Personal protection: 9mm vs. .357Magnum.

I we're out on the ranch today so please bear with gunfire here in the background now recently as far as I can tell it's become a trend for people to make the claim that nine by nineteen is just as powerful as a 357 magnum a viewer sent me a link to a video where some people were trying to prove that hypothesis I found their methods sloppy and their conclusions highly questionable but their conclusion was that at least under some circumstances the nine was just as powerful as the 357 also recently I saw a video where some guy was talking about his five facts that all shooters know and he said that all people who are serious about shooting and serious about self-defense know these five facts one of which was that nine by nineteen is just as effective his 357 Magnum now he used the term effective not powerful but still bad a few other things have led quite a few viewers to contact me and asked me to do a presentation comparing the nine and the 357 not necessarily the guns but the calibers so here we are so today I might shoot a couple of other handguns later but for the most part we're gonna compare this beretta 92fs caliber nine by nineteen with a four and three-quarter inch barrel to this Ruger security six 357 Magnum with a four inch barrel and we'll shoot a few different types of ammunition side-by-side and let's see if we can shed any light on the question about their comparative power and effectiveness now we'll start with a mundane task of shooting past a chronograph and we'll start with a nine-millimeter this is Remington ultimate defense nine by nineteen plus P with 120 for grain jacketed hollow point 11:46 1138 11:37 and 1121 now we'll try our 357 Magnum I've got this loaded with Remington green in white box 357 Magnum 125 grain semi-jacketed hollow point one grain difference in projectile weight I think we can live with that also remember the nine-millimeter we were using was plus P and it was ultimate defense that's pretty high up the food chain is 9-millimeter ammo goes by 357 Magnum standards this green and white box stuff is kind of benign so let's see how it does 1486 1486 14:23 and 1487 now let's try a different type of animal now we're back to our 9-millimeter now we have hornady critical duty nine by nineteen plus P but this has a 135 grain flex lock ballistic tip let's see how this does 1048 1,057 1037 1056 now let's see how that compares to the 357 now we'll try our critical duty 357 Magnum 135 grain flex lock ballistic tip so this should be a relatively fair comparison 12:45 12:46 1254 and 1258 now let's go crunch the numbers while we crunch the numbers and here is the results and what we see is that with our Remington ultimate defense nine by nineteen plus P we get a mean velocity of 1,000 135 feet per second but with a Remington green and white box 357 Magnum we get a velocity of 1,000 470 that's three hundred and thirty-five feet per second more that's a lot more now with our critical duty ammunition we see with the nine-millimeter plus P we get a velocity of 1049 but with our 357 magnum ammunition we get a velocity of 1250 that's still 201 feet per second more a lot more although 9-millimeter depending on your barrel length and brand of ammunition and configuration and whether or not is plus P there's a wide range of velocities and they're similarly a wide range of velocities with 357 magnum ammunition you're gonna find that 357 magnum is just more powerful than nine-millimeter usually by a wide margin however right about now is when someone says what about compact guns we've all heard that if you shoot a 357 Magnum and revolver with a snubnose barrel that you lose tremendous amounts of velocity and you end up with it not being any more powerful than a 38 special plus P well two things to that one that's just not true and two we have a presentation specifically on that subject if you want to watch it but just for today we're in luck because I brought my Ruger SP 101 357 Magnum with a two and a quarter inch barrel and I've got it loaded with the Remington green and white box 357 Magnum 125 grand semi-jacketed hollow points I'll shoot this past the chronograph and we'll see how these numbers compared so let's see what the coronagraph tells us about the performance of our snub nose 1271 1303 1296 and 1249 now let's go crunch those numbers so how'd we do with our SP 101 we got a mean velocity of one thousand two hundred and seventy nine that still one hundred and forty four feet per second faster than the nine-millimeter which was ultimate defense plus P and fired from a full-size barrel now you might ask why did I not shoot the nine millimeters through a compact pistol because it wasn't necessary to make the point I'm trying to make and that is that 357 Magnum is a lot more powerful than nine-millimeter however these are just numbers power does not necessarily translate into effectiveness effectiveness has to do with bullet mass bullet diameter and some other things now for this comparison we were comparing 135 grain bullets 235 125 to 125 so that was an even comparison also in terms of the bullet diameter now we call it nine-millimeter but most 9-millimeter ammunition has a bullet diameter 0.355 inches as we're 357 is 0.35 7 mm of an inch difference in diameter that's not enough to make a difference but in truly comparing the effectiveness let's see if we can shoot some other targets that will give us some input on that so let's shoot these $2 concrete blocks I'll shoot the one on your left with a nine millimeter and the one on your right with the 357 now I've got the 9 loaded with Remington green and white box 9 by 19 124 grain full-metal-jacket round those and I've got the 357 loaded with Remington green white box 357 Magnum 125 gray and semi-jacketed hollow point I couldn't find the Remington green and white box 357 with a Full Metal Jacket but let's see how they compare and now the 357 let's take a closer look so this is a pain shots of the nine-millimeter and this is nine shots with a 357 Magnum and remember when we were using Full Metal Jacket ammunition that should have given it a little bit of an advantage in this situation let's try shooting something else now let's shoot some evil jack-o'-lanterns I'll go back seven yards and I'll shoot the target on your left of the nine millimeter in the target on your right with 357 but this time for the 9 millimeter I'm going to use Remington golden saber 9 by 19 plus P 120 for grand jacketed hollow-point and for the 357 I'll still use the Remington green and white box 357 Magnum 125 grain semi-jacketed hollow now for those of you who haven't noticed both of these were filled with orange soda and did you notice that it seemed to take the nine-millimeter a few shots to really do some damage but the 357 it looked like it did a lot of damage with the first shot and then not much with the subsequent shots that's because the first shot basically blew out the orange soda guts and then the rest of the shots were shooting through a hollow pumpkin so which of these is more effective for your Halloween pumpkin assassination missions you be the judge now shooting cinder blocks and pumpkins is fun and it tells us what it tells us but to me a definitive test is the meat target now for those who haven't seen it before this pork chop Peck rolls followed by pork ribs watermelon lung tissue more pork ribs on the back covered with leather jackets skinned the lining of the jacket will act as rudimentary clothing and behind that as always the high-tech fleece bullet stop now I'm going to go back seven yards and I'll shoot this with a nine millimeter I'm going to shoot four shots the first two will be the ultimate defense in the second two will be the golden saber these are all 9 by 19 plus P with 124 grain jacketed hollow points so how'd we do well when the 9-millimeter rounds hit the ribs on the front shattered them pulverized our watermelon lung tissue where the projectiles hit the ribs on the back broke them and all four projectiles were stopped by the leather jackets skin on the back of the target so 9-millimeter effective if you load it with the right ammo yes but let's make a new meat target we'll try this again with the 357 Magnum and see if we can see any difference now with the 357 Magnum I was again using the Remington green and white box 125 grain semi-jacketed hollow point I only fired two rounds because from where I was standing it looked like those two had done about as much damage as the four or nine millimeter rounds had now in the front we see that where the bullets hit a rib broke them but even though the bullet diameter is the same with the 357 as it is with a nine essentially the holes look a lot bigger the two shots pulverized our watermelon lung tissue went through the ribs on the back and again both projectiles were stopped by the leather jacket skin on the back of the target we also saw a great deal of expansion now let me show you a close-up of all the projectiles were shoved and here's all of our projectiles now with the golden saber 9-millimeter ammo as is typical it lost its jagat these ultimate defense stayed together and there's some really good expansion but remember those are high-tech bullets the 357 ammo by comparison is a very low-tech projectile but we still see a great deal of expansion and equal penetration and to me anyway it looked like the two rounds of 357 did about as much damage as the four rounds of 9-millimeter now in comparing the effectiveness of the nine versus 357 there's one more thing I want to add and we're not gonna demonstrate this I'm just going to say it in deer hunting I have shot and I have seen shot several deer with nine-millimeter and 357 Magnum and from where the deer is shot to where it becomes incapacitated measured both in distance and time is significantly less with a 357 than it is with the nine and in doing net cropsey's on those animals I see much bigger wound channels and much more extensive tissue damage with the 357 than I do with the 9 so put that together with everything we've seen here today and what can we take away from it well first the idea that a nine-millimeter is just as powerful as a 357 Magnum no it's not I suppose if you made the absolutely best choice in handgun and best choice in ammunition for the nine and compared that to a very poor choice in handgun in ammunition for the 357 you could get pretty close but in any test that's in any way fair the 357 Magnum is significantly more powerful in an odd and as far as effectiveness goes by anything I've ever seen in the field or anything I could demonstrate here today the 357 Magnum is more effective anywhere from marginally to extensively now I am NOT saying that a nine-millimeter is a poor handgun choice for home defense concealed carry personal protection anti-personnel purposes the nine-millimeter can be a great choice and because a nine-millimeter is almost always an autoloader and a 357 magnum is almost always a revolver the 9 can give you the inherent advantages of an autoloader such as greater magazine capacity and that a lot of people can just reload an auto loader faster than they can or avoid so the 9 can be a great choice but as far as the idea that it's just as effective as a 357 magnum not by anything I can demonstrate which brings up the question for those people asserting that it is how did they come to that conclusion and the answer is I really don't know but if I were to speculate I think they are quoting studies that they've seen rather than talking about anything they personally experienced or put to the test now we have a very long-winded presentation on gun fight statistics and you can watch that but to give you the very short version of it a lot of the studies that people quote when they're talking about guns are fundamentally flawed and some of them are agenda driven one example I'd like to make is there was a study about police shootings that inadvertently included when a police officer used his issue firearm to commit suicide they counted that as a police shooting you can see the flaw on a study like that and because of that and many other things I always put a lot more stock into things that I've personally seen and things that I can personally test than I do in things I read about so all that having been said don't try this at home on what you call a professional and thanks for watching the 9-millimeter vs. 357 video [Music]

Channel: Paul Harrell

Views: 1,493,914

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Id: CD2t_qG9dls

Length: 16min 30sec (990 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 26 2017