9x19 may have higher muzzle velocity, but .45 ACP still beats it in wound channel diameter due to the larger slug. The same is true with the .357 magnum. .44 magnum, .45 Colt, .454 Casull, and .460 S&W Magnum are very close in diameter to the .45ACP and have substantially greater muzzle energy but still don't necessarilary create larger wounds while the, .50AE, and .500 S&W are both larger and more energetic than the .45ACP, but are often impractical.


.45 ACP is a great general people-killing cartridge. It makes fairly large holes in people and does so fairly reliably with decent concealability and manageable recoil. It's bigger cousins are really large-game hunting rounds, since large animals require greater penetration.

If you expect to go up against someone wearing armor, bring a rifle. If you expect to go up against bears, take a .500 S&W and a rifle.

And add that .357 magnum and .40 S&W with modern JHPs have the best one-shot stop ratios out there and, well, the 9mm Para isn't the end all, be all bees knees after all. Not to say that the ol' nine is bad under any stretch (my daily carry in a G17, after all), but there are more effective cartridges out there if you're willing to put up with a bit of extra, but still manageable to most people, recoil.

Ugh. I hate the 9mm, no matter how you strech or pack it. Its lack of stopping power is fine for the police market where the goal is (usually) more to subdue than it kill, but for military applications, it is simply horrible. Sure, the 9mm is probably the most common pistol and SMG round seeing service with today's police and military forces, but that doesn't make it the *best.* There's a reason why the US Army recently issued a memorandum of intent to seek a new service pistol chambered for .45 ACP. Yes, the Army, after twenty years of the 9mm Parabellum-firing Beretta, is switching back to the good old .45. And, as an actual real-life soldier, I would rather have a .45 ACP Thompson than a 9mm MP5.

9mm FMJ
.45acp FMJ

As you can see in those links, the rounds don't produce that different of results in FMJ, which is what the military would be using. 9mm yaws a bit earlier, that's about it. Stopping power based on size, it's a psychological reaction to being shot. The only way you're getting a 1 shot take-down (with damaging the central nervous system) is if the pain gets to them, in which case, being shot is being shot 2.5 millimeters isn't going to make much difference. Otherwise, your main hope is to damage a vital organ, again, 2.5 millimeters is not going to make that large a difference. Quicker follow up shots, better accuracy, and a higher magazine capacity on the other hand...

Well, the Army more recently than the call for a potential new service pistol in .45 ACP has shown great interest in the new Expanding Full Metal Jacket rounds put out by Federal. I wouldn't be surprised if the MilSpec version will have some variance in the one in this article (like the use of materials other than lead for environmental and soldier health reasons) but it'll work pretty much the same.

Isn't it against international law to use expanding rounds in warfare?

Yeah, just like we're not supposed to fire our M2 .50 cals at people because they're "anti-material" weapons, not anti-personnel. . . . . but then again, we're shooting at their weapons, not their bodies, so we nicely sidestepped that one.

Ahh...but the Hague Accords states that we can't use a bullet that "causes undo suffering". Besides, the bullets says "Full Metal Jacket" in the descriptor, no?

And this urban legend has proven to be one of the most difficult to remove. It's not illegal to shoot infantry with a .50 BMG weapon or there wouldn't be mil-issue sniper rifles (which are often referred to as anti-material rifles in mil-speak) firing the round, no?

Last I heard, that crazy Canuck with that record breaking shot wasn't hauled in for war crimes...

I used to fall into the "Lettest thou not enter battle without a handgun whose bore beginneth with 4." school of thought.

Then I saw how close the performance gap between 9mm and .45 really was, and how little real effect it has.

Now I believe in using the largest caliber you can afford to fire a lot, and can comfortably fire a lot.

Skill is a much larger factor in stopping power than caliber.

I always heard it as it was the largest round allowed to be intentionally shot at a person in a war.

