Or will we see a resurgence in larger bore calibers?

As of today, November 27,2024, the 9x19mm poly striker handgun is far and away the most popular option in handguns. Do we think this will continue or do will think there will be a resurgence in larger bore cartridges at some point if for no other reason folks get bored with the status quo? Will there be a drive back to .40/.45 popularity or will we drive to even smaller calibers ala .30 super carry, which was a dud but maybe something else.

It’s just an academic question not a ballistic x is better then y is better then z thing.

I’ve now been doing this long enough that I’ve seen the big caliber changes over time and I’ve seen some things come full circle that I never thought would happen like steel framed handguns, hammer fired guns for the appendix guys, “carry handle” AR’s coming back etc. so I wonder if we will see a return to larger bore preferences at some point.

Just musing at 0230 in the morning.

Take care, shoot safe.
Chris

"Assuming no political outside factors"

The 9mm Para is what, 120+ y/o? Has always been popular (worldwide) and will always be popular for the foreseeable future.

The .45 ACP is also about that old, but it's mostly an American caliber. It will remain popular but will never be as popular as the 9, even if there is some kind of "resurgence" as you call it.

The .40 S&W is barely over 30 y/o, was never hugely popular even at its peak, and I see zero chance for its resurgence.

9mm is here to stay. With all the micro compact guns out there, it's going to be 9mm.

Pretty much every new handgun released starts with 9mm. 40/45/357 will still be around but interest has waned.

I agree that 9x19 is experiencing a period of dominance after its long history, but I first came to SIG for the features of the fantastic P220 in .45apc. Since my early days in the Army I can’t escape a fondness for 45 and glad I stuck with it long enough to experience the softest shooting 45 ever in the P320.
But, have to admit I am never far from one of my several P365s.

My local dealer tells me they have trouble selling any handgun who's caliber starts with a "4".

Firearms goes in cycles, something will replace 9mm on top of the heap, I just don't know what or when.

I suspect that when DJT gets in the White House and things stabilize we'll see more ammo and components on the shelf. That should bring more of your big bores back to the market. I apologize for for bringing politics into the conversation, but it ties into resoure availability.

While .40 has fallen out of favor with LE, there are still plenty in private hands. While I am not a .40 fan, I picked up .40/.357 SIG conversion kit for my 320.

Also, there is always the possibility of disruptive technologies, for example if we could make caseless or plastic cased ammo viable that would make the big bores more accessable.

Discounting political factors or some giant leap forward in ballistic technology, I don't see 9mm getting displaced. Like Q said, it's been the predominant cartridge on the global market for 120+ years and nothing has supplanted it yet.

.45 is cool, and makes a significantly bigger hole, but severely limits capacity.

.40/.357 Sig are nice ideas, but at the end of the day do they really make a real-world practical difference over shooting somebody with a quality 9mm projectile? Also the increase in ammo cost and capacity loss are significant. I'm down to one .40 in my collection, and I'll be keeping it for nostalgic reasons, but don't ever see myself buying another.

.30 Super Carry is an interesting idea, but even if you could convince me through testing and data that it's just as ballistically effective as 9mm, without the universal acceptance, pre-existing infrastructure, and military contracts that 9mm has behind it, the economics just don't make sense. There's just no way to bring a new caliber to market and be able to compete logistically and finiancially with something that's been in widespread use for 120+ years...there would need to be some huge practical advantage to make it worthwhile.

I like caliber options for specific applications (Woods carry, varmint eradication, knocking down bowling pins/silhouettes, etc.), but as a daily carry option in the midwest there's nothing on the market now that will ever be a better choice than 9mm.

Bullet tech has made 9mm so much better in last decade plus it’s a toss up on paper and gel tests Vs 40/45/357sig. Real world street results slightly different. Find the caliber you like and carries and shoots well for you. For CCW j frames and subcompacts like 365 are where I go. I don’t open carry or even ccw a bigger gun like 228/hi power/1911commander/320 compact/ K frame or G19 sized or bigger. Doesn’t mean I’m getting rid of all those bigger guns in my collection however.

Hunting or camping is a different issue

quote:

Originally posted by CD228:
Firearms goes in cycles ....

That was my first thought in response to the question, and the reasons for that are often not clear, and certainly not always predictable.

Below is commentary about history and my thoughts about the subject. I will also remind those whom I annoy so easily that the forum does have an “ignore” feature.

Influences, influencers, and events can and do affect something like the popularity of a handgun cartridge, and I’m convinced I’ve seen that demonstrated very clearly in my lifetime.

My first centerfire pistol was a Browning Hi-Power that I bought just before requesting assignment to Vietnam, and that decision was mostly based on the pending impact of the “Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968” (aka the GCA of 1968), but also because of my knowledge and interests as a student of military history. The choice of pistol and the 9mm Luger cartridge were uncommon, even odd at the time, but my first exposure to the round dates back a long time.

Not long after, the influence of Jeff Cooper and others helped promote the popularity of the 1911 pistol and 45 ACP cartridge. Because the 9mm was starting to gain a few adherents, that led to the great 9mm/45 controversy that lasted for many years, in part due to its coverage in the firearms-related periodicals of the day, and which (coincidentally, I’m sure ) boosted their circulations.

In addition, the FBI started a movement toward trying to actually determine which handgun cartridges and bullets were the most effective for self-defense by law enforcement officers. The first effort I’m aware of (and I probably still have the reports buried someplace) was to see how much energy was transferred to ballistic simulant (gelatin) blocks as bullets passed through.

Somewhat later was the massive and sophisticated study involving the “computer man” that led to the Relative Incapacitation Index ratings of different rounds. The results of the latter study resulted in a firestorm of criticism by other firearms and wound ballistics authorities—both actual and self-styled—mainly, I believe, because they didn’t like the conclusions of the study. (The later studies by Marshall and Sanow met with similar criticisms, and evidently for much the same reason.)

Regardless of its reasons, the FBI’s interest in and then adoption of the 9mm Luger round for its agents’ handguns was a major boost for the cartridge’s popularity among law enforcement agencies, and especially with the introduction of the Glock pistol to America. But then the speedbump: the disastrous and infamous “shootout” in Miami in 1986 in which two bank robbers (only one of whom actually did anything other than drive a car) humiliated an FBI surveillance group, including killing the two agents who were SWAT team members.

That event led to the FBI’s abrupt abandonment of the 9mm because of all the bullets fired during the incident, one failed to travel far enough into the BG’s body to penetrate his heart. (Otherwise the bullet performed just as it was supposed to.)

This is what I mean about influences: That one Winchester 115 grain Silvertip bullet’s performance led to the FBI’s adoption of the 10mm Auto cartridge, then a down-powered 10mm version, which then led to the development of the 40 S&W cartridge. Suddenly, the 40 was the new Wunderkind of the defensive handgun world, and although it’s evidently not well known, even St. Cooper had previously opined that a round meeting its characteristics, a 1cm diameter, 180 grain bullet about 1000 fps would be a fine choice for the purpose.

During the same era various forms of “practical” handgun shooting competitions that were based on the idea that the weapons should and could be used for lifelike self-defense purposes became very popular. One thing about traditional bulls-eye competition with its targets having small scoring rings is that larger bullets have an advantage: they can hit farther from the point of aim and still score a greater point count than smaller diameter bullets. For a time, and perhaps still, larger bullets and more powerful cartridges had an advantage in competitions due to the “major” and “minor” power discrimination. But that distinction seems to have faded in popularity, and in any event, the advantages of greater magazine capacities and less recoil have swamped the benefits of shooting cartridges like the 45 ACP in competition. All that was another influence on shooters’ choices.

But what happened to the 40 S&W? I believe that was also due to the FBI’s switch back to the 9mm. The agency’s obsession with the 1986 event that would supposedly have turned out much differently if the one bullet had only penetrated a couple of inches deeper initially led to the adoption of the 147 grain 9mm bullet (and whose popularity in some circles continues to this day). As I recall, the initial specific bullet(s) available in the 147 grain load performed poorly in terms of energy and expansion and Evan Marshall pointed out that the load was similar to an anemic 38 Special load dating back decades and which had had a very poor street reputation. But that inconvenient fact never achieved significant recognition: “The FBI says it’s good, how could it be bad?”

But with the emphasis on ballistic effectiveness that wasn’t simply due to the old “bigger is better” mantra, development of better 9mm loads and especially their bullets took off, and that’s where we are today. The question, though, has it been established or at least perceived as the best possible choice for its purpose as a defensive handgun cartridge and will it never be supplanted?

My purpose in discussing a bit of history was to point out how events, influences, and influencers have affected such things. So what about those factors and possible future trends? My belief is that just as they affected choices in the past they could affect choices in the future.

The most important, and really only question during 20th century discussions of whether the 9mm or 45 ACP cartridge was better for self-defense purposes focused on whether they were good enough as “man stoppers.” It was an article of almost religious type faith among many shooters that nothing was better in a handgun suitable for the purpose than the 45. (Oh, yes: Sometimes the 357 S&W Magnum was mentioned to the discomfort of the 45 crowd, but that was usually studiously ignored or if acknowledged at all, dismissed because it wasn’t available in autoloading pistols.)

