Marine Side Arm?

[1 CAV]

Originally Posted by delta13soultaker

I say this with great respect, but yes for certain we are looking from a different point of view.

From where I'm looking...

Kinetic energy from any self-defense handgun is irrelevant.

The .45 ACP, at best makes 350 to 500 ft-lbs of energy. That is not enough energy to wound a man, and no where near enough to knock a man down.

The 9mm, at best makes 350 to 500 ft-lbs of energy.

A teenager in karate class can hit with 450 ft-lbs of force in a match. A boxer will deliver and absorb hundreds of 1,000 ft-lb punches in a fight.

.

I got this far and quit reading because I was laughing too hard to continue.

Let me just wrap this one up for my part by saying, ok, whatever man. If I had to choose between the Karate Kid and a .45 round coming at me I'll take Ralph Macchio everytime. LMAO.

I'm through arm chair quarterbacking this one and I'm not going to get dragged into some cyber warrior argument. You stick with your 9 MM and high degree of training. I guess you're the only one around here with training or something right? Whatever.




Oh by the way, Triton High Velocity 165 grain + P .45 ACP ammo delievers 572 ft-lbs of kenetic energy, which if I'm not mistaken is more than 500.

[dbltap]

So.......I guess I'll just ask a Marine what side arm he carries. Sounds like its a mixed bag for the rank and file grunts.

[delta13soultaker]

Originally Posted by dbltap

So.......I guess I'll just ask a Marine what side arm he carries. Sounds like its a mixed bag for the rank and file grunts.

They carry M9's.

[Trouble 45-70]

The Marines mission is to kill the enemy. They have been effectively doing that for well over 200 years. They have found that the 9mm especially in the Baretta is inadequate for the mission. My son in the Army doesn't like the Baretta because he has found too many of them are prone to breakage at inconvenient times. He has used it in Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan and found it wanting. A friend of mine got hits on a Mau-Mau in Kenya (Obviously not Obamas ancestor) with a full magazine of 9mms from a High Power and not only did not kill his assailant but didn't knock him down either. His Sgt took the guy down with a .303. The guy was wearing 7 woolen overcoats. He said that with his Webly, which he had to turn in prior to deployment to Africa, he would have expected to see the Mau-Mau knocked down.

[delta13soultaker]

Well...I hear you. Here's what I'm saying.

The 9x19mm has over 9,000 variations in one man's collection.

It is the oldest service cartridge anywhere (1902).

It is the standard issue handgun/SMG cartridge for over 70 countries, not counting the countries like China that are using it on limited basis. (There's 195 countries on Earth today, you can bet over half use 9x19mm for something.)

60% of US cops carry a 9mm duty weapon. It is more used than .45 ACP and .40 S&W combined.


We Americans are the only folks sitting back and questioning a cartridge that has been killing combatants before we were born, and will still be doing the job long after we are all buried and forgotten.

I have heard all I can about .45 ACP "hitting like a ton of bricks". It really does not. With FMJ it punches through like any other FMJ.

As a military cartridge, 9mm makes as much sense as .45 ACP. That's why this year the we have paid $220 for 500,000 more M9's. They're expanding the SIG contract a bit too.

Show me a US issued sidearm design that doesn't break under what we do to them.


For civilian self-defense:

Caliber Penetration Expansion

Hydrashok
9mm 124gr +P+ 13.3" 0.67"
.45ACP 185gr +p 12.9" 0.69"

PDA
9mm 135gr 11.5" 0.72"
.45ACP 165gr 11.3" 0.78"

Golden Saber
9mm 147gr 12.8" 0.68"
.45ACP 230gr 14.1" 0.76"


The numbers never get very remarkable. The bottom line is a .45 ACP is not the devastating death-beam that the internet-cowboy-ninjas proclaim. If 9mm sucks as bad as everyone likes to claim, the .45 ACP is nearly as bad.

I'm not going into the ft-lbs thing. Around 500 ft-lbs of energy is moot. 600 ft-lbs is moot. 700 is moot etc. The threshold for reliable wounding is around a ton of kinetic energy and above.



So the caliber thing is fun to discuss. But calibers don't win fights. Tactics, techniques, and procedures win fights.

My advice is free, unless you don't take it.

[USMARINE1884]

Ok to clear this up Marines currently are issued the M9 only certain groups as special operations qualified MEU's (Marine Expeditionary Unit) carry a .45, (MEUSOC 45) also Marine Corps Detachment 1 the new SOCOM part of the USMC carry the Kimber Desert Warrior 1911. I have seen all these in my time in the Marines. I own the civilian model (same as gov.) Desert Warrior. I also would like to add that I saw a guy get hit with 8 9mm rounds to the chest before he decided to finally go down. I then saw a guy take a 12 gauge 00 buck to the chest when we entered a house and he didnt have any time to decide he went down! I never used my M9 at all I only saw a SAW gunner use his because his SAW got so jammed and we were in a pretty sticky situation.

