Straight Case

The .357 Magnum - Ideal Urban Warfare Cartridge?

The "Ideal" Urban Warfare cartridge? I keep coming back to it. I own several long guns in .308 Win-7.62x51. They are all fine long-range rifles. As we saw in the recent anarchist attack on the Dallas, TX PD, some rifles are a must, if for no other reason than to put up harassing fires to keep the snipers' heads down until the streets are cleared and the heavies come in for counter-attack. DPD had damn few long guns of any kind to bring to bear. When they called their Code Zero, they had dozens of cops respond very quickly. You saw the video, cops, under sniper fire, with drawn pistols, herding civilians to safety (or where they thought it was safe, no one had eyes on the sniper's hide for a full 10-20 minutes). Then, you saw the occasional AR-15, MAYBE one for every 30 officers.

Dallas PD was outgunned in that fight. Yes, they had numerical weapons superiority. Yes, they had mobility. Yes they had comms. No, they never ID'd the threat until maybe 20 minutes into the attack, and they offered NO counter-fire until the SWAT got the perp pinned down in that parking garage, at which point the threat to the core are of the city was managed.

My what-if.

What if each officer had been carrying a handgun suitable to present fire at 200 meters? THEY USED TO. Those were heavy, six-shot revolvers with 6" barrels, firing the .357 Remington Magnum cartridge. In certain loadings, such as this, this and this, the .357 Magnum is perfect against thin-skinned targets out to that range. The longer barrel is key, as you can see by those ballistic comparisons. You have to be able to SEE the target, and there are all sorts of fine revolver scopes which will give the edge out to those ranges. 2.5 magnification is sufficient.

Imagine if 25 of those officers covering the "protests" had been equipped with those revolvers. As the first shots rang out, they could have returned fire effectively enough to keep the sniper's head down. If the sniper shifted position, they could have shifted fire to follow.

Okay, I hear the howls now, "Your handgun only gets you to your long gun." Oh, very well, but your handgun is ON YOUR HIP. Make it the most effective tool you can. Drop back 50 years, will you?

Oh, and that long gun? Here it is. Put a good Scout Scope on that handy .357 carbine, and it will get the job done with the same ballistic authority as a 30-30 centerfire, which is the same ballistics as what that sniper was using.

No, I don't like the poodleshooter.

The OLD handgun cartridges...

By "old", I mean cartridges which started out as blackpowder rounds. In other words, 38 Special, most of the 32 rimmed stuff (EXCEPT the H&R & the .327 Federal), ALL of the short (and weak) 38's, and most everything the Colt Single Action Army was chambered for. Gawd, I'd have to fire up the Wayback Machine to list all of those, because I believe Colt had a rule then: if they thought they could sell 2000 revolvers in a particular caliber, they would tool up for it.

As the era of black powder began to wane (although not knowing it yet), some manufacturers began to experiment with bottleneck rounds. The rounds built for the Winchester Model 1873 are a good example: 32-20 and 44-40. The whole idea of bottleneck rounds in ANY form is to put more push behind the bullet. In black powder days, that push was important, since black powder is very anemic compared to modern (or even original) smokeless powder. The SAAMI max pressures for black powder run around 12,000 CUP, where hotter large cartridges like the 44 Remington Magnum run closer to 50,000 CUP.

It all translates to energy, or that measurement of the whack the bullet imparts to what it hits. In the 44 Russian, an originally-blackpowder round, which we will look at in detail below, the max energy is just under 300 pounds/feet at max SAMMI pressure of 10,000 CUP (with smokeless powder). In the 44 Remington Magnum, the max energy is closer to 1800 pounds/feet, a sixfold increase, even though the cartridge capacity is maybe 25% more than 44 Russian.

I have been shooting .44 guns for about 8 years. I have a Marlin Model 1894 in 44 Magnum, a Colt Anaconda revolver in that caliber, and a pocket 5-shot Charter Arms Bulldog revolver in 44 Special, the blackpowder precursor to 44 Magnum. The 44 Special has a SAAMI max of 14,000 CUP, so all I get out of the snub-nose Bulldog is 1,000 feet per second at best, but that is okay for short-range defensive duty, and the Bulldog's bark is worse than it's bite. If ever called upon to be in a multi-enemy shootout, I plan to yell "forty-four" before I fire the first round. The enemy WILL believe I am shooting at least a 44 Magnum, maybe even a Cassul at them. They will hesitate, which gives me the advantage.