Except for the fact that A10s fire their cannon at infantry all the time. Same goes for tank cannon and the 25mm Bushmaster in the Bradley. All of these fire a projectile, casing, and propellant combination commonly referred to as a "round".

NOTE: I am a southerner. I live and work in GA.

Half of the people I know that shoot guns (not for their job (like a cop) but for fun) live up North. I know lots of people in the MASS, NY, PA, OH, IN, IL stretch that shoot guns. I see just as many gun stores up there as I do down here.

Now it is a little more acceptable down here to own/posses/carry a gun from a social perspective than up north.

I've been doing some digging around, about the best I can tell is that the geneva convention does bar certain types of rounds from being used on infantry, and some specialty rounds for a 50BMG are designed for anti-material, and would violate the convention if used on infantry due to the way the round works. So, maybe it'd be more accurate to say that rounds used in a m82 in a anti-material role and not allowed to be used on infantry, but regular ammo for it is fine?

The Geneva Convention doesn't address ammo, at all. The Hague convention bans the use of ammunition that expands easily in the human body, specifically addressing jacketed soft-points and notched bullets. The St. Petersburg Deceleration bans the use of Explosive Projectiles Under 400 Grammes. However, at the time the St. Petersbnurg Declaration was made the United States was a militarily irrelevant little country and was not invited to the talks and has never acceded to the treaty. International agreements are only binding on those countries that choose to be bound by them. So while France, Russia, and Britain can't shoot you with an explosive .50 bullet, the United States can. And, technically, if the UNited States is involved in the conflict at all, this prohibition doesn't apply to any other country involved.

The unit I'm in is an aviation unit with OH-58D Kiowa Warriors, and they take M2s on their birds every time they fly. And they don't fire ball ammo like you would issue to a ground vehicle crew -- our FARP only carries a 3:1 mix of API and tracer. API = Armor Piercing (Incendiary), which is an anti-material round. And we shoot it at insurgents all that time.


. . . but then again, they're not uniformed combatants, so I doubt that any of the aforementioned rules-of-war conventions technically apply (though we act like they do).

In most cases it's not about not having been invited to the talks, but about which treaties the USA chose not to sign or even to simply call void and ignore (like the additional protocols of the Geneva and Hague* Conventions or that nice little treaty that actually prohibits the USA from developing and installing a global missile defense system).

The Hague Convention (or one of it's later additions) bans also bullets made from non-metallic material (or more specifically material that will not show up on x-ray), fragmentary ammo (for anti-personel use) and the use of guns with a caliber beyond 20mm for direct anti-personel fire (IIRC, at least the german army has specific regulations on that point).

So what about all those 40mm fragmentation grenade launcher rounds the Germans use? They aren't exactly designed for stunning anti-material effect.

I think its bullets that intentionally fragment after entering the body that are barred, not frag grenades and the like.

Tarantula is right. Sorry for the sloppy wording. The ban is about bullets designed to break up after entering the body. That was one of the things that led to the heated debates about the 5.56mm NATO-ammo at the time of the Vietnam War (5.56mm FMJ rounds tend to break into several pieces more easily than the bigger 7.62mm rounds - or at least they tended to back then - which brought up the discussion wether or not they violate the Hague Convention).

German 7.62 MM NATO rounds also break up. Unlike identical looking US 7.62mm NATO rounds that follow the same spec. No idea why, the deep mathematics of terminal ballistics are not something I do.

To put it in SR terms... regular ammo would be fine, while ex or ex-ex would violate the hague convention because they are designed to break into more pieces after entering.

I have read the same thing. That article speculated that the crimp on the bullet made it weak enough to break up on impact.

Actually, no. The only things that the Hague Convention ban are expanding bullets, chemical and biological weapons, and the firing of projectiles or explosives from balloons and other aircraft for a period of five years starting in 1899.

Fragmenting bullets are perfectly alright, as are large caliber bullets.

Aren't fragmenting bullets a type of expanding bullet?