357 SIG

Mr Aguirre

Thanks for your blog and book.  The book is probably the best primer on what to expect, if we see a crash inour future.  It isn’t as ‘pretty’ as many other such books, but much more useful–especially the arguments for stayingin the suburbs–instead of ‘survival retreating’ from Argentina’s eperience.

Regarding the video.  I agree very much with your choice of the .357 Glock.  I also have a #31 Glock and will carry it more when the weather gets colder.  I have a Kahr CW9 for warmer weather.  I only have (second hand) knowledge of one person shot with a .357 magnum, by a deputy that I knew.  The robber simply dropped on the spot and was pronounced ‘DOA’ at the hospital.  Somewhere that 125 gr magnum load earned the term ‘trapdoor load’ because a lot of bad guys just dropped straight down like they were falling through a trapdoor with a solid hit from one.  The Glock 31 fiully loaded weighs pretty close to the same as my unloaded Glock 20 and is smaller in all of the right places.

I reload .357 Sig and can load a box for $12.00, buying once fired cases (in lots of 500) with Hornady or Nosler 124gr JHP’s–both good performers.  Gold Dots are much more expensive and raise the cost to $17 per box.  If you reload this round I highly recommend the Lee collet crimping die.  (Never factor in your per hour labor or you may never reload again).  All loads in this ’31 are as accurate as target wad cutters in my Gold Cup .45, except the 124 gr fmj Winchester loads that I can buy at my local Walmart (about $30–last I checked).

Mark

Hi Mark, I agree with you and that’s why I went with the 357 SIG in the first place. While I dont expect one shot stops with any caliber (hangun or rifle) I know some are better than others and the 357 SIG is clearly one of the most effective ones you can shoot from a handgun. Besides its power there’s also the issue of it being the most accurate mass produced pistol caliber with a flat trajectory as well as the one that will feed best and  less likely to jam compared to straight wall cases.

Join the forum discussion on this post

FerFAL

Reply: Myths about self defense

Mr Aguirre

I have to agree with your post about self defense myths in a couple of cases where I have had (thankfully) indirect experience:

A tenant of mine was shot 4 times with a .38 Special-Colt Diamondback loaded with Federal 158gr
LSWCHP's.  One round hit her directly in the breast bone--it followed her skin completely around her ribs and was under the skin of her back. One round went through and through her left thigh--but no bones or arteries and one round logged in each forearm going lengthwise and causing some nerve
damage in one arm.   She managed to fight back a bit and later crawled to a waiting police car.  (I had given  her the ammo and her ex-boyfriend took them from her revolver).  The other 3 slugs were removed at a later visit to her doctors office.  The ex shot himself twice (!) in the heart and died--leaving me some major cleanup.  The tenant was a very pretty blonde about 5'5'', 115lbs (about 10 lbs boobs) and that .38 sure didn't stop her--she had a young son to protect.

A high school friend took a load of 00 Buck from a Cop's shotgun at about 35' about 2'' below his
solar plexus.  It did stop him at that moment, but he was showing off his (horrendous) scar from the wound at bars a few months later.  He was about 5'10''  170lbs and a gifted athlete before he went
'to the dark side'...later died from a drug overdose.

You are right---nothing is a sure thing, and most people survive their gunshot wounds.  I'm sure you
will see a lot of confirming emails like this.

Mark in Oh

Hi Mark, yes, that’s surprisingly common, the projectile travels all around the torso and ends up on the other side, just under the skin. The doctor just cuts the skin and removes the projectile. On the other hand, there’s people that get shot in a limb with 22LR round nose and the projectile travels across the arm, through the armpit and into the heart or some main blood vessel, killing them. If they had been shot with a more powerful caliber, it may have gone through the arm and none of that would have happened. Ammunition is a pretty simple variable, it’s the human body and mind that messes up the equation. :-)
Sounds like your buddy was very lucky. The key word there is “stop”. He may have survived, but it sounds like the 00 buck did its job putting him out of the fight.
Take care folks.
FerFAL

