The Final Answer: 9mm vs. .45

Dear Cecil,

   I'm a firearms enthusiast and have spent massive amounts of time searching for an answer to a question that never seems to go away.  What is this question you ask?  The never-ending 9mm vs. .45 caliber debate.  No one ever seems to be able to step outside their personal predjudices and answer this question in a logical, unbiased way.  Now I know that merely asking you if you like 9mm or .45 is a rather subjective question, so I'll give you something a bit more specific.  

   Assuming Jacketed-Hollow-Point Bullets (the standard today), and standard loading pressure, which caliber does more damage to it's recipient?

   Cecil, I beg you, come to my aide!  You wouldn't believe the flaming contests people give this question on gun forums!  Your my last resort, and I'm hoping that I'll finally get the straight dope.

I’m utterly confident Cecil will stop by any minute to answer your question. In the mean time, I’ll take a stab at it.

The .45 is better. This is because it makes a bigger hole.

The question is too general and needs some definitions and limits.

Define “Damge to Recipient”. Are you talking the diamater of the hole? The depth of the hole? What part of the recipient is taking the damage? Hit in the heart? Lung? Head?
Also, what are the specifications of your test?
Shot at point blank range? 5 feet? 50 yards?

The 9mm is better. It makes more holes.

I imagine that they are equal. One well placed shot from either and the ‘recipient’ would be just as dead.

9mm? .45? Oh please! Let the schoolboys fight that one out. Real men argue about the 14.5 and .223

The .45 is better. Even if you miss, it can still be pretty effective. :wink:

Signed,

1911 owner.

Your question is, as others have noted, too vague.

Further, rounds cooking off by themselves don’t pack much power (as I learned -to my simultaneous dismay and relief- when my ex’s family decided to burn some hastily inspected boxes of “junk” from her rural grandpa’s attic after he died) A definitive answer will have to take the specific gun into account as well.

I think the “hard facts” are pretty well established. It’s been a long time since I was an active gun enthusiast, but we used to have reasonably reliable “gun bibles”, and published bench measurements. However, most shooters are really only concerned “what it means” in a scenario–in their opinion

It’s easy to find accurate measurements of, say, an M1911-A1 .45 ACP firing say, a 230 grain bullet with the “standard load” for a muzzle velocity of 830 fps. This was the first site turned up by Google. You can find measurements of impact momentum, kinetic energy, bullet distortion and energy imparted to a ballistic gelatin target at various ranges. That’s probably not what you want though, or it’d be a simple numbers question.

If you are happy with such simple objective answers, Google has them. The debate’s been going on so long that plenty of people have taken the measurements with good gear and posted them. I didn’t look at too man yof the results, but all the ones I saw agreed to within 5-10%, so I’d trust them.

The standard today? Sez who?
Why not full metal jackets? You know, **Old School ** bullets.

Well, like others have said, it’s a pretty open ended question.

Obviously, if you’re hit somewhere vital (brain, spinal cord, heart, etc…) it isn’t going to make much difference if you’re hit with a 22 or a 500 S&W Magnum- you’ll die pretty damn fast.

Beyond that, there are two schools of thought, the Marshall/Sanow/Ayoob school and the Fackler school, that espouse different properties of guns and ammunition for maximum stopping power.

The Marshall/Sanow/Ayoob school believes that velocity is the key to effective stopping power- the faster, the better, because “energy transfer” and “shock effect” are what they claim causes the most effective one-shot stops. These guys are cops and gun writers, and they’ve compiled a database of one-shot stops from real police shooting events, and draw conclusions from that. The 9mm Parabellum comes in very high because of the high velocities.
The Fackler school is named after Dr. Martin Fackler, a former US Army surgeon during Vietnam, and the president of the International Wound Ballistics Association (not sure if the organization still exists). Fackler and his supporters believe the opposite of Marshall, Sanow and Ayoob, namely that the most effective stopping power in handgun rounds is achieved through big, heavy bullets with a lot of momentum, because they penetrate deeper and leave a larger hole, and are correspondingly more likely to poke a hole in something vital.

As for me, I tend to believe Fackler, if only because his papers and studies are subjected to peer review, and have (from my limited perspective) a much more scientific orientation than the Marshall/Sanow/Ayoob stuff does.

My two cents:

From Remington.Com
.45 Auto load FMJ: Energy in Ft/Lbs between 326 - 446 ft/lbs at 50 yds.
9mm Luger Auto Pistol FMJ: Energy in Ft/Lbs between 277 - 316 ft/lbs at 50 yds.

