.380 ACP: The Biggest Little Caliber

now that we have reached the 14th installment of our epic pocket pistol series it's probably time that I get around to talking about the caliber that completely dominates this category of handguns 380 acp if you saw my video about 32 acp a few weeks ago the history of 380 is going to sound really familiar it was developed by John Browning in 1908 just nine years after he came up with 32 acp the first 380 pistol was the colt model 1908 pocket hammerless which was a variant of the model 1903 chambered in 32 like 32 acp 380 was more popular in Europe than in the United States the Europeans have lots of different names for it like nine-millimeter Browning nine-millimeter short 9-millimeter browning short nine by seventeen millimeter and nine millimeter Curt's because the metric system is better and less confusing and the first half of the 20th century 380 was widely used by military and police in Europe in some cases replacing the 32 ACP sidearms they just adopted a few years prior back in the States John Browning's 45 automatic was standard issue for the Armed Forces and our law enforcement was dominated by revolvers usually in 38 special 380s were almost exclusively used by non uniform civilians in the mid to late 1900s the popularity of 380 acp faded in the u.s. along with most other pocket pistol calibers I think a lot of this had to do simply with the effects of urbanization as people moved into cities and suburbs carrying a handgun became less socially acceptable for polite post-war Americans in many parts of the country state and local laws restricting concealed carry became more common and existing laws or more strictly enforced on top of all that in 1968 our wise and all-knowing federal government passed the gun control act among other things this law created the federal licensing system for firearms dealers it prohibited the sale of guns to minors and most relevant for our discussion today it created the sporting purpose is standard for importing firearms these new import restrictions were supposedly intended to slow the influx of what the news media was calling Saturday night specials or low-quality cheap small caliber handguns that were frequently being used in crimes of course the import restrictions did nothing to reduce violent crime but fifty years later we are still stuck with a convoluted point system that handguns have to pass before they can be brought into the country this essentially ended the importation of small handguns chambered for small cartridges like 380 and 32 regardless of whether or not they were actually either low-quality or cheap so by the time the modern concealed carry movement really got going in the 1990s 380 acp was not especially popular as more and more states passed legislation supporting shall issue carry permits there was suddenly a new and rapidly growing market for small handguns but 20 or 25 years ago if you didn't want to carry a full-size or compact pistol the standard go-to option was a snubnose 38 there were a couple of small 380 s on the market but they weren't the tiny featherweight models were used to seeing today that all started to change in about 2003 with the release of a little pistol called the kel-tec P 380 based on the success of their P 32 and 32 acp kel-tec was able to just slightly scale up the design and make it work for 380 acp with a polymer frame and a loaded weight of just 11 ounces the P 380 was by far the lightest 380 ever to go into production kel tec stole a lot of these guns but demand for a new breed of pocket 380 s didn't really skyrocket until it was fueled by the power of a household brand name in 2008 Ruger introduced the LCP a tiny polymer frame 380 that looked suspiciously similar to the kel-tec right away the LCP was a hit for Ruger and in the last decade they have sold over 2 million of them in the meantime other handgun manufacturers didn't waste any time coming up with their own lightweight pocket 380 s including Smith & Wesson Taurus car Sig beretta Glock and [ __ ] during this same time period we've also seen the rise of the subcompact single stack 9-millimeter pistols which bridge the gap between the pocket pistols and the compacts what this means is that anyone who is interested in buying a concealable handgun today has more options to choose from in a wider variety of sizes than at any time in the past it's good to have options but that also complicates the decision making process so let's take a look at how the 380 pocket pistols as a general category compared to the alternatives we're going to consider the larger guns like the single stack 9 millimeters and on the other end the pocket pistols and calibers smaller than 380 I also wanted to compare 3 ATS to snubnose revolver z' in this video but after thinking about it there are just too many issues to cover and that topic really deserves its own video so I will get to that sometime in the near future compared to a single stack nine-millimeter like the Smith & Wesson shield the Glock 43 or the Walther pp s the main advantage of a 380 is the smaller size at a glance they may not look significantly smaller but for someone who wants to carry in a non-permissive environment the three ATS are more practical to keep 100% concealed all the time I did the math and among the most popular models the average loaded weight of a single stack nine-millimeter was about 60% heavier than the average pocket-sized 380 that makes a big difference especially if you want to carry the gun in a pants pocket or in your waistband without a belt or in some other less conventional carry methods on the other hand 380 ammo is not as affordable as a 9-millimeter there are far fewer self-defense loaders to choose from and of course the most common objection is that the round is not as powerful as 9-millimeter and will get to the issue of ballistics in a minute but like I've pointed out many times throughout the series in the context of personal defense for armed citizens that should be a relatively minor part of the equation the more important question is whether you can actually hit the target and with the pocket 380s a lot of people find that really challenging frankly most people don't shoot these small 9 millimeters very well either but on average they do seem to be a little easier to handle of course that's gonna vary a lot depending on the specific model and the person shooting for example I have a little more confidence shooting the 9-millimeter shield compared to the 380 bodyguard the shield's larger grip just makes it more controllable but like most people I shoot the Glock 42 which is on the large end of the spectrum for a pocket 380 a lot better than the nine-millimeter Glock 43 so there is no hard and fast rule except maybe that for the lightest of the three ATS like the ones that weigh around 11 to 13 ounces loaded shooting them well is going to be a demanding task by just about any standard it's easy to forget that the pocket 380 s are not the smallest semi-autos around either in overall dimensions or in the size of the caliber itself earlier in this series I have talked about pocket pistols chambered in 25 acp 22 long-rifle and 32 acp you could argue that the main advantage of the three ATS compared to these other Mouse guns is that it's got superior ballistic performance again I want to set aside that argument for a minute because I think the real benefit of the 380 s in this case is simply their ubiquity you got many more options to choose from and they're gonna be a lot easier to find whether you're walking into your local gun shop or you want to order one online that doesn't mean those smaller calibers are necessarily a bad choice it just means that you might have to do some extra work to track one down and find a holster and other aftermarket accessories I can think of two main reasons you might want to go through that hassle to carry a sub 380 pocket gun the first is that for some reason the three ATS are just not small enough for what you have in mind maybe you want a pocket carry but you're like me and you're not a very big person and you don't like wearing big baggy pants so you don't have very big pockets even the smallest 380 might be pushing the limits of what you can comfortably cram into those pockets or maybe you're like the guy who commented on one of our videos that a 25 acp beretta was the only gun he could conceal and his trunks when he went swimming at the YMCA there are plenty of niche applications that might require something smaller than a Ruger LCP the other big advantage of the smaller calibers and one that I've talked about a lot previously is that they just don't recoil as much as the ladies with such a small amount of surface area to get a grip on some people find that they can get quicker and more accurate hits with the pocket gun that doesn't want to jump out of their hand as much as a 380 does but depending on the size of your hands and your level of manual dexterity you might be just as likely to have trouble with one of those tiny pistols because there's just nowhere to put your hands without making the thing malfunction or running into some other issue if you're worried about that but you still want to take advantage of the reduced recoil and a pocket gun you might consider something like the beretta 3030 - Tomcat it's a 32 acp and it's very small but the grip is relatively large so only after we have considered all of these other issues do I think it's a good idea to factor in the terminal ballistics of these different calibers if you start looking into the real world anecdotal evidence of what 380 acp is capable of you'll find a lot of people drawing the conclusion that it's the minimum caliber that should be relied upon for self-defense and you'll also hear that it's a useless piece shooter not fit for killing mice and squirrels a few years ago when we first started our ballistic gelatin project we tested 20 different 380 loads using a Glock 42 with a four layer heavy clothing barrier on the gel just like we've seen with all the other pocket pistol calibers these bullets either expand or penetrate but they're not very good at doing both none of those 20 loads met the standard of 12 to 18 inches of penetration and at least a 150 percent expansion a couple of them look like they got pretty close if you look at the averages like the hornady critical defense and the Sig V crown but even those had at least two or three individual bullets failed to meet the standard and that's with a Glock 42 a lot of the smaller guns have even shorter barrels which means less velocity and probably worse performance from these hollow points so if you want to judge these loads based strictly on the typical standards used in wound ballistics there is not a 380 with performance on par with a good service caliber load like a 9-millimeter 40 or 45 but that doesn't mean they're useless either with good shot placement 380 is going to work just fine for personal protection in all but the most extreme cases personally I would prefer to rely on around that's got consistently good penetration even if it's got unreliable expansion something like the Hornet ext P a non expanding Full Metal Jacket round with a flat tip might also be a good choice but we haven't tested one of those yet as always whatever you choose it needs to work reliably in your gun and it needs to hit the target where your sights are aligned in the next installment of our pocket pistol series we're going to have a little 380 showdown and find out how some of the best pistols in this category compared to one another in the meantime if you need some ammo for your pocket pistol or any other gun be sure to get it from us with lightning fast shipping at Lucky Gunnar calm

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Length: 12min 5sec (725 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 04 2019