Caliber of choice

Anonymous said...
I live in Costa Rica part of the year. This weekend I finished my 2nd seminar in AMOK!, a knife fighting discipline. It is not that I plan to become a knife fighter. I want to know how to defend against it and also how to get me blade into play. My friends in Costa Rica think I'm paranoid. I'm the only one of them who has not been robbed or mugged.
Ferfal, I have a question. CR is an NPE for me as a tourist. As such I carry only a Glock 19, no holster...a "clip-on') with just that magazine (loaded with DPX) so I can toss the gun if I need to do it. I prefer the 9mm and a few additional rounds to the 357 SIG. What made you decide on the 357?

Take Care

Hi,
9mm or bigger LOADED WITH PREMIUM JHP AMMO, will do the job, some will do it a bit better than others, but just a bit.
I have no problems with my Bersa 9mm as a self defense weapon. I keep it loaded with Gold Dot +P.
The 357 SIG gives you some more stopping power and penetration.
In case all I get is one, not so well placed shot, I prefer a 357 SIG shot.
Other like 45 ACP, 40 S&W or 9mm. They are all good as long as you use good ammo.
If you can only get FMJ, definitely go for “big and slow” (45 ACP).
As long as I can choose, I prefer the very fast, violent expansion of a 124 GR JHP traveling at over 1400 fps.

FerFAL

The “myth” of stopping power.

Anonymous said...
From the FBI Firearms Training Unit:

"Barring a hit to the brain, the only way to force incapacitation is to cause sufficient blood loss that the subject can no longer function, and that takes time. Even if the heart is instantly destroyed, there is sufficient oxygen in the brain to support full and complete voluntary action for 10-15 seconds.
Kinetic energy does not wound. Temporary cavity does not wound. The much discussed "shock"
of bullet impact is a fable and "knock down" power is a myth. The critical element is penetration. The
bullet must pass through the large, blood bearing organs ..."

And yet people have been shot in the brain on occasions and still didn’t loose consciousness and survived. So that pretty much ruins that affirmation. Unless a very fast rifle round with a center of the head hit or a hollow point projectile turn the brain to pulp, there's no 100% assurance that a head shot will stop an attacker immeditaly for sure. Again, it still defends on where it hit precisely and with what caliber.

Here’s my offer, let me hit you once in the face, chest, stomach, or even a good kick to the thigh.
If you are still standing we can discuss the “myths” of kinetic energy some more. :^)
If as you say temporary cavity has no implication, there would be no difference between 38 special, 9mm and 45 ACP, all with round nose ammunition, since the permanent cavity is almost the same in all three in spite of the slight difference. Yet 45 hardball is clearly a superior stopper, based on street results.
That information is dated and it is abundantly proved wrong by empiric evidence. As I mentioned, a shoulder shot putting an attacker down for good, a gut shot with a .32 long dropping an attacker armed with a knife instantly, shock by 12 ga. LTL plastic pellets shot at contact range, even without serious penetration the shock was enough to leave the soccer player unconscious on the ground instantly. Trauma kills, kills all the time.


Seriously people, we can debate until the end of time, but some things are not opened up for debate:
1)Not all calibers are equal
2)Some have better one shot stop rates than others
3)Not looking into those rates and taking them into consideration is a pretty stupid idea.

FerFAL

Why 357 SIG?

My main handgun of choice is the Glock 31. I really like Glocks and I specially like the 357 SIG caliber.
On occasions I also keep a Bersa 9mm handy, loaded either with special EMB ammo or Gold Dot +P+.
Some people don’t know much about 357 SIG and think it’s equal to 9mm +P+ or even a notch worse than good 40 S&W.
This is some performance information found in Wikipedia on 357 SIG.

Performance
Because of its relatively high velocity for a handgun round, the .357 SIG has a very flat trajectory, extending the effective range. However, it does not quite reach the performance of the .357 Magnum with bullets heavier than 125 grains (8.1 g), with the same usable barrel lengths, the typical commercial loadings using 125-grain (8.1 g) bullets, fired from a four-inch (102 mm) barrel; a typical commercial .357 Magnum load propels a 125-grain (8.1 g) bullet to 1,450 ft/s (440 m/s), while a typical .357 SIG load propels the same bullet to 1,350 ft/s (410 m/s), with only a usable 2.85-inch (72 mm) barrel. Specialty loads, such as Double Tap Ammunition, are able to propel a 125-grain (8.1 g) bullet to 1,450 ft/s (440 m/s) from a four-inch (102 mm) barrel. Offsetting this general slight disadvantage in performance is the fact that semi-automatic pistols tend to carry considerably more ammunition than revolvers.
Also like the Tokarev, the .357 SIG works well when shooting through barriers. There has been a documented case in Texas where a police officer's .45 round did not penetrate a tractor-trailer's shell, but a .357 SIG round from a backup officer's gun did, killing the suspect inside. The round's ability to penetrate barriers is the main reason for its adoption by law enforcement agencies. However, other documented police shootings have confirmed the round's ability to not over penetrate the body, even though ballistic gelatin shows 16 inches (410 mm) of penetration through heavy clothing (125 grain Speer Gold Dot). The Virginia State Police have had several documented officer-related shootings involving the .357 Sig, and in every case, not only were the felons stopped instantly with one shot (except one who was shot several times while attempting to murder an officer), the bullet either didn't exit the felon, or was stopped in the clothing upon exiting, proving that even at such high velocities, the round when used with adequate expanding hollowpoints will not over penetrate soft tissue. The same department has also reported that attacking dogs have been stopped dead in their tracks by a single shot, whereas the former subsonic 147 grain 9 mm duty rounds would require multiple shots to incapacitate the animals.[11]
The reputation that the .357 SIG round had for losing its crimp (allowing for bullet setback) was partially true when the cartridge was new and ammunition manufacturers were just beginning to produce the round. These problems have since been corrected by major manufacturers. As a result, the round now exhibits nominal setback characteristics, similar to other cartridges.[citation needed]
The bottleneck shape of the .357 SIG cartridge makes feeding problems almost non-existent.[citation needed] This is because the bullet is channeled through the larger chamber before being seated entirely as the slide goes into full battery. Flat point bullets are seldom used with other autoloader platforms because of feeding problems; however, such bullets are commonly seen in the .357 SIG chambering and are quite reliable, as are hollow-point bullets.
One disadvantage of the .357 SIG is that it fires a .355" bullet at higher velocities than most bullets of that caliber are designed for. Very few bullets have been designed specifically for the .357 SIG, and .357 Magnum bullets that are designed for the same velocity range cannot be used due to their slightly larger diameter. Because of this, there are fewer ammunition choices in .357 SIG than one might expect for a cartridge using .355" bullets.
Another potential drawback of the .357 SIG is its somewhat harsh treatment of pistols that are not designed to handle its high pressure that coupled to its case head area yields a for a semi-automatic service handgun cartridge high bolt thrust.[12] Firing .357 SIG through modified pistols that were originally designed to fire the .40 S&W can accelerate wear.
The "Accurate Powder" reloading manuals claims that it is "without a doubt the most ballistically consistent handgun cartridge we have ever worked with."[13]

Implementation

The SIG-Sauer P229 in .357 SIG is currently the standard issue firearm carried by agents of the United States Secret Service, the Bastrop County Texas Sheriff's Office, the North Carolina State Highway Patrol, Delaware State Police, Rhode Island State Police, Alameda County Sheriff's Office, Virginia State Police, Federal Air Marshals and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. In most cases, it has replaced 10 mm, .40 S&W and 9 mm loads. In 1995, the Texas Department of Public Safety became the first government agency to implement the .357 SIG. The Tennessee Highway Patrol presently issues the Glock 31 pistol chambered in .357 SIG. The Bedford Heights Police Department (OH) currently issues the Glock 31/32 in .357 SIG.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.357_SIG

FerFAL

Ammo availability

I’d like to mention this because people are talking about it a lot and maybe this can help.
The standard approach is to buy guns in common calibers because the ammunition is more plentiful and easy to find.
These last few months people got very interested in the kind of ammo available, thinking about ammo availability in the future.
What happened in USA was that because of these events, people started stockpiling guns and ammunition.
Of course, they cleaned out most common calibers and the ones that aren’t that common like 10mm or 41 magnum where still available.
“Oh, the theories are wrong! Odd calibers are clearly the way to go!”. Well, no.
Because of the situation, it would seem that common calibers don’t make as much sense, but you can’t base you decision on a momentarily situation.
Common calibers will be restocked. Odd calibers will still be expensive and hard to get in smaller shops.
What happened here was that the Military Factory ( Fabricaciones Militares) cut down the production of ammo because of the crisis.
Guess which calibers were dropped and which ones continued to be manufactured?
You go that right, common calibers, 22LR, 9mm, 45, 308W, calibers they new would sell and not sit around waiting for someone with that uncommon firearm caliber.
So people, in spite of recent events stick to common calibers, and if guns are your “thing” then yes have other guns so you can take advantage of any kind of ammo you may find, but common is always better if you are just going to have a few guns.
Same for other smaller local caliber manufacturers: 22LR, 12 ga, 9mm, 40 and 45 , 38 and 357 magnum, those are the ones that get made.
Stick to common calibers and have a nice amount stocked. When you need it it’s no time to go buying.

FerFAL

The 357 SIG

Don Williams said...
I would note that the Secret Service and US Air Marshalls (guard airliners --most highly trained shooters in federal government) agree with FerFal -- they use 357 Sig.

I wondered why -- probably because 357 Sig will go through Class II body armor and if someone is wearing Class III armor, it is bulky enough for you to see so you know to shoot for head anyway.

Whereas with 9mm and 45 ACP you may lose a lot of valuable time by firing several shots at center of mass --to no avail --before realizing guy has thin class II body armor and you need to aim for head. By which time, bad guy has you.

Plus 357 Sig turns cover like car doors and thin walls into mere concealment.(Surprise!)

Finally, it shoots flat enough to make life interesting for a rifleman if the rifleman is shooting at you at urban ranges (100 yards or less.)

Doesn't quite have the magazine capacity of the 9mm, however. And greater recoil would make head shots harder with 357 Sig unless you are a pretty good markman who's shot the round enough to handle it. Plus 9mm is available around the world --even Russians and Chinese are using it.

Factory 357 Sig comes with FMJ in flat-nosed semiwad cutter shape.
Interesting enough, semiwad cutter rounds sometimes penetrate deeper than pointed FMJ because they don't tumble/roll. (Army doctor who does studies with ballistic Gelatin.) Handgun hunters like flatnosed semiwad cutter bullets for same reason.

What do you think, FerFal? Any other advantages to add or corrections?

Before I say anything, I think that with today's ammo ( good stuff made by Gold Dot, Corbon and Federal)there's little difference. Getting into this kind of detail is for those of us that want the extra edge certain caliber may provide.

As Joseph said, almost all big bore calibers will go right through car doors and thin sheets of metal, and enough energy is left to kill the poor guy on the other side.

I’ll give a bit of an edge when going thorough thick glass or other surfaces to the SIG given its speed.

But it’s not just about penetration.

I think they all use 357 SIG because so far police departments that have been using it are very pleased with it.

There’s always going to be that SOB that gets shot 50 times in the chest and a couple RPGs to the head and is still alive, but in average the 357 SIG has been performing very well.

With a barrel like the one in my Glock 31, ballistics are very similar (sometimes even better) than most 124gr 357 loads.
Also keep in mind that any .40 can be turned to 357 SIG and vise versa, just swap barrels. Everything else, including the mags, stays the same.
This makes practice with your 357 SIG much cheaper since all you have to do is get a .40 barrel and shoot all the .40 ammo you want.

If you get “Double Tap” ammo, firing out of a gun like my Glock 31 with a 4.5” barrel ( which is still smaller than a 1911 ), you are sending a 125gr. JHP Gold Dot projectile at 1525 fps.

That’s a nice handgun round to fire at someone that wants to hurt you.

Keep in mind that the self defense load that made the 357 magnum legendary, fires a 124 gr. JHP at 1400 fps.

Why the slight speed difference? The revolver looses a bit of gas through the cylinder/barrel gap.

Same happens with high speed 22 LR. Ammo in autos and revolvers.

CCI Stingers will fly out of my little Bersa 22 ( 3,5 “ barrel) at 1231 fps, while the same round fired out of a 4” barrel S&W revolver flies at 1120 fps.

Compared to hot loads offer also by doubletap, the best a 9mm+P (124 gr JHP) can do out of a Glock17 is 1310fps.

Now this is a nice +P 9mm load, but its still 215 fps behind the 357 SIG.

What can I say, I like it a lot.
Not only because of the numbers, but also because I find it easy to shoot fast (much easier than a 357 magnum revolver) and it’s also one of the most accurate calibers I’ve fired.

Magazine capacity isn’t 9mm, but you still have 15+1 in the 357 SIG/40S&W vs. 17+1 in the Glock 17 9mm.

I’ll happily give up those two rounds for the extra power per round the SIG provides, and it’s unparalleled feeding reliability compared to straight wall cases.

I like it a lot.

FerFAL

Reply: Weapon of choice.

Anonymous said...

What do you carry now-a-days? What do you think is high capacity? A glock 26 is "only" 10 rounds. Are you suggesting a full service size pistol like glock 17 minimum?

I carry a glock 26, it conceals well. Thinking about getting a glock 30 for more stopping power. Good idea?

Subcompacts are intended as backup. If I were you I'd carry a standard or compact as a main carry gun, nothing smaller, plus a subcompact in the same caliber.
I know its more comfortable, but it's not a pair of panties, it's a gun for life and death situations. You want all the capacity, power (short barrel reduces fps) and accuracy you can get.

But if those are the choices, I'd go for the Glock 30 and get 45 ACP ammo for short barrel guns.

I myself like 357 SIG.

Hits hard, it’s fast, replicates one of the best stoppers ( 124.gr JHP 357 magnum at 1400 fps).

It’s accurate and controllable, and the bottleneck case feeds reliably into the chamber of autos.

You can also get 9mm or 40 S&W barrels for your 357 SIG Glock for cheaper traning.
You can't do that with a 45 ACP.

By high capacity I mean at least more than 10, preferably 13, 15 rounds, or 17 like the Glock 17.

Double stack magazines mostly. I love the 1911 and it was my first serious gun, but today I think you have better alternatives.

In my opinion everyone should have a 9mm, even if you carry something a bit more powerful for self defense.
If I could only have one auto pistol to get dropped anywhere in the world, that would probably be a Hi Power 9mm.
Something like a Glock 19/17 are perfect choices too.

9mm, 40 S&W, 45 ACP and 357 SIG, they are all excellent choices with the right ammo. Good brands like Gold Dot, Federal or Corbon.
Now, if I I’m getting just one, shot, I’d prefer a shot of 357 SIG over 9mm.
45 ACP is an excellent choice, but you generally sacrifice capacity.
45 ACP vs 357 SIG, the SIG gives you more capacity, a smaller gun and a bit more power.
40 S&W supposedly has the best one-shot stop rates, but I prefer the SIG since it’s faster and expands more reliably.

Again, 9mm up to 45 ACP are all excellent choices with the right ammo.
The only thing you have to remember is that it’s not some death ray like in the movies, you’ll have to keep shooting as fast as you can until the attacker goes down. If you don’t get results after the first 2 or 3 shots I’d start aiming a bit higher, if you know what I mean…
Here police uses 9mm FMJ ammo, and they kill criminals like flies.
I guarantee you, they are all very dead.

FerFAL