Everyday Carry
By Robb Manning
Choosing a Caliber for Carry: Part 1, number of rounds
The debate on carry ammo rages on now more than ever. On one side you have the “.45 ACP only” crowd, and on the other side is most everybody else. This topic can branch off in a hundred different ways, but right now I’m going to boil it down to just one issue, which can be answered by one question: Would you rather have just a few cartridges of a larger caliber, such as the .45 ACP, or many rounds, such as the 9mm?
Bad guys rarely travel alone. For me, more rounds are better than fewer.
For me, the answer is simple, and I’ll tell you why. I go with more rounds. In comparably sized carry pistols, you’re going to have more rounds if you go with the 9mm, and usually it’s not close, there’s going to be roughly twice as many 9mm rounds as there are .45. That’s just the way it is, due to the circumference of the cartridge. To be thin enough to carry, most .45s are going to be single-stack, and that’s going to place the round count at five or six rounds (ie. Springfield Armory XD-S, and Glock G36). That’s in the revolver range. A 9mm of similar size will pack ten rounds into the magazine (Ruger SR9c, and Glock G26).
I’m going to give you two reasons why, for me, more is better. First of all, pistols aren’t easy to shoot. It’s not like Hollywood where you can be rolling around, flying through the air, doing cartwheels as you’re shooting at bad guys, and with ten shots ten bad guys fall to the ground. I’m a pretty good shot, but not great. On the Marine Corps pistol range I’ve managed to shoot Expert more often than not. At self-defense range, at my fastest “unload a magazine” speed I can place all of my rounds into a paper-plate size target. But that’s at the range. Despite all the gun forum smack talk, the highest majority of us have never drawn and fired at a bad guy standing seven feet away from us, as he’s going for his gun, or already has his gun pointed at us. How good is your group going to be then? This is reason number one why I’ll choose ten rounds of 9mm over five of .45 ACP; it gives you twice as many chances to hit a vital spot and stop a bad guy. For all the talk of ballistics, it’s better to hit a target once with a 9mm, than miss with a .45.
Second, bad guys often travel in groups. One on one, maybe five rounds is a viable choice, but what happens if you’re confronted by two, three, or more bad guys? It’s a fact that otherwise logical people tend to be emboldened and make bad choices when in groups of people. Sure, perhaps when the first threat goes down, the others will scatter, but do you want to stake your life on it? You also need to think about the various scenarios that you could encounter. It’s not always going to be like on TV where a bad guy pops out of a dark alley and says, “give me all your money.” Turn on the news and see the different possible scenarios where self-defense could be needed. It could be a group of five, ten or even twelve people with baseball bats, or even with nothing more than good sneakers ready to stomp someone. An unarmed group of people bent on stomping someone for no good reason can be more lethal than an assailant with a gun. This is reason number two, why I choose to go with more rounds of 9mm, than fewer rounds of .45; there could be multiple threats to engage.
Of course, everyone is different, and everyone has different situations. I’m thinking from an urban self-defense environment. Perhaps your self-defense situation is an angry bear or cougar. In that instance, I’d go with the .454 Casull out of the 8” barreled revolver.
Contact Rob Manning at Robb.Manning@onwisconsinoutdoors.com.