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

[Earlwb]

Well it could work for most self defense purposes. The thugs and criminals tend to not want to get shot. You gut shoot them and they run away. If the bullet missed something vital like a major artery, the criminal has to go to the hospital. The hospitals report all shooting victims good or bad to the police. Now the perp has to explain how he got shot. You have earlier reported it to the police too. So now the perp is stuck. It depends on how good of a public defender that he gets. The public defender usually plea bargains the case to expedite it too. Of course you may have to go to court to identify him to the court and maybe take the stand against him. Of course the perp might try to sue you for it. But nowadays the courts tend to take a dim view of such shenanigans.

I think the odds are pretty remote that one would run up against a drugged out crazy person and then you would need a 12 gauge shotgun and six buckshot loads to stop them. Also trying to take on a terrorist armed with a rifle while you could have any size pistol isn't good. Better to run and take cover and avoid it unless you are forced to return fire.

The little .32 S&W Long does do about 12 inches of penetration into ballistics gel too. Thus the perp isn't going to be able to dig the bullet out like you see them do in the old Western movies. Unless he is one tough son of a gun.

ref not exactly a good test but close though https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYmuTH3I4c8

[Frank V]

You know I kind of like the .32s, but not for defense. There are just better choices & you just may run up against that drug crazed individual or maybe the thug has friends.
I have heard of instances of people shot with a .32 & not knowing they were hit. Strange stuff does happen & personally the .38 Special with heavier +P bullets is my minimum.
YMMV though.

[35remington]

Actually, with ammo that is correct, and not shooting it through a revolver that is ill suited for it like the Nagant in the above video but rather in the correctly chambered 32 Long, penetration approaches 20 inches with a solid bullet and permissable handloads that approximate the high end of the allowable range....like a 98 grain SWC in the low 800 fps range from a 4 1/4" inch barrel (my Smith I frame).

For a solid bullet like in the video above to make 12 inches, velocity must be about in the 550 fps range with a roundnosed bullet. Likely considerable velocity loss shooting 32 longs in a Nagant. Don't view the video results as typical of actual 32 Long revolvers. They will do better than 12 inches. Heck, the 32 Smith and Wesson will do about 16 with a pointy roundnose 88 grain factory load of about 660 fps.

[Earlwb]

Yes, you are correct in that shooting them out of a Nagant doesn't do them any favors. I remember reading in a magazine many years ago where someone did some ballistics gel tests with the .32 S&W Long. But no one has done it more recently and made a video of it. I think that many people have snubbed the little cartridge and skipped over it. Since no one makes a revolver anymore for it doesn't help it any either. They do have some ballistics gel tests for the .32 ACP though. I think that was because of the new generation of bullet designs that came out for it.

[victorfox]

What Gil said makes me remember why I never wanted to live in Europe but always had my heart full of America...

My father grew up with a spanish S&W 32 clone he bought at 15 and lost in a robbery at about 60 years old. He was not carrying it the guys pointed a gun to him and pushed him inside the house where they cleaned all they could. So no gunfight here.

Some 10 years earlier he managed to stop 3 guys in the property eho were tryjng to steal some stuff there. And also he shot some possums and a feral dog that attacked our livestock. I'm not impressed with it's power but its a nice little accurate caliber as well as the 32acp. I once put some 6 or 8 guys to run from our pastures I shot in the middle of them after they almost hit me with a thrown rock and they never stopped running and were not seen again. I'd rather have a 357 or a 45 but hey I live in brazil and wouldn't feel unarmed if I had that old and humble 32 with me.

I think 50% of stopping power is psychological and the other 50% is shooting, beating and stabbing the heck out of your assailant... until he stops or expires.

[Three44s]

My home state had the occasion to decide on handguns and caliber for the corrections staff.

It was decided to go with 9mm Luger over the .40 S&W at that time.

The suppliers had the guns priced the same.

The ammo was priced the same.

The FREIGHT was less for the 9mm ..........

The BEAN COUNTERS chose ............

............ the 9mm

Somebody a few decades forward will likely surmise the because my home state chose the 9mm over the .40 S&W ...... that the 9mm is just as good as the .40 S&W ......... "them being experts" ....... it must be just as good for anyone else ......... right?

No ........ the bean counters at that particular juncture put our state's correction staff at a disadvantage over the mere price of freight for the ammo.

That's how these stories of this cartridge or that one often take on a life of their own.

The fact is that a good number of our miscreants these days are drugies ...... and not just MJ but things that make pale in comparison and if some one believes a small gun is all you'll ever need ....... that's your choice. We all take our chances by even getting out of bed in the morning and go about our days our own way.

You can look at my member name and read all you need into how I really feel about handguns ........ except for the fact that I traded one of my .44s off .........

............ for a .480 ...........

The two stories that really stand out for me ........ the first of which is about our troops fighting the Moros amoung others in the Phillipines ........ they were killing the Moros great efficiency but at the expense of our troops emptying their .38's into the charging swordsmen .......... our soldier died before the Moro fell as well.

The call went out for an immediate shippment of their old .45 LC single action revolvers to bolster their armaments. A lot less of our soldiers lost their heads as result of that adjustment in the battle field ........

The other story was about a Sky Marshall who carried a .45 LC Mountain gun and related his experience of drawing his weapon on a middle eastern type who was getting nasty at an airport. The enthusiasum drained out of his face upon staring down that big bore. No shots had to be subsequently fired.



Best regards

Three 44s

[Outpost75]

Those Colt single-actions sent to the Philippines by the way, were fed with Schofield ammunition.

The .45 Schofield cartridge dates from 1875 when Major George W. Schofield convinced the U.S. Army that the S&W No. 3 top-break’s simultaneous ejection was faster and easier to manage on horseback than the Colt Single-Action Army’s rod ejection. By 1879 the Army had bought 8289 No. 3 Schofields and by then also realized that having two different .45 revolver cartridges in its supply system was an awkward complication. So, the Schofield cartridge was adopted as the M1887 for interchangeable use in both Smith & Wesson No.3 top-break and Colt Single-Action Army revolvers. The .45 S&W was loaded commercially until just before WW2.

Keith, in Sixguns (1950) stated, “While many soldiers could shoot the Smith & Wesson better, on account of its lighter recoil, the S&W cartridge was never as good for knocking over a running Indian pony.” None the less, by the late 1880s, the Schofield was the only .45 revolver cartridge being produced for US Army issue. By then, it had gained a reputation as a reliable man-stopper, in the hands of gunmen such as Bill Cody, both the James and Younger gangs, John Wesley Hardin, Pat Garret, and Virgil Earp, among others. In 1902, Colt Single Actions and Schofield ammunition would be sent to the Philippines as a stopgap, after noted failures of the .38 Long Colt, until adoption of Colt’s .45 Double Action Revolver Model of 1909.

Hatcher’s Textbook of Pistols and Revolvers (1935) stated that the .45 Schofield cartridge was loaded with 28 grains of black powder and a 230 grain flat-nosed bullet, producing a muzzle velocity of 730 f.p.s. The performance expected of production ammunition was a mean absolute deviation of 5 inches, with 4 inches of penetration in soft pine, at 50-yards, the range at which Army revolvers were sighted. This standard of accuracy and penetration still represents a useful benchmark to assess what an adequate “service revolver” should do.

[Wayne Dobbs]

Those Colt single-actions sent to the Philippines by the way, were fed with Schofield ammunition.

The .45 Schofield cartridge dates from 1875 when Major George W. Schofield convinced the U.S. Army that the S&W No. 3 top-break’s simultaneous ejection was faster and easier to manage on horseback than the Colt Single-Action Army’s rod ejection. By 1879 the Army had bought 8289 No. 3 Schofields and by then also realized that having two different .45 revolver cartridges in its supply system was an awkward complication. So, the Schofield cartridge was adopted as the M1887 for interchangeable use in both Smith & Wesson No.3 top-break and Colt Single-Action Army revolvers. The .45 S&W was loaded commercially until just before WW2.

Keith, in Sixguns (1950) stated, “While many soldiers could shoot the Smith & Wesson better, on account of its lighter recoil, the S&W cartridge was never as good for knocking over a running Indian pony.” None the less, by the late 1880s, the Schofield was the only .45 revolver cartridge being produced for US Army issue. By then, it had gained a reputation as a reliable man-stopper, in the hands of gunmen such as Bill Cody, both the James and Younger gangs, John Wesley Hardin, Pat Garret, and Virgil Earp, among others. In 1902, Colt Single Actions and Schofield ammunition would be sent to the Philippines as a stopgap, after noted failures of the .38 Long Colt, until adoption of Colt’s .45 Double Action Revolver Model of 1909.

Hatcher’s Textbook of Pistols and Revolvers (1935) stated that the .45 Schofield cartridge was loaded with 28 grains of black powder and a 230 grain flat-nosed bullet, producing a muzzle velocity of 730 f.p.s. The performance expected of production ammunition was a mean absolute deviation of 5 inches, with 4 inches of penetration in soft pine, at 50-yards, the range at which Army revolvers were sighted. This standard of accuracy and penetration still represents a useful benchmark to assess what an adequate “service revolver” should do.

And wasn't this the rough metric that JMB used in designing the .45 Auto cartridge?

[Outpost75]

The original spec. on the .45 ACP was 810+/- 25 fps.

[Earlwb]

Yes I believe that the .45 Auto cartridge was based on the .45 Schofield round too. But they appear to have upped the power level a little more. The .45 Schofield round went about 710 fps versus the .45 auto at 830 fps.

[Frank V]

Well we're getting kind of off the .32. I'm enjoying reading about a caliber I've never had ( a .32 except for a Win 92 in .32-20) I know the .32 to be very accurate in a good gun.

[Hans Gruber]

Responding to the post about Jim Cirillo shooting a person with two slugs....
I absolutely do NOT want to start an argument here, but...after 23 years as an ICU and ER Nurse I was recounting a few of the GSW's I've seen "walk" through the door. I was suddenly struck by the realization that I've seen people come in hit with .22LR, .32 AP, .38 Spl., 9mm, .45 ACP, and .40 S&W, and in every case the actual physical damage was minimal, though all the torso or skull hits with the .22LR seemed amazingly more destructive than any paper ballistics would suggest. What I have NOT seen in over two decades is a lot of people come in hit with handguns in the .357 Magnum and UP range and equally few high powered rifle "wounds." This is because such calibers usually send the person impacted to the morgue without the need to go through an ED.
The destructiveness of the 5.56 and 7.62 firing FMJ military ammo is quite impressive when the person is hit at close range, yet even these calibers only deliver about a 50% "kill" ratio with FMJ bullets. On the other hand, I've NEVER seen a human stroll in, or in any other capacity "carried in" to an ER after taking a torso/pelvic/head/shoulder/hip hit from something like a .308 softpoint. The reason....because they don't survive to make it to the hospital. MAYBE based on anectdotal tellings, they take multiple hits and run around for a few seconds before collapsing, but for sure FEW make it to an ED! With that said, my personal .500 S&W 380 grain Matt's bullet over 41 grains of Lil'gun exceeds 2,000 lb-ft of KE from my 6.5" barrel S&W - doing so with a half-inch in diameter, FLAT NOSE slug traveling over 1,500 fps. I would have to personally SEE the human who takes a torso or major joint hit from just ONE of those and even stay on his feet, let alone attempt to sprint for the door!

I once had the privilege of doing follow-up wound care to a small town "Constable" who had been gunned down one night by a thug with an AK. A single round had penetrated through the pelvic area, and it took out a slug of tissue larger than a man's fist, requiring surgical incisions in three axis to the extent of his pelvic girdle. The man could barely walk and this after months of rehabilitation on top of months in the hospital with repeat surgeries. A single .500 S&W round would have amplified that damage significantly!

I don't know what kind of maniac might take a full-bore 12 gauge slug to the torso at point blank range and still demand a second by lack of response, yet I understand well the adrenaline-fueled sensation of time slowing down during a gunfight leaving the observer/participant to PERCEIVE a person hit with a slug continued to present a direct threat, but if seen on a camera in "real time" I suspect the subject shot in the Jim Cirillo account went down instantly with shot number one, but Cirillo put another into him reflexively as part of the stress-fire response to danger! A 3/4" diameter, rifled, sharp-shouldered Brenneke slug with non-discarding sabot impacting over 1,400 fps is going to create both an entrance and exit wound so large that the person will "bleed out" within a few seconds at most. Go on YouTube and watch a few real-life video feeds of people shot with shotguns...the massive impact wound and subsequent blood spill, as well as IMMEDIATE collapse must be SEEN to be believed!

I take NOTHING away from men who have been in life-or-death shootouts, but such men are usually possessed of an innate ability to "see things unfold in slow motion" despite the fact that an observing camera would reflect mere hundreths of a second elapsed time.

[Earlwb]

Someone published an article in one of the gun magazines many years ago. They used news reports of shootings. They culled the reports to narrow down the criteria to be a one shot stop scenario. Anyway as I remember it the .32, .380, .38, and 9mm rounds all came out about equal for one shot stopping power. So if someone is using a .32 they shouldn't feel bad about it, in this range of cartridges it does as well as the others do.

Now this article was written back when the bullets hadn't evolved as much yet. Most bullets were round nose lead or full metal jacket still. But it was impressive that the .32 S&W and .32 ACP were still holding their own with the larger more powerful cartridges.

When you think about it the .32 S&W cartridge evolved from the earlier .32 rim fire round which evolved from the .31 cap and ball revolver pistols. The muzzle velocity has stayed about the same since circa the 1850's when these guns first came out. Now granted the early round ball's being used had a faster muzzle velocity over the conical bullets. But the overall muzzle energy is still there though. So it has likely been used to shoot quite a few people over all those years. Apparently it worked for the most part.

Here is one example of what people have done since the article I saw way back in the mate 1980's. This author's results are quite interesting too.
http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/alter...stopping-power

Now then this article is interesting too. They attempted to quantify it more. The little .32's still do quite well though.
http://www.chuckhawks.com/handgun_power_chart.htm

I also ran across this updated report on stopping power too:
http://www.hendonpub.com/resources/a...etails?id=4593

[Frank V]

The name of the game in fight stopping is bullet placement.

[dverna]

I do not know why I read threads like this. More is better. Less is not more. Shoot the most powerful gun you can handle. Use the best bullets available. KISS.

[needausername]

This reminds me of a conversation with my barber. He has a 22 revolver in the drawer and while many people say "That won't do anything", no one has ever volunteered to take one. Any caliber is better than a bare fist.

[Frank V]

Let's not argue, a smaller caliber is easier to shoot well for most people. I have seem to my own satisfaction that the .38 Special +P even in a J frame is pretty easy for me to control & hit with. Also the 9mm in a gun the size of the Glock 19 is VERY easy & fast for me to get good hits with. My favorite the .44 Special is only a little less easy to hit with & that's with a N frame loaded with 250gr bullets at just over 800fps. We need to use a gun we will actually carry, if it's too big, cumbersome, heavy, & whatever else that would cause us to not carry it it's probably not suited to us for a carry gun.
Most of the experts will tell you to use a caliber you can hit well with. The .32 certainly should be in that catigory even the .327 mag. Good shooting.
Staying tuned.

[Thumbcocker]

Wasn't the .32 long introduced when the benchmark for stopping power was a .36 cap and ball revolver? I seem to recall that TR adopted a .32 for NYPD because it equaled the power of a Navy Colt.

[Earlwb]

The .31's were some of the early cap and ball revolvers as well as some early single shot small pistols (derringer like) too. These .31 revolvers go back to the 1840's from when they first came out. The .31 caliber probably came from the early Kentucky squirrel guns or rifles too. They used to make some small single shot derringer like pistols in this caliber as well. The .31 short rimfire first came out in 1860, followed later by the .32 long rimfire in 1868. They used to make a .32 extra short cartridge for the palm pistols too. If I remember Flobert made a .32 extra short cartridge for their parlor guns as well. These evolved into the .32 S&W short (circa 1878) and 32 S&W Long (circa 1896) later of course. The centerfire cartridges kept about the same ballistics as the earlier rimfire cartridges too.

The .36 cap and ball revolvers evolved into the .38 caliber guns that we know today. The .38 short rimfire and .38 long rimfire. The later the .38 S&W came out circa 1878. These .38's had the larger .361 bore versus the later .38 special and .357 magnum with the slightly smaller barrel bore.

Up until after World War II most civilian governments didn't want the police to be too threatening towards the civilian population. So they tended to minimize the police armaments. Small caliber handguns and shotguns was about it for the police armaments of the time. The authorities didn't think the police needed more powerful guns. Granted police budgets also played a big role too. Heck the United Kingdom (Great Britain) went a very long time before their police started carrying sidearms or having a SWAT team equivalent. Even today, not every British Police officer is armed still. The British government did that to help alleviate the fears of the public after having been so traumatized by the police in the past.

[kiwi]

I have a copy of the Colt 1851 .36 cal pocket pistol 5 shot with a 6" barrel use to shoot it quite a lot in BP target matches it would hold the 9 ring at 25 metres
if I did my part, A few times I hit the steel frame holding the turning targets the pure lead ball would flatten out to the diameter and thickness of a 50 cent coin
I can understand why Wild Bill hung on to his .36 Navy Colts those lead balls are very nasty and accurate and real easy to hit your target with,
Read some of Evan P Marshall's work on stopping power quite interesting,
We don't carry in this part of the world, not really necessary Chicago has more shooting in a weekend than we do in a year, if I did need to I would carry
my .357 mag.