The 44 Russian. 

One of the issues which keeps me from shooting my Anaconda more is it's savage recoil. I am a lightly-built dude with my wrists being only 6 7/8" at the forearm end. I also have small hands, taking the smallest work gloves made for men, or medium women's gloves. I can just barely grip the Anaconda's Hogue-style grip with one hand, and I never shoot it that way. I can and have shot 60 rounds of full-power 44 Magnum through it in one range session (Cap'n Jim will remember that!), but I had leather gloves on which were taped to my wrists! Okay, the smarties say, why don't you just carry and practice with 44 Special? I did that until I got the Charter Bulldog. The Anaconda is a HUGE revolver, weighing 47 ounces. Add the ammo, and it's almost 4 1/2 pounds. The Bulldog weighs 20 1/2 ounces, and is almost an inch narrower. It conceals nicely. I carry the Anaconda open when I carry it. I have decided to drop back 3/4 of a century and load some 44 Russian ammo to practice with. I came up with this:

Bullet: 200-gr LFN, 5.0-gr Green Dot, LPP. Performance: 836 fps, 2" groups at 15 yards out of a Bulldog!

These will make shooting the Anaconda about equal to shooting an old S&W K-22: 22LR out of a heavy old 38 revolver. They will make shooting the Bulldog. about like shooting 38 out of a heavy old revolver.

And, of course, it is one of the missions of Straight Case to promote shooting the old firearms/loads which figured so prominently in our Nation's history...

A load for the Second most versatile cartridge...

Since I just got some Accurate #9 in, I think I will gin up some of these:

200gr JHP	25.0 gr	No. 9	1,676 fps	1.595"	CCI 300	Accurate
	Suggested starting load: 22.5 gr

Adding about 175 fps for the rifle barrel of the Marlin 1894, the Muzzle Energy Computer gives me 1520 #/ft at the muzzle for that XTP JHP. They'll work just fine in the Colt Anaconda, too.

 

Thankew very mucho, Elmer.

"Hammerless" revolvers

In my not-so-humble opinion, "Bobbed" and "Hammerless" revolvers are nothing less than a waste of tactical advantage, which is what defense with firearms is all about.

In this post, esteemed gun-blogger PawPaw writes about how he gave a Smith MDL 60 to a family member, and she shortly complained that carrying it caused the hammer spur to dig into her body, and the solution sought was to bob the hammer spur off. With all the gun-talent in that family, they evidently did a nice job of cropping the hammer, but doing the job in the first place bothers me enough to write about it.

Why not sell the gun, and get a revolver with a shrouded hammer? These have vestigial spur on the hammer, can still be cocked for single action, but don't rub holes in your flesh if you choose to carry IWB.

There is just a little checkered stub of the hammer showing on that Smith, and the shrouding offers the advantage of adding some weight to the firearm, for steadier shooting.

There is HUGE tactical advantage of single-action fire, well aimed, at a distance from the target.

It is a somewhat extreme example, but I have made 4 out of 6 hits with table-supported single-action fire on a man-sized target 300 yards distant with my Colt Anaconda 44 Magnum, shooting factory 240-gr JHP. When I carried a .357 Magnum Ruger Security Six 4" on patrol duty, I was required to be able to put 5 out of 6 on a man-silhouette, using single action, two-hand Weaver, at 50 yards. Towards the end of my duty-revolver days, just before going to a Glock 17, I routinely warmed up for that qualification stage at 60 yards, the max range available on our Sheriff's tactical pistol range.

I, too, carried a Smith & Wesson Model 60 on duty in the olden days, both as a second gun in a pocket holster sewed into the pocket of my winter prowl jacket, or OWB holster under a blazer if I was working plain clothes. My only modification to that gun was done by an expert armorer, who put an outstanding "action job" on it while he and I worked the Front Desk in the station-house one evening. I later put neon green dots of paint in the rear sight channel, and painted the front sight orange neon. Foolishly, I sold that gun when I went back on Extended Active Duty in the USAF in 1979.

