Standard firearms doctrine is that you use the smallest caliber that will do the job, so you have more rounds for a given weight. In civilian life 9mm is pretty common and you can go to 10mm or .40, .44, or .45 caliber if you feel you need the “stopping power”. I’d heard of .50 cal handguns before, but only as rarities used by big game hunters or collecters who like to feel macho. So why was it decided that the US armed forces semiautomatic handgun needed to be .50 cal? Is it for armor penetration?
The Desert Eagle .50 is not in use by any agency around the world. Certainly not at all by the US armed forces. It’s a gee-wiz gun, with little practical application. I mean, sure it will kill you dead, but so would a much better 9mm/.40/.45.
The US armed forces currently use the M9 Beretta 9mm, or the M11 Sig 229 9mm. The special-forces types use anything from Sig 226 to HK Mk.23, but never a Desert Eagle. Ever.
IMHO/GD fodder for sure but what the hell, it’s Christmas.
For starters the Desert Eagle handgun is not used by the US armed forced or any armed forces that I am aware of. Standard AFAIK qualifier applies so feel free to correct me.
Perhaps you may be confusing the .50 AE (Action Express) handgun cartridge with the much more powerful .50 BMG (Browning Machine Gun) cartridge used in special purpose sniper rifles like the Barrett the marines use to “reach out and touch someone.” FWIW the .50 BMG is often used for its armor piercing ability where the .50 AE would be unsuitable for that purpose.
That the two cartridge use the same diameter bullet is very misleading to a non-shooter. The .50 AE is a large, but mostly typical handgun cartridge with a relatively short, blunt bullet. .50 BMG uses a bottleneck case design which holds much more propellant for more power and uses a bullet that is several times heavier and consequently longer. It is a pointed “spitzer” shape, typical of rifle bullets which makes it very aerodynamic for long range shooting and well suited to piercing armor.
I’ve never heard that “standard firearms doctrine.” It does make sense to use the smallest caliber that will cosnsitently do the job but IMHO that isn’t the case with 9mm. 9mm Parabellum is used in the US armed forces because it’s the standard handgun caliber for our NATO allies. Bean counters in green eyeshades may have had more to do with descision than did soldiers who were given the task of shooting people who were shooting back at them. Lots of real world experience has shown 9mm Para to be inadequate for the task which is why the US adopted .45 ACP in the first place to replace .38 caliber revolvers. It is still issued to special forces.
9mm became wildly popular in the '70s and '80s when US police departments started replacing .38 special revolvers with high magazine capacity “wondernines.” IMO it was a case of replacing something that sucked with something that sucked not quite so badly but it still sucked. More recently .40 S&W caliber has become dominant for civilian police. It has reasonable power but the physical size of the cartrdidge allows it to be used in handguns that have the same compact dimensions as one in 9mm. .45 ACP requires the grip to be somewhat larger and this can be a problem for someone with smaller than average hands and this has been a factor since large numbers of women now work as police.
I’m on a roll so you get some useless trivia for free. IMO the Desert Eagle mainly exists as a novelty. The reason the .50 AE caliber exists is because that bullet diameter is the largest allowed by the national firearms act before a weapon is classified as a destructive device which would have to be registered like a piece of artillery, making it much less practical to market. If your “compensation-for-a-tiny-willy” needs are not met by the Desert Eagle you can now buy a .50 caliber revolver from Smith & Wesson which is even more powerful. <shrug> Cheaper than a Corvette. :rolleyes:
Glock has just invented “new caliber,” the .45 GAP (Glock Automatic Pistol I think. ) It duplicates the ballistics of .45 ACP (Automatic Colt Pistol) but in a shorter package which allows it to be used in a 9mm/.40S&W sized handgun. It will be interesting to see if it becomes accepted in the marketplace, becomes consigned to the dustbin of history like the Winchester 9x23 or becomes a niche item like the .41 magnum.
True, But standard MARKETING doctrine is that bigger is better, especially when your target (heh heh) demographic is the over-macho guys who collect oddball guns.
The gun was made .50 cal for one purpose only; so the manufacturer could sell more of them.
As a long time gun owner & shooter I’m not suggesting everyone who owns guns or collects guns is a testosterone-crazed goof. But we all know there is a fringe out there that gets involved with guns for the macho ego-boost thrill. And those folks are avid buyers of the biggest, the baddest-looking, etc. Desert Eagle knows their customer base.
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- The Desert Eagle is pure showmanship. It’s an okay gun, not real well known for anything but being a .50 auto. There are revolvers available chambered in calibers that have a lot more power.
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- By the by, there’s a company making a .50 1911 now. I forget the details, but it costs a couple or three thousand dollars. And the cases look funny, because the case head is smaller than the case body diameter.
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This is called a rebated rim and was used for the same reason in .41 AE caliber. The rim was the same size as 9mm Parabellum so the slide, extractor and ejector from a 9mm pistol could be used but the body was larger to accomodate a .41 caliber bullet. A pistol could be converted by only exchanging the barrel and magazine.
Just for fun, here’s a couple of links to some really powerful handguns:
.454 Casull - http://www.fishandhunttexas.com/454casull.htm
S&W .500 - http://firearms.smith-wesson.com/store/index.php3?cat=293531&item=831462
I’m not a shooter but I think that both of these are marketed for taking big game.
There’s also a (purported) .50 BMG “pistol” out there that I’ve seen some photos of but it’s enormous and frankly looks more like a carbine than a pistol. I assume that somebody will be along to explain the difference between a huge single-shot pistol and a short-barelled rifle at some point.
A couple of you have commented that gun makers manufacture these “macho” guns for one reason- because they sell. Why else would they make any firearm?
They’re business’, same as Wonder Bread. (ie Iron Kids Bread) 
Peace,
mangeorge
I forgot to mention that a friend, a devout NRA member, opines that “they” are trying to stir up the tiny element of the gun control crowd in CA who are intent on banning the .50cal.
You know, like those who exaggerate the wierdness of PETA.
BTW; isn’t the S&W far more powerful than the 44mag, or any other production handgun?
Ok, can someone who’s knowledgable explain what besides the caliber determines the power of the rounds? For instance back in the day the .357 Magnum was an example of a super-powerful handgun. Does “magnum” mean that the cartridges contain a extra-heavy load of propellent? I looked at that S&W .50 cal revolver :eek: and it explained how it’s rounds have a greater force in foot-pounds than any other handgun.
Hiya neighbor 
S&W (from the link I posted) claims that the .500 is the most powerful production handgun out there. 2600 ft-lbs of muzzle energy is the same as the muzzle energy of a .308 rifle (and this will of course vary all over the place depending on the exact load, barrel, etc but for our purposes it’s good enough).
Muzzle energy of a .44 mag is around 1000-1200 ft lbs, a .44 automag was around 1500 ft-lbs (per quick results from Google, like I said I’m no firearms expert).
That link I posted for the Casull .454 shows 1800 ft-lbs of muzzle energy.
The upshot is that the S&W .500 has a lot more power than most handguns, even a monster like the Casull. Please note the empty weight of about 5 pounds.
Hiya 
Muzzle energy is just the kinetic energy of the round as it leaves the gun:
So the two determining factors are mass of the bullet and muzzle velocity.
Mass will be determined by the size of the slug - caliber, length, shape.
Velocity will be determined by how much propellant is used, what type it is and I guess barrel length to some degree.
Since velocity counts for a lot more than mass that shows why caliber isn’t an accurate way to tell how “powerful” a bullet is. A .22 and a 5.56mm slug have about the same caliber but if it came down to it I’d rather get shot with a .22 pistol than an M16.
The basic power of a round comes from the size-weight of the round(and technically that doesn’t give power, it just kind of efffects how that power is transfered to the target), the ammount of explosive, and the length of the barrel(the longer the barrel, the more the round is accelerated before being turned over to the friction of the open air).
Danged twitchy, arthritic finger. I accidently clicked “submit”.
Anyway, I thought the five pounds meant the bullet.
But I’ve read, here iirc, that some military, cops, and big game hunters are interested in the S&W for just those big numbers. Gangsters, too.
Bullet weight and velocity.
“Caliber” refers to the bullet diameter, nothing more. Larger caliber firearms typically have heavier bullets and larger powder charges, but there is no direct relation between the bullet diameter and the power of the round. A .50 Browning Machine Gun is much more powerful than a .68 caliber muzzleloading rifle, even though the .68 fires a projectile of larger caliber.
There’s no strict definition of what makes a magnum cartridge. The term comes from wine bottle sizes. Magnums are a larger size of bottle. Usually you see the term “magnum” applied to a more powerful version of a standard round. For example, the .357 Magnum is a more powerful version of the .38 Special; the .44 Magnum is a more powerful version of the .44 Special; the .22 Magnum was meant as a more powerful alternative for the .22 Long Rifle.
Boy this is fun. Google has turned up some fascinating stuff, frankly I think that this is the same mindset that gave us the Monster Truck, only these guys like firearms instead of great big tires:
Here’s a sample .50BMG “pistol”:
http://www.custom-glock.com/shotday4/shotday4-Images/19.jpg
And some guy in Germany with his hefty revolver, available in .600 NITRO EXPRESS fer chrissakes.
http://www.pfeifer-waffen.at/Zeliska2.pdf
.600 Nitro Express was used in elephant guns…
Mangeorge, I really can’t imagine the military or the police having any desire for weapons like these:
Pro - S&W .500 will kill a person.
Neutral - Any gun will kill a person.
Con - Big. Expensive. Heavy. Enormous recoil. 5 shots. Hard to draw and maneuver. Accidental death of civilians 500 yards away behind heavy cover.
If they need to dump that much energy into a target well that’s what rifles and shotguns are for.
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- The .50-BMG pistol was made by a company named Maadi-Griffin. It is most certainly real, I can remember gun print magazines reviewing it in the day, though it was very much considered a novelty gun–not real useful for much of anything except proving the effectivness of muzzle brakes. Some pictures come up in this Google image search. …The fellow who originated the Maadi-Griffin company encountered legal troubles culiminating in his manufacturer priveledges being revoked, but that had nothing to do with the design of any of his guns. According to federal charges, he was basically selling complete gun kits without following legal requiremits for transfer.
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- The .50-BMG pistol was made by a company named Maadi-Griffin. It is most certainly real, I can remember gun print magazines reviewing it in the day, though it was very much considered a novelty gun–not real useful for much of anything except proving the effectivness of muzzle brakes. Some pictures come up in this Google image search. …The fellow who originated the Maadi-Griffin company encountered legal troubles culiminating in his manufacturer priveledges being revoked, but that had nothing to do with the design of any of his guns. According to federal charges, he was basically selling complete gun kits without following legal requiremits for transfer.
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Caliber designations mean much more than the bullet diameter. In some cases the designation may give a bit more information such as 7.62x39mm (AK-47) where the first number is bore diameter and the second is case length. .45-70 is a .45 caliber bullet with a 70 grain charge of black powder. The key parts of a caliber designation means bullet diameter, case dimensions, primer type and most importantly safe operating pressures.
.357 Magnum is a good example as it was developed from the earlier .38 special. That cartridge was designed in the black powder era so it has more capacity than it needs for modern smokeless propellant. Since a more powerful cartridge would be dangerous in most existing .38 revolvers experiments were done with a revolver built on a larger S&W .44 special frame. When the cartridge was formalized it was given a longer case so that it would not fit in a .38 special revolver though .38 special ammunition could be used in a .357 magnum revolver.
The .500 S&W magnum is an oddity like the .41 Magnum in that it was not developed from an existing cartridge but as a brand new one. The .50 AE used in the desert Eagle is different in that it uses the same rim diameter as .44 manum ammunition.
Power is usually defined as kinetic energy of the bullet, as V[sup]2[/sup]M, usually designated in foot pounds.
mangeorge, the only proposed bans I’m aware of for .50 caliber are specific to .50 BMG and would not apply to other .50 caliber cartridges.
Valgard, any .50 BMG handgun is to be taken as a joke. Is this the photo you mean? The recoil impulse is so high in a rifle I don’t think there is any way that someone could shoot a handgun in that caliber without very serious injury.
Yeah, I pretty much figured that out the first time I heard of the things. It’s the difference between “technically feasible” and “practical”. I don’t see any engineering reason why one couldn’t build a short-barreled gun with a pistol grip that fires a .50BMG round. I can see plenty of reasons why it’s a damn fool thing to make, much less fire.