That’s going to be next-to impossible, due to all the different weapons, different loadings, and different countries/conditions. Any figures you read are going to be very pistol/load specific, and to that shooter’s personal experience. When you stop to think of all the different permutations, you can see how daunting such a study would be. There might be department-specific studies, but not universal ones.
As noted by Scumpup while I was writing this, gun and load specific. 
Absolutely true. The takeaway that the FBI got from their review of the situation was that they needed bigger guns, which was in contradiction to the actual facts of the case, and the 1076 ended up being an unsuitable duty weapon for many agents, leading to the “10mm FBI Lite” load that eventually became the .40 S&W, which is arguably little more effective than the 9mmP +P loads that it replaced in many law enforcement agencies.
Or a Jennings or Hi-Point. But with modern autoloaders like the Glock, Sig, H&K, Springfield XD, et cetera, which are well-maintained and are fed with good quality commercial or well-controlled handloaded ammunition, jamming should be a rare instance rather than a regular occurrence. I had a Taurus 9mm that was a jam-o-matic (bad extractor, which they replaced with another bad extractor) but I’ve never had a failure to feed and fire with any of a number of Hi-Powers, 92Fs, and Sig Sauers that I’ve fired thousands of rounds through. I have had a number of failures with 1911 pattern guns, but these were all tight tolerance raceguns that would not be suitable for duty use; aside from a broken barrel bushing, a couple of broken swinging links, and improperly gunsmithed guns, I’ve never seen a 1911 fail to feed and fire the roundnose bullets (for which it was originally designed) that couldn’t be attributed to bad ammo.
Stranger
Is it really the case that a guy who takes a hit with a .38 police special is more likely to continue to want to play cops and robbers than one who is hit by a 9mm or .45 mag? Seems to me that a skilled hand with a .38 would be a lot more lethal than a “confident” hand with a .45. Some of the posts above make it sound like the case against .38 is more about confidence than need.
I’d be interested to know if the .38 six-shooter encouraged caution on the part of the officer in tense encounters, and if there is a higher rate of weapon-use per encounter when cops carry bigger weapons. And when the weapon IS actually fired, if there is an effective difference in the result with the bigger guns as opposed to the .38. Like, do guys shoot back more when they have a .38 hole in them?
I would just like to add that before autos became popular for law enforcement, most police officers, around here anyway, carried .357s. Many may have loaded .38 Spec. +P+, however. Of course, I was also born in 1969.
First of all, it is inarguable that a well-placed bullet of any significant caliber is superior to one that fails to hit a significant target. That said, revolvers are by no means inherently more accurate that modern autoloaders for any close combat purpose, and the Marshall and Sanow “one-shot-stop” statistics (as contested as they may be) show a substantial performance advantage of the 9mmP, .40 S&W, and .45 ACP over the .38 Spl. (The .357 Magnum, however, is still the king of one shot stops.)
Furthermore, the terminal ballistic performance of the autoloader calibers listed above, evaluated against the FBI Handgun Wounding Factors and Effectiveness (warning: PDF) is inherently superior as the amount of penetration in ballistic gelatin from all of these rounds is superior to that from a standard pressure .38 Spl. (A secondary consideration is the prevention of hazardous excess penetration, which is the real reason to use expanding hollowpoint bullets.) Penetration is the sine qua non of handgun effectivenss; if the round does not penetrate deeply enough to reliably damage major organs or disrupt the circulatory and nervous systems it is not adequate to depend upon for defense. This is why the .32 is judged to be inadequate, and the .380 aCP and .38 Spl are marginal. Even at this, both perpetrators and police officers have taken multiple hits with all calibers up to and including 00 and 000 buckshot at close range and managed to keep going, so no handgun round can be considered a panacea. But more massive and better penetrating rounds clearly offer greater effectiveness over the comparatively lightweight bullets chambered in the .38 Spl.
As far as firepower, every peace officer I have talked to who has been in an actual firefight has confirmed my own experience in tactical training and the general conclusion of the firearms tactics community; that in a real firefight, you don’t count rounds loosed, you don’t “squeeze and breathe”, and you absolutely, positively, don’t want to run out of ammo. You focus in on the target and front sight blade, and keep firing until the threat goes down, and every act you perform reverts from rational thought to training; this is why training officers to fire two rounds and stop is a really, really, really bad idea. Officers who have trained to offer continual fire against a reactive target until it disappears from view have demonstratively higher effective fire and survival rates. Also, in many cases, auditory exclusion will prevent a shooter from realizing that he is out of ammo. In this case, the wheelgun shooter is at a disadvantage, as the revolver will continue to cycle. In contrast, the slide on an autoloader will lock back, giving a visual cue that the weapon is exhausted and needs to be reloaded.
Stranger
We were allowed to carry either a .38 or a .357, but were required to load only with .38 Special ammo. Most cops admitted to having magnum loads behind the first round or two (self preservation, and rules be damned), and many carried shot rounds for calls involving dogs.
What was the basis for this peculiar policy, if I may ask?
Stranger
It’s also worth bearing in mind that for a long, long time handguns were more an authority symbol than anything else.
The Russians, for example, replaced their .44 calibre S&W No. 3 revolvers with the .32 calibre Nagant M1895, which was… not an improvement (The 7.62x38R round being unimpressive even by .32 calibre standards).