Today, I have a Ruger SP101 five shot two-inch. It is a heavier revolver, has a fine spur hammer on it, painted sights, and I can easily hit the man-silhouette at 60 yards with it.

Yes, with very long practice and continued familiarization, you can get ALMOST as good double-action results with a revolver as you can with single-action, but most folks don't have the time or ammo to do those hours of work. One fifth of that work on the range with single action and you are safe and proficient with your revolver.

Most who carry snubbie revolvers are confident people: confident that they can get the job of defense done with 5 shots. That confidence level increases markedly when proficiency at longer ranges is attained, and that calls for single action practice. 

When is a 44 not a 44?

Yeah, yeah, which came first, the chicken or the egg? I know, and no, this isn't about sophistry, it's about a database I just ran across while trying to find a more inclusive burn rate chart for reloading powders.

I found that chart, and a lot more, at The Reload Bench.

On this page of their Cartridge data base, I ran across a startling, and probably, little known fact: that the maximum Cartridge Over All Length is longer for the .44 Special than it is for the 44 Remington Magnum!

1.620" for the .44 S&W Special vs. 1.610" for the .44 Remington Magnum.

BTW, here's an excellent article on cast boolits for the .44 Special snubby. As I had assumed, loading past 7 grains of fast powder, such as  Unique, doesn't give much more speed (and thereby, energy), but it DOES open up the groups quite a bit. Stay with 7.0 and under, and you won't run into either pressure problems or inaccuracy problems, but you will still get a stout thump out of the round. That 230 LBT extra-wide meplat RN-FP looks promising, I'll have to find some of those.

Learning happens every day, dummy goes on forever.

Who is Teppo Jutsu...

...and why all the mystery about 1870 ballistics?

Here is a whole company founded on hype, the hype that ancient Japanese Samurai were the first "special forces" snipers. Other than my agreement that any military art in ancient Japan was taken very seriously and developed to a high level of skill and art, I'd have to demur.

By all evidence, the first time the Japanese even saw modern European long arms was in the mid to late 1600's, and they were well on the way to being the dominant weapon on the battlefield by then in Europe, whereas they took longer to become accepted in feudal Japan, and were only accepted at all because they were a force-multiplier for area-denial. Prior to reading about Teppo Jutsu, I'd never heard of any Japanese deployment of firearms as anything BUT area-denial weapons, and I'm married into a Japanese family where this sort of discussion has taken place, my wife being only 3 generations removed from the last of the Samurai.

The samurai aspects seem superfluous over at Teppo Jutsu though, and are there to add mystique to their niche marketing of heavy-bullet wildcat catridges/weapon systems in the low supersonic and transonic speed range.

They build an AR which will shoot .458 SOCOM (that "special forces" mystique again!) and something newer called .338 Spectre. OK, I suppose that there is a small need for supressed, low-velocity bullets which can kill at short to medium ranges, but aren't we re-inventing the wheel here?

Looking at the hottest .338 Spectre out there, we find a 180-grain bullet making 1800 fps for a M/E of 1300 #/ft. The round get weaker from there, and to make a subsonic round puts one in the class of, say, a .44 Special. Back at the high end, if you load about 30 grains of Winchester 748 into a .32 Special hull, you'll get about the same performance, out of a gun which might be almost 100 years old.

Let's get modern, though. How about the 50 Beowulf or 50 Alaskan? Those are modern wildcats, and you can load them down to get as solid a hit sub-sonic as you can get out of anything, or load them up and be well beyond that punch a .338 spectre will give you.

Suppressed. Well, OK, suppressed. That's an advantage, most of the time, but REAL noise suppression limits you to subsonic ammo, which limits your range and ability to penetrate cover. It's a trade-off, being quiet, and in this writer's not-so-humble opinion, it's NOT an adequate tradeoff for most war scenarios. You WANT that penetrating power, that long, flat trajectory. You'll give up quiet to get it.

Now, if you're an assassin, and your life depends on getting in stealthy, killing stealthy, and getting out stealthy, by all means have a quiet gun. Maybe what you REALLY need, though, is a cross-bow or even long-bow. THAT'S what the Samurai really used when they wanted to have aimed fire, long-bows.

