Im going to bet a new glock, Ive had a 40cal in the past and I loved it but ive also heard a lot ablut the .357. What are your opinions?
I’m a fan of my 9 short (9X18).
The .357 SIG nearly duplicates the performance of one specific .357 magnum load that was statistically shown to be a very good stopper. As an auto pistol cartridge, it is still a good stopper. It is a flat shooting cartridge, for a pistol. It is less common on store shelves than .40 S&W and more expensive when it is available. It also has more blast and recoil than the .40.
Everything is a series of trade-offs. For what you want your gun to do, do the advantages outweigh the disadvatages?
Get both.
Glock barrels are interchangable between the same size frame pistols (G22 and G31, G23 and G32, G27 and G33) in .40 S&W and 357 SIG ((G22 and G31, G23 and G32, G27 and G33 ;cite). The magazines are interchangable as well, and the frames are identical.
Get whichever gun you can find cheaper, and then buy the barrel for the other one for about $150.
For what purpose are you purchasing this weapon? That will greatly influence the answer.
Home protection, and the shooting range.
I have always thought it is best to keep to the most common calibers. Thus: .45, 9mm, and .38/.357 are the best in that case. Although there is much debate over which one is best or whether some odd caliber is better, all will “do the job” and have proven themselves over and over.
When I needed a pistol for home defense (living in a house that had suffered several recent B&E’s), I ended up with a very decent Taurus .357 revolver.
Well, it’s a good thing I never needed to use that pistol in self defense - it turns out that the muzzle flash from a .357 is so bright as to be blinding. I mean it will literally blind you for 20 or 30 seconds if you pull the trigger in a dimly lit room.
If you’re trying to fight for your life, doing so while being unable to see might not be entirely to your advantage.
Since I’d wager that most home break-ins occur at night, I’d either load a .357 pistol with .38s, or pass on it entirely.
It’s not quite that bad, but it is distracting, to say the least. I’ve trained with my S&W Model 28 in a darkened environment, and I learned some tricks to adapt. But my 9mm has a lot less muzzle flash, and holds twice the number of rounds to boot.
friend Silenus,
I think we have had this conversation before, but I still say that if you can’t kill it with six rounds from a .357 magnum, you shouldn’t be shooting at it.
But…but…there may be a gang of miscreants! I must smite them, lest they molest my cats!
OK, but my experience (outdoors, bright moonlight) was exactly that bad: 20 seconds before I could re-sight my target (the original estimate of 20 - 30 seconds came from some or other gun magazine). The fact that I’m in my 40’s probably doesn’t help - night vision ain’t what it used to be. YMMV.
One trick is to, just before firing but after acquiring sight picture, close one eye. Then open it after the muzzle flash. I’ve used this trick to keep my night vision when getting a soda from the fridge in the dark. It works. Of course, after the second shot you are hosed, but hopefully the first two were all you needed.
Don’t forget to take into account the possibility of permanent hearing damage.
Remember that you’ll be firing that pistol in a small room and not a firing range where you will probably be wearing hearing protection anyway.
Just thought I’d mention this before anyone decides to buy a .44 Magnum to make sure your home defense weapon has sufficient stopping power.
A longer barrel has less flash.
One word: Speedloaders
I took my .45 out for the first time and fired it with ear protection. But then I thought I’d be wise and fire it once without ear protection, figuring I’d need to know how loud the thing would be in the event that I actually had a “situation.”
Big, Big noise! I’ll never do that again! :smack:
Having carried a weapon for a non-law-enforcement job (I worked Armored); I chose my Taurus 9mm for the sole reason that I’ve owned the danged thing for 17 years and it has never jammed. Fifteen rounds in the clip, no reason to carry additional clips. (Be real, if you can’t get out of the jam in 15 rounds, you ain’t getting out alive. Secondly, no one in our branch had fired a weapon in the line of duty - at a Human - in something like 20 years. And third, I worked Downtown. You get trigger happy, bystanders die.)
For home defense, I keep a large Taurus .357 magnum with a 6" barrel.
In 11 years of living in a somewhat bad neighborhood, I had to display (never point, never fire) that pistol five times to discourage someone from continuing an active attempt to break into my house while I was there. The mere sight of it caused drug addled felons to flee. (The last one was not deterred by my 911 call right in front of him, or by the large knife in my hand, but ran like a rocket at the sight of that pistol!)
But really, forget a pistol. Just the sound of a pump shotgun racking a shell is more than enough to make grown men wet their pants. You also have to worry less about “how many shots will it take to stop him” and “how many walls will this penetrate before it stops?”
Range wise; I bought the 9mm first. I bought the .357 revolver second, because it takes much longer to shoot the same amount of ammo and is more fun in the process.