Similarly, the British gradually replaced their .455 calibre revolvers with .38 S&W calibre revolvers, although that was because the .38 revolvers they were using were easier to train people to shoot with and still had performance similar to 9mm Parabellum.
As other people in the thread have noted, a .38 revolver is still better than no gun at all, and in practical terms they’re still perfectly serviceable guns- and still the most common handgun cartridge on the planet, I believe (although 9mm is not very far behind at all).
OTOH, there’s the .32-20.
Thought Mr Johnson was making it up until I looked at the numbers. About 200 ft/lbs for a .38 Special vs 1000 ft/lbs for a 32-20? That’ll fuck you up good!
Not certain about years ago, but there were a variety of 9mm revolvers out there over the last 20 years made by Taurus, Smith & Wesson, Ruger, and Medusa. Also, Charter Arms just came out with a brand new 9mm revolver.
More likely just punch through you, the guy behind you, and halfway through an engine block, and unless it happens to hit something vital along the way the b.g. may not even notice. I personally like nice heavy bullets that flatten out and stop deep inside the perpetrator; give me a .45 ACP or .41 Magnum with a lighter bullet. Actually, I prefer sitting by the fire with a good book and a glass if Irish whiskey over perforating anyone, but if it is necessary to drop the hammer, I’d like a round that maximizes my chances of going back to the fire, literature, and whiskey, rather than the hospital or morgue.
Oh, and pedantic nitpick, but the units of energy are ft-lbs, not ft/lbs.
Stranger
There is that, but Robert Johnson’s bitch would feel the brunt of it.
(Expressing interest, but understanding, that the 32-20 was cast aside by the 30-30, which doubles the stopping power.
I did not know how far the raw numbers would take this thread. Keep it up; I’m enjoying it!
Blow me.
Actually it seemed to fit the facts of the case rather well. The bad guy was hit with a 38spl+p round fired from a 357 revolver; the bullet went into his lung and stopped just short of his heart. He was able to continue fighting for at least 90 seconds during which he killed two agents. If the agent had had magnum loads in his 357 it might have penetrated to his heart and stopped him sooner. IIR the facts of the case C.
I had a Smith & Wesson Sigma .40 that almost never made it through an entire magazine without jamming at least once. Always with Winchester white box, no reloads. I sent it back to S&W twice, they replaced almost every part on the thing, and it jammed on the first shot I took after getting it back both times.
I never really understood it. I think it was due in part to bulk ammo purchase cost and the misguided desire to inflict less harm with a “smaller” round. Like I say, I never heard a sensible explanation.
The logical extension of this thought is that eventually they are going to want an even more “efficient” weapon, unless they can limit the access that criminals have to weaponry.
If you want yet another gun control thread, how about starting it yourself?
Read the entire description of the incident. They did so many other things wrong that the failure of that particular shot to instantly incapacitate the target should not be singled out as the salient failure.
The real conclusion should have been, if you know that you’re going to the O.K. Corral, take a rifle. Pistols are a compromise between convenience and effectivenss, and no handgun rounds suitable for a compact duty weapon is as effective as a .223 Rem, .30 Carbine, or a .30-30, much less a 12 gauge sabot slug or a 6.8mm SPC. The agents walked in to a firefight poorly armed and without a good tactical plan, resulting in what we general term, a cluster-fuck, which resulted in both multiple crashes and loss of weapons by two officers. Had they been properly equipped and prepared with overwhelming force, Matix and Platt wouldn’t have had a chance.
The 10mm Auto ended up being too much gun, both in terms of the packaging and the recoil, for many agents to handle, according to many critics. Having fired it in both the Glock 20 and the full sized S&W 1006, I have to agree. I can’t imagine making quick followup shots with the 1076, and it was a very heavy gun for daily carry on a non-duty belt. I’d rather shoot .357 Magnums from a Ruger SP101 (compact revolver) than the 10mm Auto.
I’ve never had any personal experience with the Sigma except for handling one of the first generation ones, and I wasn’t impressed. S&W had and still has some quality control issues, particularly with autoloaders, so it doesn’t surprise me that the Sigma was a complainer. Most good quality pistols, however, will fire as reliably as a clean revolver, and are far more robust in terms of the amount of abuse and contamination they can withstand.
So, probably made by some REFM sitting behind a desk who was more concerned about negative publicity than the safety of his officers. The reality is, if you’ve elected to drop the hammer on another person, you’ve made the decision that they are a threat to life and limb to yourself or someone else, and their well-being is forfeit. If the perpetrator happens to survive, good for him, but as a defender (peace officer or civilian) your first, last, and only objective should be to stop the threat, whether by routing the attack through a show of arms, or a vigorous active counterattack that incapacitates the offender. Or, as a friend of mine tells his troops, “No half measures; no hesitation. If you’re going to take them down, take them all the way down.”
Stranger
Exactly right. Long guns, and plenty of them, should have been the order of the day; along with each agent having a specific role. Given what was known at the time about Matix and Platt, the agents should have expected the two to go out in a hail of lead. One gets the distinct impression the government agents expected their opponents to be overawed by the fact that they were facing the FBI.
Body armor was available at the time and the agents should have been wearing it.
Control of weapons should have been maintained i.e. the revolvers should have been holstered or in hand, not on car seats. The agent who lost his glasses should have been wearing a retaining strap to hold them in place during vigorous activity if he was unable to function without them.
Perhaps they should have studied Frank Hamer’s elimination of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker in advance of this operation.