I can't shoot a bow and arrow. If I decided I wanted to be a stealthy assassin, I would simply have a Marlin 44 Magnum threaded to take a can, and I would shoot subsonic 44 bullets at whatever I wanted to kill quietly. Little fuss and bother that way, and if I can do it with one round, I can take the hull with me, too.

Oh, and by the time that need for stealth arises, all those Teppo Jutsu $3-4K carbines will have been confiscated before they are needed in anger, but my Marlin "deer rifle" will still be flying below the radar.

 

Second carry gun?

The Best Gun Writer Ever, Massad Ayoob, gives us all there is to know about carrying a second gun as a backup to the first.

Yes, there ARE days I carry a backup, and I carried a backup EVERY duty-day when I was a Deputy Sheriff in Uniform Patrol. Mostly, it was a S&W Model 60, in an elastic loop sewn into the strong-hand pocket of my prowl coat. Summertime, a small auto too it's place, but in the strong-hand pants pocket. Strong hand? Yep. Massad Ayoob doesn't recommend that, but I did it because I could have my hand on a gun at all times, and not appear to be offending the public. To my lights, the important thing was getting the first shot on target, not whether the first shot was a .38 Special or a .357 magnum (both were issued and permitted by the S.O.). I was qualified Revolver Master on both.

When the Dept. transitioned to semi-autos (Glock Mdl 17), I kept the Model 60 in the prowl coat.

Now that I'm retired, a .44 Special Bulldog is my usual sidearm, and when I feel the need for a second gun, I carry a Kel-Tec P3AT (.380 ACP). If "war" is more likely than usual, due to location and time, I'll carry a Glock Mdl 22, and my back-up will be a "car" gun, the Kel-Tec Sub Rifle 2000, in .40 S&W, which takes the same magazines as the Glock Mdl 22. In it's case (attache-case size, the Sub Rifle folds in half to 16 1/2" long), I have 2X29-round magazines and 3X15-round magazines. That's about a battle-day in a full war scenario (without full-auto).

I can do this scene also with a 9mm Kel-Tec P11, which takes a shorter version of the S&W 5906 magazines the 9mm Sub Rifle dines on, so I have magazine interchangability there as well.

Should I want to do a pistol/carbine combo in .45 ACP, I can carry my 1911A1, and it's companion carbine, the Marlin Camp 45. Not so much ammo capacity there, but plenty of range (and trajectory to figure out, 8 feet over-hold at 120 yards!).

Two more combinations are possible, .357 Magnum snubbie revolver and Marlin 1894 levergun, or .44 Magnum revolver and Marlin 1894 levergun. The Marlin .44, shooting a 240-gr FMJ-FN bullet from MY reloading bench, pushed by 23 grains of 2400 powder, is potent and flat-shooting to almost 200 yards, and deadly to over 500. The carbine has XS ghost-ring sights on it now, fine to 100 yards, but I'll probably put a new 1X4X40 Tactical scope on it soon, since the 200-500 yard capabilities are mostly a pipe dream now.

Carry gun and back-up, ammo compatible preferred. It's what THIS straight-case shooter does, teaches, and is equipped for.

Considering the dollars in shooting

Yes, we have to consider the cost factor.

Let's pose a fairly common problem: Take a citizen who is newly-aware of their rights and responsibilities of self-defense under the 2A. They want to learn to shoot, and if they're smart, they also consider the cost of their defensive array of armaments. They've asked Yours Truly to advise them and conduct their training, and I've agreed to.

Since they are considering cost, I advise them to layer on their 2A defensive arsenal, starting with a concealable defense handgun, then a shotgun, then a rifle. As you can see, what my advice entails is the citizen being able to defend their close-in spaces (with the handgun), then somewhat farther out (with the shotgun), then as far out as they want (with the rifle).

I have a NEW recommendation for the close-in spaces. It involves this weapon:

That's the new Charter Arms Pitbull, a 5-shot snubbie chambered in .40 S&W, a modern, rimless, high-pressure, straight-case pistol round. Most .40 S&W defense loads out of a short barrel are going to be in the 370-400 #/ft energy area, running from 850-1000 fps. That's better than 100 #/ft more than .38 Special, a low-pressure round. It's close to the energy of the Bulldog model in .44 Special, but there is a vast improvement in the cost to shoot it.

.44 Special ammo averages $35/box at retail, so, $700/1000 (1,000 rds being the minimum needed for advancement from new shooter to competent self-defense gunner). In the case of the .40 S&W Pitbull, you could get a case of this ammo for $275, a saving of $425 in the first thousand rounds of ammo alone. That is about the cost of the gun at "street-price", so by going to Forty instead of Forty-Four, you get a free gun!

This is a very technically-advanced revolver, a brand-new design. The advantage of the new design is the extractor system which makes it un-necessary to use "moon-clip" ammo retainers such as found in the S&W or Taurus Forty Caliber snubbies. BTW, there will be Laser Grips available for this revolver, too!

Yes, we DO, in fact, count our pennies here at Straight-Case.

H/T to Uncle for highlighting the Pitbull in his Gun Porn section.

Steampunk meets gunbloggers...(edited with new link)

...and hopes for a happy relationship. See comment #6 at the link.

Hope springs eternal, but if it fails, there are always single-action revolvers and heavy straight-case rounds to satisfy the soul, and for carry, modern double-action revolvers shooting those same rounds.

The steampunk link? The design of the 1911 as the era-perfect, personal-carry, bullet-dispensing machine reminds me of the famous British locomotive design engineer, Sir Nigel Gresley, who elevated his employer's London North Eastern Railway's fast passenger trains to the peak of both the art and science of rapid intercity rail transport with his streamlined Pacific-type (4-6-4) locomotives. The story of his trains establishing the forever speed records for steam that they did can be found here.

Carrying a 1911 used to make you top-drawer(pun intended) in your chosen weaponry, but that was then. There's a few other considerations, and as long as we're talking steampunk, let's compare them to revolvers.

(Waits for the cries of "Heresy" and "Apostate" to die down).

If'n you're gonna carry a 1911, why not substitue for it a Colt Anaconda, which gives you the choice of loading either kill-'em-behind-walls .44 magnums or the ballistic twin to the .45 ACP, the .44 Special? If'n that Colt is too big for your hip, and probably is for 80% of the people who would carry it, try a 20-oz Charter Arms Bulldog in .44 Special, loaded with Flying Ashtrays. OK, you get two less shots than that 1911, but it weighs half as much, and if 5 Flying Ashtrays won't do the job, you need a rifle company to bail your ass out of THAT jam, so you reload and wait for the cavalry.

Steampunk and Straight-Case revolvers. Yep, they ARE a pair to draw to/from.

I have this gun idea...

For a common-caliber, hard-hitting, semi-auto carbine suitable for the "zombie apocalypse".

It would be based on this Russian shotgun, the Izhmash .410 (which is also available in 12 & 20 gauge), but I would re-barrel it to .44 Remington Magnum caliber.

If I'm correct, the IZ-104 design, based on the venerable Kalishnikov action, would take the pressure of the cartridge, with a suitable barrel. It's all in the gas-regulation for operating the action.

Note that in a sidebar for the linked page, this 15-round magazine is available. It could be easily modified with a filler to enable use of the shorter .44 Magnum round, which is about the same diameter as a .410 shotgun shell, and both are rimmed.

OK, I can read your minds. You ask "why convert it?" Simple answer: the .410 slug rounds are suitable for medium, thin-skin game out to MAYBE 50 or 60 yards, any buckshot you shoot for less than that, but the .44 Remington Magnum is suitable to 200 yards or even more (on energy alone, it can kill out to 500 yards). Buffalo Bore's "Deer Grenade" .44 Magnum round has over a half-ton of energy at 200 yards, and only 11" of drop. Even in the hard-hitting 12-gauge, rifled slugs aren't accurate much beyond 100 yards. Yes, I know that Mikhail Kalishnikov invented the 7.62X39 for this service, but I just LIKE the work done by a larger-caliber round at short to medium ranges. It's a personal thing, you could say.

Since the Ruger Deerfield carbine went out of production, there is NO .44 Magnum, semi-auto carbine manufactured for this do-all and be-all Straight Case round. My guess is that for less than $1,000 total outlay, I could build such a carbine and field it.

This seems like a worthy winter project to me. All suggestions on smiths to do the re-barreling will be welcome.