The .32 S&W Long as a man-stopper

[Dale53]

gunfan;
I have not chronographed the .32 S&W Long loads. They do what I wish (shoot well and work well for edible small game).

The .32 Magnum load chronographs at 1100+ fps out of my S&W 16-4. I also shoot them out of my 4" SP101 and my S&W 631 Kit Gun. Really, tho', most all of my .32 shooting is done with my .32 S&W Long loads. I no longer hunt varmints (too dern old and feeble) and my shooting is almost entirely target work.

I DO like the .32's, however, and find them very useful. The 631 was a great back up for my Beretta Over/Under while bird hunting. I often took sitting rabbits with the handgun (both cottontails and snowshoe rabbits). It was also really useful for wounded grouse that I didn't wish to shoot a second time with the shotgun. It also worked well for the occasional sitting grouse.

Here is the 16-4:



Here is the 631:



And finally, here is the Ruger SP 101:



In this day and age of "Bigger is Better", it is unfortunate that many have forgotten how really useful the small bores can be. This is particularly true when you cast your own bullets and adjust the load for the task at hand.

FWIW
Dale53

[Molly]

Here is some I use quite frequently:

.32 S&W Long case with 1.8 grs. of Bullseye behind a hollow base wadcutter (90 grs).

.32 S&W Long case with 2.6 grs of 231 behind a 100 gr cast Keith (group buy mould).

.32 H&R Magnum with 11.0 grs of H110 behind the Keith 100 gr. Keith bullet.

Dale53

Hi Dale,

I'm going to be back in Cincy for a day or two if / when our place sells. Being retired, neither of us are exactly glued to a schedule, so wanna spend a day when that occurs?

Got some sad news: I was polishing the bore of my .32 squirrel rifle with some squib loads of 1.0g HP38 under the 100g Keith bullet, and it was sorta boring. Velocity so low I could see the slugs strolling downrange. I guess I got bored or something, because toward the end, I was just popping them off as fast as I could fire, eject, load & close the action again. When I was done, the sun gleamed just right on the barrel to let me see something odd aout it. Closer examination showed a slight bulge about eight inches from the muzzle. Well, I've still got a hacksaw and it won't be the first rifle I've given a nose job, but it sure made me sick. I just can't believe that a single grain of powder was able to bulge that thick barrel.

Your 32 Mag load sure looks interesting, and I'll see about working up to it in my guns. I'm surprised you don't have something similar in the .32 Long.

Say HI to your honey for me.
Regards,
Molly

[Dale53]

Molly;
I will be MOST happy to welcome you back to "God's Country"!

However, my daughter and family will arrive here on March 30th for a week and I'll be tied up entirely on those dates. After that, however, I should be "good to go"...

I have little reason to hot load the .32 S&W Long as all I use it for is target shooting.

I am truly sorry to hear about your misfortune. That is a BUMMER!

FWIW

Dale53

[gunfan]

I love my .32's! They are SO much fun for a "day in the sun." (At close range, they can give a bad guy a "terminal headache.")

They work for me.

Scott

[olafhardt]

when a boolit hits the physical deformation of the metal and tissue transforms the kinetic energy into thermal energy, thus a cup of good warm coffee applies as much energy to the mouth and throat as 15 hits with a 45ACP. The momentum absorbed by the shooter is always greater than that absorbed by the party shot. I like my S&W 637 with whatever is in the cylinder. You tote whatever turns you on. All the knock out formulas and indexes are ridiculous.

[Judan_454]

Ive never been in a gun fight so I could not tell you what cal. works better as manstopper. But I remember a deer hunting season years a ago. We were make a deer drive across a duck marsh we kicked up a big buck which started running across the marsh full bore. One of the standers which my hunting parterners, Uncle shot at the buck running it continued to run for about another 200 yds and then dropped over dead. My hunting partner went to dress the deer out because he wanted to save the heart to eat. When he opened the deer and looked for the heart, it was totally gone it was blown to pieces from one shot from a 30-06. That deer ran another 200 yds with no heart,just goes to show you what adrenaline does even to a deer that is being pushed. So I tend to think the same thing could happen to a crimnal with a adrenaline pumpng though his vains.

[Greg]

Molly

87 grain - Lyman 313492 button nose WC, cast with a 50:50 alloy.
sized .313" - Javelin alox lube
WW 32 Long brass
WSP primer
4.2 grains HS-6
1.140" OAL

I like this load a lot, at fifteen yards I could keep my shots on a ¾" paster, back when I could see that well. that was with a 6½" SSM standing. It did really well on rabbits in snowy briar patches too.

[Green Frog]

I don't know whether this fits into the spirit of this thread, but I got out to the club with my I-frame 32 S&W L snubbie Sunday afternoon, and my usual load of 2.0 gr BullsEye behind a 100 gr SWC was staying in a dinner plate sized group DA @ 25 yds. If the bad guy is that far away and takes that much lead to the boiler room, he's determined enough that I'm in trouble anyway. If you want assured one shot stops, I guess an RPG would work, but below that, there will be anomalies with whatever gun/cartridge you use. JMHO, of course, and YMMV!

Froggie

[gunfan]

I don't know whether this fits into the spirit of this thread, but I got out to the club with my I-frame 32 S&W L snubbie Sunday afternoon, and my usual load of 2.0 gr BullsEye behind a 200 gr SWC was staying in a dinner plate sized group DA @ 25 yds. If the bad guy is that far away and takes that much lead to the boiler room, he's determined enough that I'm in trouble anyway. If you want assured one shot stops, I guess an RPG would work, but below that, there will be anomalies with whatever gun/cartridge you use. JMHO, of course, and YMMV!

Froggie

200-grain SWC? That's a LOOOOOOONG bullet! LOL!

(I think that you meant 100 SWC, right?)

Scott

[Dale53]

Regarding stopping power - Jim Cirillo told me, one time, that the only SURE thing is a .38 Wadcutter in the left eye. In a super market holdup shoot out, he shot a bad guy point blank range with a 12 gauge shotgun loaded with Breneke slugs. One shot to the torso and the guy didn't even drop his gun! The second shot, the guy drops his gun and runs for the door. The door only opened to the inside. When the bad guy felt the resistance of the door, he slipped to the floor, and expired.

I have shot deer through the boiler room and had them run anywhere from 30 yards to 200 yards (this with a .44 magnum).

FWIW
Dale53

[PanaDP]

Final note: in WWII, Applegate's OSS equipped its agents with .38 revolvers firing a 125g bullet at a MV of less than 700fps. I suspect that means two things: (1) some lack of confidence in hastily-trained agents to handle big-bore weapons; (2) a conviction that 2-3 rapidly fired bullets into center mass are generally a recipe for winning. The former isn't a big issue for most reading these posts, but the latter is certainly food for thought. And yes, even though I'm duly alarmed about the modern-day likelihood of a drug-crazed opponent, I rarely read of a defensive encounter in which the good guy loses because of the gun he's using. I know it happens, of course, but odds are that aggressive employment of a quality gun & ammo will win most times when it comes to civilian use of firearms for purely defensive purposes. (For LEOs required to go on the offensive against drug gangs & the like, the odds are far tougher.)

I have read before that after the first world war the British move from .455 webley and .476 elfield to .38-200 was not because of any new tech or tests. It was because so many of the experienced soldiers were killed in the great war that it left the British army with far less experienced soldiers and the brass thought it was better for them to hit with a .38 than to miss with a .455 or .476.

[Green Frog]

200-grain SWC? That's a LOOOOOOONG bullet! LOL!

(I think that you meant 100 SWC, right?)

Scott

I forgot to mention that I use 32 S&W (short) cases to make room for the bullet in the chamber.

Thanks, Scott. Typo corrected.

Froggie

[gunfan]

I forgot to mention that I use 32 S&W (short) cases to make room for the bullet in the chamber.

Thanks, Scott. Typo corrected.

Froggie

I wasn't trying to "yank your chain," I was just "ribbing" you a little!

While the factory .32 S&W Long loads are kept low to prevent stressing the "break-top" revolvers of last century, the .32 Long shares the ability of handling a rather "spicy" load when fired from a modern revolver chambered for the cartridge.

Hot .32 Long loads range well up into the mild .32 H&R Magnum spectrum, and have a distinct advantage over and above the .38 S&W Special "wadcutter" loads, as the bullets are inherently more accurate than those of the aforementioned .38. This is important during a firefight, because accuracy is the imperative when it comes to stopping a bad guy.

Let's face it, when you're shooting a smaller diameter/ lighter weight bullet, every advantage you can obtain (and use) is extremely important!

Scott

[Molly]

Warning: Long post.

Hi fellers,

I thought we’d pretty well wrung this topic out, but I was consolidating the load data I have on my computer, and came across something from about 35 or 40 years back that I thought you boys would find interesting. Mind you, this is a report, NOT a recommendation. I’m not saying you should do this, or that I would do it again, but I DID it, and the results were pretty interesting.

I’d traded into a “Young America” pocket revolver and ground the hammer off to make it sorta semi-hammerless. For light weight ease and speed of getting into action, there wasn’t – and still isn’t - a whole lot around that would equal it, much less beat it. The barrel was only something like an inch and a half or so long, and it didn’t have a sight blade that would cut into my pants pocket like so many other revolvers did. I could drop my hand into my pocket, slip my finger into the trigger guard and give it a flip as I drew it out, pointed straight ahead and ready for action in only a second or two. As long as the distances didn’t get much past belly-button range, it had a lot to recommend it. Those were its good features.

It only had one really bad feature: the .32 Short chambering. I’d been working with larger rounds up to the .44 Special and the.44 Mag. Out of that stubby barrel, the .32 Short had a long way to go by those standards. But I noticed that the chambers were cut straight through, and the only thing that stopped the round from falling through was the rim. I likewise noticed that it was considerably longer than the .32 Short round and found that a .32 Long case would come within a few thousandths of the end of the chamber. You could almost see the smoke rolling out of my ears.

I’d been handloading Lyman 311252 in the Short case, but I saw that I’d have to turn it around and shoot it base forward if I was going to get it to chamber in the pocket pistol. But by golly, 311252 actually looked pretty good that way. Sorta like a .38 wadcutter round that had been on a diet. I fired it just to check for functioning, and the report was so mild that I immediately began increasing the powder charge behind my “wadcutter”, a few tenths of a grain at a time. Pressure signs were non-existent, as anything that exhibited any signs at all would have equaled a proof load in this antique pistol. I slowly worked up higher and higher charges until I got the slightest bit of case expansion. I stopped there, and backed off to 3.0 grains of Herco, which gave no visible case expansion at all. I figured that if the pressure wasn’t enough to bulge the case, it sure wouldn’t bulge the case plus the steel (iron?) chamber.

This gave substantially increased performance. I didn’t have a whole lot of sophisticated test equipment or procedures, but I wandered over into a cow pasture adjacent to my home, and used the watering pond there. It had pretty well dried up over the summer, but still had plenty of a gelatinous mixture of mud and … ahhh … agricultural slag.

I found one of the less distasteful spots to stand, and popped one of my handloads into the muck. The hole looked unexpectedly wide, and I wondered how far the slug had gone in. I broke off a weed and notched it to measure the diameter, then used it to probe the depth, notching it again when it reached bottom. Measured back home, it had penetrated 7.25 inches, and left a hole on the surface that was an inch and a half in diameter. Tested the same way, a Winchester .32 Auto Silvertip from the same gun penetrated just 4.4" and left a channel only 0.8" in diameter. Now the .32 Silvertip has such a reputation as a minor but desirable self defense choice that there are guns designed exclusively for it. And its performance was only half that of my handload.

I assure you that the performance of that old load doesn’t hold a candle to what I’m able to produce in more modern guns today, and still with no evidence of excessive pressure, thank you, though I’ll admit to some case bulging and slight primer flattening. But the cases still extract with great ease, and seem immortal when it comes to case life. I think that anyone who writes the .32 long and its longer descendants off as scornful is really missing a bet, especially if they are handloaded to modern performance in recently manufactured solid frame guns. Such combinations are outstanding for field and stream excursions, and far from worthless for personal defense.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little excursion down memory lane as much as I did. Ahh, those were the days!

[alleyoop]

carried a 32 short this weekend

[Molly]

carried a 32 short this weekend

No gripes from me on that. I'e done it myself, as I noted above. For that matter, I've carried 22's. But with enough experience and testing, I've learned to do a bit better.

At one time, I'd have told you to pop a few .32 shorts into the mud and compare their performance with other rounds. And I'm honestly not too sure that isn't a good way to go. All else being equal, I like as much power as I can conveniently carry. I do find the extra power comforting for a fact. But as I aged, I found that having my pants pulled off by the weight of a loaded .44 or .45 was becoming less and less attractive. And I find the study on the stopping power of various guns posted above in this thread more and more reasonable.

I've put a sudden stop to at least three rapes (one aimed at my wife) and a number of other antisocial behaviors, and I have yet to fire my gun in anger. But that is because I 've made it plain that I would do so very quickly unless things changed very quickly. I've seen a gang of drunken thugs back off of an assault and sober up instantly when they saw no more than a pistol grip sticking out of my pants pocket. There was no debate about how powerful the gun was, or if it was loaded, nor whether I would be able to stop them with a single torso shot each. I made it plain that I was not pleased with the situation, and was ready, willing and able to change it.

Their response was instantaneous sobriety and obedience. They were careful to address me politely as 'Sir', and after I frisked them, they sat quietly against the wall and spent their spare time wishing the cops would HURRY! I suspect your .32 short would do as well in a similar situation. Nobody wants to get shot, even with a pellet gun.

[gunfan]

I'll agree. There aren't many, (if any) volunteers that will take a hot .32 S&W Long (a.k.a. .32 Colt New Police/.32 Colt) load in a strategic place... or any place, for that matter!

I'd put up either my 1970's Taurus Model 74 or H&R Model 733 against a .22 lr or .22 Magnum handgun anytime!

Moderate recoil, excellent penetration and decent killing power.

They still work! (And they work well!)

Scott

[Uncle R.]

Dad-Gum it! At a small show just last Saturday I walked away from an absolutely pristine Colt Cobra - LNIB - because it was a .32 instead of a .38. I wish I'd read Molly's most excellent essay before that day.
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Or maybe I'm better off for having not. I still have the cash.
<GRIN>
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I've been getting a hankering for a D-frame Colt lately and that beautiful example of "the first Colt snake" would have scratched my itch for at least a little while. After reading this I'm thinking maybe a .32 long would be a viable self-defense cartridge after all.
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Uncle R.

[NoZombies]

...32 S&W Long (a.k.a. .32 Colt New Police/.32 Colt)...

Not to nitpick, but for the sake of future readers, I'll point out that the .32 S&W long and .32 new police are dimensionally and pressure wise, completely interchangeable. "32 colt" however could refer to .32 short or long colt, which should not be used in a gun chambered for the above rounds. The .32 short or long colt use a heeled bullet in a smaller diameter case, much like the 22 long rifle.

[gunfan]

"Not to nitpick, but for the sake of future readers, I'll point out that the .32 S&W long and .32 new police are dimensionally and pressure wise, completely interchangeable. "32 colt" however could refer to .32 short or long colt, which should not be used in a gun chambered for the above rounds. The .32 short or long colt use a heeled bullet in a smaller diameter case, much like the 22 long rifle."

I have heard differently. the .32 Short Colt and .32 Long Colt are marked as such, while the .32 Colt and .32 Colt New Police have been purported to be dimensionally identical. (This is what I was told by the vendors of such revolvers on Gunbroker.com.)

A "snub-nosed" .32 Colt (or Colt New Police) would work well at 'waltzing distances" to "settle someone's hash" and "stop the action" with a properly placed slug.

Scott