Semper Fi!

[TranterUK]

Originally Posted by delta13soultaker

Calibers do not win fights.

Well said delta, and true. Men win gun fights, armed first with training, then practice, determination and the one and only, experience.

[delta13soultaker]

Originally Posted by USMARINE1884

Ok to clear this up Marines currently are issued the M9 only certain groups as special operations qualified MEU's (Marine Expeditionary Unit) carry a .45, (MEUSOC 45) also Marine Corps Detachment 1 the new SOCOM part of the USMC carry the Kimber Desert Warrior 1911. I have seen all these in my time in the Marines. I own the civilian model (same as gov.) Desert Warrior. I also would like to add that I saw a guy get hit with 8 9mm rounds to the chest before he decided to finally go down. I then saw a guy take a 12 gauge 00 buck to the chest when we entered a house and he didnt have any time to decide he went down! I never used my M9 at all I only saw a SAW gunner use his because his SAW got so jammed and we were in a pretty sticky situation.

Semper Fi!

I saw a guy take a center-mass 7.62mm ball and decided not to go down for a hot minute, a really hot minute. But I wouldn't bad mouth the M24 or ol' .308 Win over the thing.

The XM45 is scratched because somebody leaked who the contractor was that would be awarded the first contract under the DoD duel-contract gig. So allllll that work and that design is dead. Gone.

Another standard issue .45 concept will hit the loop again in about 5 years. As in on the procurement drawing board. Who the hell knows if it will get anywhere; who knows what things will be like. The Army and Navy have gotten nowhere. The next round already belongs to the USAF. We'll see.

In the meantime the 9mm is not going anywhere.

The fact the 9mm ball sucks is no secret. What makes it suck is what makes all the other pistol ball rounds suck. The Army already answered the problem and pending legal feedback, we'll be discarding the traditional 882 ball round soon.

The new 9x19mm bullet looks conventional outside, but is a lead-free, solid alloy, hollow based bullet. It has no jacket and no core. The bullet is long; the base actually sits fully inside the case, as in around the primer flash hole. The propellant is inside the projectile, which is inside the case. Almost nobody can say they've seen a pistol bullet like it on the inside. And in gel, it's a consistent 15" depth penetrator with a drastically curved wound channel, almost a J. It ought to wound as badly as a good hollowpoint, but without expansion. It is a heavier, slower 9mm caliber bullet that looks from the cross section I've seen like about 15-17mm long. The cavity inside is about 75% of the length.

It may work. So far it works so well it has raised legal questions, but on paper. I'm not praising it yet though...those hollow steel armor-piercing rounds we had in the 90's that zipped 3,000+ fps from a 5" barrel looked sweet too in gel but sucked on 140 lb unbathed bad guys.

Originally Posted by TranterUK

Well said delta, and true. Men win gun fights, armed first with training, then practice, determination and the one and only, experience.

Yes, sir, we're only armed with what we know.

I shouldn't have egged this caliber debate. A thread on recoil management, maneuver, cover as barriers, blocked car egress, interior points of domination, or the highly neglected night marksmanship....or why not some field craft like daylight versus night prep for an ACOG...anything might of been better use of text.

Maybe some young budding shooters will read it over though and decide for his or her self how they'll chose the tools to defend themselves.

My friend, I was born from the womb with quad-Picatinny rails on my pecker. My ego says I ought to leave this one alone and take the wife out for ice cream.

[USMC-03]

Originally Posted by delta13soultaker

My ego says I ought to leave this one alone and take the wife out for ice cream.

Come on over, Delta, I'll buy you and Shelly a double scoop of Marionberry from a local dairy...

[delta13soultaker]

Thanks, bro

[xwad]

The USMC Marine Expeditionary Unit still use a version of the M1911 called the MEU(SOC).

This is what it looks like:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...c/907f65d8.jpg

[17thfabn]

My experiance with shooting victims is all from being a fire department medic. Over the years I'm guessing I've seen 50 or more shooting victims. Of course I'm seeing them 5, 10 or more minutes after they have been shot.

The vast majority of shooting victims (are they victims if it is one thug shooting another thug?) I've seen have been with hand guns. The 9mm is probably number 1, followed by the .22 in popularity.

In my experiance the number one 1 shot stopper is...........










The .22 revolver.

This is because it is the number one suicide gun. All the gun suicides I've seen have been with a .22 revolver, except two. Those two were both murderers who had been chased by the police and decided they didn't want their day in court.

