orientation, which gives good, but not exaggerated, expansion, just due to being soft lead.

Buffalo Bore makes good .38 defense load in both regular and high test. I’d get some of those when you can. Regular should be fine. Bullet shape matters more than velocity IMO. Old roundnose .38s were pretty poor stoppers, but FN and good hollerpoints make a better impression.

Years ago, a fleeing jackhole was shot in the azz by the Howard County, MD police with standard .38 RNs. He didn’t even realize he’d been shot.

Yeah, that's another of those old wives tales that just needs to go away. Turn it the right way, you'll get pretty darned good penetration.

Really ? The Brits found it worked well on the Wogs.

455 Webley Mk III: Introduced in 1898. The famous "Manstopper" bullet intended for police, civilian and colonial use. Essentially, the Mk III was a 218 grain lead "hollowpoint" design, propelled by cordite. The cylindrical bullet had hemispherical hollows at each end—one to seal the barrel, the other to deform on impact. This bullet was soon prohibited for use by the military because it was not compliant with the Hague Convention of 1899. The Mark III was withdrawn from service in 1900 and the Mark II was reintroduced.

The problem with reversing the wadcutter is that (due to being soft lead) it expands into a disk on impact, and only penetrates a few inches.

Although they appear similar, they are very different... There's more than just "design".

Consider first, the .455 Mk III was designed from the get-go to be a hollow point bullet. The .38 Wadcutter wasn't. The .38 wadcutter uses almost pure lead so it deforms easily during the swaging process. The .455 is swaged, but they had to consider terminal performance; so I'd be willing to bet the metallurgy of the .455 is a bit different.

The hollow base cavity wasn't designed with bullet expansion in mind.

Now I have never seen ballistic gelatin tests of the Mk III (although I would love to, and I'm talking period load, not someone's recreation), but I have seen such tests of a backwards wadcutter, and it's less than impressive in penetration. What's more, when it encounters heavy clothing the cavity tends to collapse so you get no expansion...kinda defeating the whole purpose.

Good read:

http://cartridgecollectors.org/?page=introduction-to-455-cartridges

HP/HB manstopper was swaged from pure lead.

Wog home invaders don't wear heavy clothing, just a hoodie and sweat pants. Neither would slow a flipped WC. Just skip head shots.

The 455 choices: