I always hear people taking about how a rifle is a better stopper than a pistol but today I was looking at a .45 colt and a 7.62 x39 and the .45 colt was bigger wouldn't it be a better stopper with the bigger slug? another question, Why do rifle round get necked down?

FEET PER SECOND. The 7.62 round travels a hell of alot faster than a .45 and every time the velocity doubles the kenitec energy QUADRUPLES! The size of the hole that the projectile makes is insignificant if it is moving very slow. ENERGY KILLS.

BTW. How old are you?

So why don't they neck down the bigger calibers like 45 colt with a .30 caliber slug why have the big slug?

I'm 18 why do you ask?

Well they do. .400 CorBon is a .45 acp necked down to a .40 cal bullet. go to www.tromix.com if weird ass calibers are your thing.  The reason i asked your age was that they hardly teach physics anymore in high school and was curious wheather or not you were still in it.


[Edited to say that TROMIX is closed. Dont know why. Anyone else know where to find wildcat loads on the net?]

Stupid question - what exactly defines a rifle round vs. a pistol round besides size/length?  What confuses me is  what I read about the M1 carbine and that it fires "pistol ammunition."  Granted the .30cal round it shoots has a straight-walled case and it's not a spritzer bullet, but it seems awfully long for a "pistol cartridge."  And doesn't the .30cal round generate pressures nearly equivalent to or at the low end of modern rifle cartridges?  So why would it be considered pistol calibre?

Well if a small slug is so good why do they neck down all the handgun rounds to make them more powerful.

Well if a small slug is so good why do they neck down all the handgun rounds to make them more effective.

Larger case capacity, lighter bullet, more velocity.  Most rifle cartridges have a neck which the round headspaces on, most straight walled pistol cartridges headspace on the case mouth.  At close ranges, which is what most pistols are designed for the heavier bullet delivers more energy at lower velocities.  However small caliber bullets at high velocity are eqaully effective due to said high velocity.

I might add that necking a cartridge down does'nt mean that it will be more effective, what it does mean though, is you end up with more case capacity and usually a smaller, lighter bullet, which in turn gets you more velocity.

1911greg, you will soon notice that when it comes to effectiveness, no one can agree on a thing.  Some people say light bullets and high velocities are best, other heavy large bullets.  Some people swear fragmentation is key and other talk about weight retention.  There is one thing that no one argues, rifles are much more powerful.  Consider the 223 Rem round, it's a very weak rifle cartridge but it has almost 1300 foot pounds of energy, while 45 ACP has 350 to 500.  Even a very powerful handgun cartridge like the 44 Magnum typically only has 700 to 900 foot pounds.  By comparison, powerful rifle cartridges used to dangerous game can have over 5000 foot pounds of energy!  It's not only about energy though, penetration must be appropriate for the size target and bullet design to be appropriate to expand of fragment.

When it comes to handguns, all the calibers except 10 mm, 44 mag and their more powerful cousins are marginal stoppers.  The problem is that the recoil of these rounds makes them tactically useless because second shots are slow.  The difference between 9mm and 45 cal is small, your best bet is to choose a caliber that you can shoot well because placement is very important.  One short coming of necked cartridges is their tendency towards muzzle flash which can affect night vision and thus follow up shots.  With that said, 357 sig is very fun to shoot and when I get some bucks I will be converting my Sig 229 from 40 cal to 357 Sig with a factory barrel.

I didn't think the .44 was that good of a stopper I guess the statistics aren't too good for it because not too many people carry it. How about the 10mm wasn't that developed or tested for the FBI? why didn't they use it and why didn't it catch on?

1911greg -

The .44 Magnum is not a good stopper in the sense of anti-personnel ammunition because it is designed to take on things greater in size than the average human.  The bullets from a .44 Mag are not generally constructed to expand on a human target.  They tend to act like a FMJ round and completely penetrate the target, expending very little of its kinetic energy within the target.  Also, most .44 Mags have wicked recoil, making follow up shots slow at best.

The 10mm auto round is an excellent anti-personnel round, in theory.  It was designed to pack a .41 Magnum-level punch in an autopistol platform suitable for law enforcement usage.  Its power was actually its undoing.  The original 10mm was so powerful it wrecked the crappy guns that were built for it (pre-Glock 20 days) and the recoil proved unsuitable for smaller-statured FBI agents.  The result of this was the downloading of the 10mm.  The problem with this was the fact that the guns were still big and now unneeded for a underloaded 10mm.  Hence the birth of the .40 S&W round.  This round duplicated the power of the downloaded 10mm, all in a 9mm-sized weapon.  Night night, 10mm.

So that's the scoop on the .44 Magnum and 10mm.

Handguns were designed as defensive weapons, and rifles, offensive weapons.  Rifles usually fire higher velosity projectiles.  Because necked cartriges can handle higher chamber pressures do to their design, which means they can fire projectiles at higher velosities.