When you hear a gun in the house is more dangerous to it's owner than to a criminal it is because of suicides. But I think this is a phoney statistic, because those people who really want to end it all would just find another way.

Most of the local cops carry 9mm. Their ammo must be much better than that carried by the thugs. The wounds from the few police shootings I've been involved in treating seemed to be much worse than those people shot by thugs with 9mm.

I have to throw the B.S. card on the guy who claimed some one was shot by a 9mm and it did not penetrate into his cheek. I'll bet that the rest of the story is that the shot hit some where else richoceted off loosing much of it's energy and then struck it's victim.

I once saw a guy who had a 9mm slug sticking out of his arm. But it was a confirmed richochet shot.

I am amazed at the number of people who are shot in the chest, neck or abdomin and the bullet misses all the vitals.

The chest is pretty well packed with the lungs, heart and great blood vessels. If you penetrate all the way through you have the spine in the back.

In the abdomin you have organs that if hit may not cause immediate incapacitation, but will cause massive bleeding that will put some one down once given enough time for shock to set in. The kidneys and liver have large amounts of blood flowing through them. The stomach and intestines also have a fair amount of blood flowing through them. And again you have the great blood vessels and spine.

It seems almost impossible to not hit something vital in the neck. You've got the jugular veins, carotid arteries, trachea (wind pipe) and the cervical spine. And yet I've seen people shot and stabbed in the neck, with no apparent effect.

One guy was in a shoot out in the front seat of a car, passenger seat occupant versus driver at less than 4'. He had a small wound in the back of his neck, that we thought was probably a glancing wound. He seemed no worse of for the experiance. We treated him as if it was a gun shot wound (GSW) to be on the safe side. The E.R. doc showed us his X-ray. You could see clear as day a .25 projectile in his neck that stopped about 1/4" from his cervical spine near c-1, and c-2. Hit those and it is a quick trip to the morgue.

My point to all this is some times it is just luck of the draw. A good center of the mass shot misses all the vital organs and the person survives. Other times a person is hit high in the right side of the chest and the subclavian vein or artery is nicked and they quickly bleed out.

[17thfabn]

Originally Posted by delta13soultaker

The 9x19mm is the oldest service cartridge anywhere (1902).
.

How about the Russian 7.62 x 54mmR? I think it is still used by the Russians and others in their Dragunov marksman rifles and medium machine guns. It was adopted in 1891.

Delta13 what kind of gun and ammo were you getting 3,000 fps out of a 5" barrel?

[delta13soultaker]

I guess that makes that 7.62 x 54mm the oldest service rifle cartridge. I meant to say oldest service pistol cartridge, but...

They were a low tech AP round, made of steel tube and had a thin plastic cup in the base that detaches after leaving the muzzle. Very lightweight, hollow steel tube with sharp edges in front, defeated soft body armor within 10', produced in several calibers. I admit I exaggerated the velocity. A 5" barrel was more like 2,200 fps/9mm. It pushed 3,000 fps from a 9" MP5 barrel.

It was a good idea at a glance. But as swift as those bullets went, they were sub-sonic in a few meters, not accurate very far, and they turned many reliable weapons in to single-shots because they wouldn't cycle a slide or bolt without modification. A solid penetrator bullet gives the same terminal ballistics and defeats the same armor, but without the other faults.

[artabr]

Originally Posted by 17thfabn

My experiance with shooting victims is all from being a fire department medic. Over the years I'm guessing I've seen 50 or more shooting victims. Of course I'm seeing them 5, 10 or more minutes after they have been shot.

The vast majority of shooting victims (are they victims if it is one thug shooting another thug?) I've seen have been with hand guns. The 9mm is probably number 1, followed by the .22 in popularity.

In my experiance the number one 1 shot stopper is...........










The .22 revolver.

This is because it is the number one suicide gun. All the gun suicides I've seen have been with a .22 revolver, except two. Those two were both murderers who had been chased by the police and decided they didn't want their day in court.

When you hear a gun in the house is more dangerous to it's owner than to a criminal it is because of suicides. But I think this is a phoney statistic, because those people who really want to end it all would just find another way.

Most of the local cops carry 9mm. Their ammo must be much better than that carried by the thugs. The wounds from the few police shootings I've been involved in treating seemed to be much worse than those people shot by thugs with 9mm.

I have to throw the B.S. card on the guy who claimed some one was shot by a 9mm and it did not penetrate into his cheek. I'll bet that the rest of the story is that the shot hit some where else richoceted off loosing much of it's energy and then struck it's victim.

I once saw a guy who had a 9mm slug sticking out of his arm. But it was a confirmed richochet shot.

I am amazed at the number of people who are shot in the chest, neck or abdomin and the bullet misses all the vitals.

The chest is pretty well packed with the lungs, heart and great blood vessels. If you penetrate all the way through you have the spine in the back.

In the abdomin you have organs that if hit may not cause immediate incapacitation, but will cause massive bleeding that will put some one down once given enough time for shock to set in. The kidneys and liver have large amounts of blood flowing through them. The stomach and intestines also have a fair amount of blood flowing through them. And again you have the great blood vessels and spine.

It seems almost impossible to not hit something vital in the neck. You've got the jugular veins, carotid arteries, trachea (wind pipe) and the cervical spine. And yet I've seen people shot and stabbed in the neck, with no apparent effect.

One guy was in a shoot out in the front seat of a car, passenger seat occupant versus driver at less than 4'. He had a small wound in the back of his neck, that we thought was probably a glancing wound. He seemed no worse of for the experiance. We treated him as if it was a gun shot wound (GSW) to be on the safe side. The E.R. doc showed us his X-ray. You could see clear as day a .25 projectile in his neck that stopped about 1/4" from his cervical spine near c-1, and c-2. Hit those and it is a quick trip to the morgue.

My point to all this is some times it is just luck of the draw. A good center of the mass shot misses all the vital organs and the person survives. Other times a person is hit high in the right side of the chest and the subclavian vein or artery is nicked and they quickly bleed out.

I was helping a buddy of mine teach a CCW class. One of the students was an ER doc who told us about a woman that had come into his ER.
She had been shot at almost point blank range, she had powder burns on her forehead. She was shot with a .38 Special fired from a snubnose revolver. The bullet hit about dead center on her forehead and flattened out.
She had a couple of slight cracks in her skull but the bullet never penetrated.
The bullet was a leadnosed jacketed HP. A true hardheaded woman.


Art

[17thfabn]

Originally Posted by artabr

I was helping a buddy of mine teach a CCW class. One of the students was an ER doc who told us about a woman that had come into his ER.
She had been shot at almost point blank range, she had powder burns on her forehead. She was shot with a .38 Special fired from a snubnose revolver. The bullet hit about dead center on her forehead and flattened out.
She had a couple of slight cracks in her skull but the bullet never penetrated.
The bullet was a leadnosed jacketed HP. A true hardheaded woman.


Art

I made a run on an old lady about 7 years ago who shot herself in the chest with a snub nose .38 (I guess it throws out my all suicides with a .22 theory). The bullet went in below her heart, and wedged in the skin in her back. You could see the pullet poking out, but it did not break the skin. She seemed no worse for her ordeal, her vital signs were stable. She did complain alot about us startng an I.V. on her. I found this strange after she had shot herself? A couple of minutes after we droped her off in the E.R. she became non responsive and died about two minutes latter. Some times it takes a little while for the bullets to have an effect.

If this was a thug who was attacking some one, he could very easily fight for ten minutes like the devil himself then latter die.

[17thfabn]

Originally Posted by delta13soultaker

I guess that makes that 7.62 x 54mm the oldest service rifle cartridge. I meant to say oldest service pistol cartridge, but...

They were a low tech AP round, made of steel tube and had a thin plastic cup in the base that detaches after leaving the muzzle. Very lightweight, hollow steel tube with sharp edges in front, defeated soft body armor within 10', produced in several calibers. I admit I exaggerated the velocity. A 5" barrel was more like 2,200 fps/9mm. It pushed 3,000 fps from a 9" MP5 barrel.

It was a good idea at a glance. But as swift as those bullets went, they were sub-sonic in a few meters, not accurate very far, and they turned many reliable weapons in to single-shots because they wouldn't cycle a slide or bolt without modification. A solid penetrator bullet gives the same terminal ballistics and defeats the same armor, but without the other faults.

Even from a 9" barrel 3,000 fps is impressive. But I guess 3,000 fps with or little weight behind it is just not enough.

[Teejay9]

As I've heard it told, the .30-06 and the .45 did so much damage that the NATO people wanted to take some of the hard-hitting out of the game. Along with standardization of the rounds, they wanted something not so destructive. Sounds like a Kumbaya moment. Anyway, The US opted for fast, penetrating rounds, as opposed to rounds that could take an arm or leg. That's how the M16 superseded the M14. Cheaper, and didn't mess the target all up. Or so I've been told. TJ

[macro01]

marines prefer 1911 more, their MEU uses a modified 1911

[Thomas G]

Originally Posted by Kane

id like to point out the exact same thing happened in the war with the phillipines in the 1900s. the army adopted a .38 revolver over the colt 45 but the soldiers soon dumped it in favor of the newly made 1911. the cycle repeats.

When they dumped tier .38's they were issued single action .45 Colts