From Federal’s Ammunition Catalog:
.45 Auto FMJ Match (Self-Defense Load): Energy in Ft/Lbs 342 ft/lbs at 50 yds
9x19mm Luger Parabellum EFMJ [sub]::shrug::[/sub] (Self Defense Load): Energy in Ft/Lbs 287 ft/lbs at 50 yds

What I’m getting at here, is that with a 9mm, it’ll put a hole in you, and knock you down. A .45 Auto will put a hole in you, knock you down, and give you reason for a second thought.

Personally, I compromise, and carry a .40S&W for one reason: My Kimber .45ACP BP Ten II (which does carry 10 rounds) jams all the time [sub]I’m sending it back for some work[/sub], the frame fits my hands better, and I’ve shot it before and feel more comfortable with it.

I have always preached that you should carry what you feel comfortable with. Feel good enough to carry a large frame .45? Go ahead. There are advantages. Feel good enough to carry a .380ACP? Go ahead. There are advantages. My point: Fit the gun to the person, not the person to the gun.

Tripler
And those are just a couple of my cents.

I own both, but my “nightstand” pistol is a .357 loaded with 125 grain hollowpoints. Studies have shown that this loading has the highest “one-shot stops” out there.

Of course, I also own a .40 S&W, 3 .45s, a couple of 9mm, a .380, … :smiley:

I will cast another vote for the .40 S&W, that’s what I carry and here is my reasoning:

The .45’s that I looked at had a Maximum capacity of 8 or 9 rounds (7 or 8 + 1).

9mm is too “light” for me, there is a reason you need all those extra rounds.

.40 S&W seemed like the perfect compromise, as far as capacity I rum a Mec-Gar preban magazine (12) in it with 1 “in the pipe” (that’s 13 rounds that hit with 90+ % of the energy of a .45).

Unclviny

Living off your Y2K stockpile, are you?

Just kidding. I side with Napoleon on this: “God isn’t on the side of the biggest guns, but with the best shots.” The best weapon is the biggest one you can fire accurately. Going past that and risking inaccuracy is, you’ll forgive the expression, overkill.

Nah, just your basic, run-of-the-mill gun nut, who had nothing to spend his money on until he got married.

The papers always scream about people who get busted and have “5000 rounds of ammunition” in the house. All that means to me is that there was a sale at Turner’s! :smiley:

Oh hey, count me in that category. . . and I’m still not married yet! :smiley:

Tripler
Go find the guns you like, while you have a couple of dollars to do so.

To derive the best answer you need to look at the history of .45.

The .45 was designed because US soldiers found that shooting Filiponos with lesser handguns just tended to piss them off. In order to kill Filiponos efficiently you needed to chew a big hole out of them so that they would bleed to death quickly and not linger around for months with festering wounds which would cripple or kill less hardy and determined people. You also needed to stop them and physically knock them back otherwise they would tend to keep coming.

Nowadays ballistics and bullet design have improved and people have invented new techniques to kill people more efficiently. The bottom line is that a burning phosphorous bullet or shredding bullet or a hydrostatic bullet can do tremendous damage almost regardless of caliber. The question has become somewhat moot.

A 9mm is a big slow bullet that tumbles around and does a lot of damage, but it lacks the force of a.45. You can literally shoot down small trees with 9mm talons if you can get them.

Generally speaking superior power is superior power and any bullet in a .45 designed to take advantage of that power is going to do more damage than a similar 9mm.

A .45 will also contain more deadly energy over a longer distance. If you are firing shots at a distance at a target that you don’t see all that well, and if there is all kinds of foliage in your way, the .45 is the gun for you. Small leaves and twigs aren’t going to deflect your heavy bullet as much as a lighter smaller bullet.

So, for shooting Filiponos in a jungle, the .45 is far superior. For accurate shooting it is also preferable. For closer range, or unimpeded work the 9mm is probably preferable.

9mm: not enough gun. .45: too much gun. I’d say the .40 (or the comparitively rare 10mm) is pretty near perfect.

just my humble opinion: shoot the gun with which you have the best ability to hit the target. i own a browning high power 9mm. i can keep a four shot group down to about three inches at 75 feet. i can cut that group to less than two inches with my smith and wesson model 19 .357. i have a couple of friends who are 1911 .45 owners. one pistol seems o.k, but my four shot group grows to about six inches. i could probably throw the other one straighter than it will shoot.

my answer to the question? .357. if you can’t kill it with six from a .357, you probably shouldn’t be shooting at it…

Sig line!!

:smiley: