0282 – 4 Reasons Why I Am Switching from 45 ACP to 9mm and Why You Too Should Make the Change
Summary: This podcast is a little bit painful to post. You see, for the past two years I have been eating crow as I made the switch from .40 S&W to .45 ACP. Just about the time I was really getting into my groove with the my Templar Custom Arms Glock 25.5 chambered in .45 ACP I’m going to make another switch. Yup, I’m making the switch to 9mm. I have a Caracal F that I have been testing (more videos coming early next week if things go well) and I will probably have a couple of 9mm Glocks built up in the next month. I will be testing those guns heavily in the next few months and one of them will be replacing my Trusty Glock 25.5. Admin: Sponsor of the Day: Dale Fricke Holsters Live Safe Academy: Lou Chiodo 3 Day June Course with Western Reserve Tactical and Alesandro Podovani of Safer, Faster Defense When the Balloon Goes up Defining the Context All day every day I carry a gun. I carry a gun for one simple reason. I want to have the tools available to deal with a life and death situation when the need arises. I spend a good bit of time and energy being the best defensive shooter that I can be and part of the equation is making sure I have the right equipment for the job and the right equipment for me to complete the task that requires me to deploy my defensive handgun. I continually evaluate my carry system and the context of its use to see if I can fine tune it to perform better. This is always something that can be tweaked to make the system work better in one way or another and considering these tweaks can be a daunting task as often improvement in one area is a sacrifice in another. Today we are going to look at some of the factors that I considered carefully in my decision to dump the big powerful .45 ACP for the 9mm. The Preferred Defensive Pistol When I began teaching defensive handgun courses several years ago, and for quite some time before I was teaching in an official capacity I was recommending, high capacity, striker fired, automatics for anyone who was interested in a defensive handgun. My typical recommendation was .40 S&W when I started teaching, but as I started to look more realistically at why I was such a fan of the .40 I realized that I was leading myself and others astray due to my competitive background. I liked the .40 because it made major which has no bearing whatsoever on defensive shooting. You see, I failed in that I let some other discipline influence firearm choice. when it comes to defensive handguns, we cannot allow anything that is not related to defensive shooting influence our decision. Competition is NOT defensive shooting. My error. I corrected it as soon as I realized there was an issue. This has been an issue that I have been modifying my position as my knowledge has increased. As soon as I dumped the .40, I made the switch to the .45. I enjoyed the recoil of the 45 ACP more than the .4o S&W and the terminal ballistics were certainly superior to a 9mm. Add to all that the fact that I am a pretty solid defensive shooter and I felt that I was able to handle the recoil of the .45 more efficiently than my average student… That line of thinking began to unravel almost immediately. A couple of weeks ago I sat in an ICE Training IDC and finally faced that facts that I knew were on the horizon. I decided that it was time to bite the bullet and make another change. Here is why. 1. Wounding Capacity Wounding capacity is a complex variable that smart people over simplify constantly. Lets look at some of the important points of Wounding capacity that we must understand. Most people look at the terminal ballistics of ONE 9mm round and compare it to ONE whatever round and use this as definitive evidence as to why one round is superior to another. If I only had one shot? But I don’t only have one shot. I carry a standard capacity automatic. The terminal ballistics of EVERY round that is combat accurate matters not just the performance of a[...]