It was very commonly asserted by anti-9mmers that its stopping power wasn’t as good as the 45’s, and it was flirting with death to rely on the cartridge. One picture I still remember well was of a seminude man lying on a mortuary slab and pockmarked with a slew of 9mm bullet entrance wounds. He had died, but it had supposedly taken an inordinate number of shots to put him down. (It was never clear to me, though, how many shots were fired before he stopped being a threat, and how many may have been fired after, and which is something that is commonly seen in LE defensive shootings.)

Even before the availability of 9mm loads with hollow point bullets that actually did what they were intended to do, expand in the body, though, things started to change. When researchers and writers stopped ignoring the fact that the 45 and FMJ bullets didn’t actually put bad guys down with one shot 19 out of 20 times (as claimed by the Gunsite group), some of the shine started to fade from the larger caliber. The Marshall/Sanow stopping power books with their evaluations of much older loads are mostly dated now, but one thing I recall that their studies revealed was that all FMJ handgun bullets regardless of power or diameter stopped aggressive threats with a single hit about the same percentage of times, (~2/3, IIRC without checking).

At this point I’m not sure why emphasis on ballistic effectiveness of various handgun cartridges and loads has largely faded from interest. The pat answer would be that the 9mm with proper bullets does the job every time, but based on what was revealed about by past studies and reports, I doubt that’s actually true. I could go into a lot of useless speculation about the “why,” but at this time it just seems to be a fact: Hardly anyone worries about ballistic effectiveness of defensive handguns. Whatever that level may be, it’s enough without fretting over.

But that is nevertheless something that could become an influence on cartridge selection in the future. Consider this scenario:

At a semipublic event a man with a gun suddenly starts shooting at President Trump. The Secret Service agents return fire and hit him several times with their 9mm handguns, but the man doesn’t go down immediately and continues to shoot. He wounds the President and kills two agents before expiring himself. Would such an event be red meat to people like me who believe that it would have been better if the agents had been armed with weapons chambered for more powerful cartridges: 357 SIG, 40 S&W, the rise-from-the-dead 45 ACP, or some new wonder round? I believe so, and if that happened could it result in a massive popularity shift away from the 9mm Luger?

Right now the US military forces are trying to shift away from the 5.56mm NATO as their primary rifle rounds. If future reports—however exaggerated or even invented—start claiming that all the BGs who would have just laughed at the 5.56 in the past were immediately sent to their 72-virgin rewards by the 277 Fury, would that affect the current popularity of the 5.56 cartridge among civilian users?

Finally, although the original question wanted to exclude any political factors that would affect the 9mm’s popularity, I don’t believe that’s an impossibility. The antigunners will never give up, and they are always looking for new ways to attack our rights. Some efforts have already been made to ban certain cartridges, and the more popular they are and therefore used in more crimes, the more likely they will be targeted by such efforts. Then there’s the magazine capacity issue. One claim for the rise in popularity of the 40 S&W 30 years ago was the Federal 10-round mag limit that put the 9mm, 40, and 45 on the same level in that regard. When that ban expired, then the supposed huge advantage of having 17 rounds in a magazine rather than a pitifully-inadequate 14* rounds was at least one reason why the 9mm was suddenly deemed to be the better choice.
* My Hi-Power had a 13-round magazine that seemed to be amazing at the time.

Anyway, it’s an interesting question and one that prompted me to ponder things I haven’t thought about in a long time.

9 mm dominance has been fueled by several factors, some which have already been covered
-FBI influence
- the micro size 9mm CCW pistols

While I doubt any potential “failure” of the 9mm in a high profile event will be the caliber’s fault, someone will almost certainly lay blame on the cartridge and the search for an alternative will start all over again.

Yeah, the technology of the 9mm has improved, but the same technology has also been applied to most of the other calibers as well.

Other things to consider is 9mm is also the most marketable caliber.

Some can't handle a 10mm, others deem .380 ineffective, 45 Auto isn't all that great for someone with smaller hands. 25 ACP and 50AE are outliers as well.

quote:

Originally posted by cslinger:
Or will we see a resurgence in larger bore calibers?

Referring to pistol cartridges intended for use against human targets, there is no need.

The 9x19mm is the sweet spot of pistol cartridges. How ironic, then, that it came about as an afterthought. It is a lineal descendant of the first practical automatic pistol cartridge, the 7.65x25mm Borchardt, which spawned the 7.65x21mm Parabellum in Luger's improved Borchardt pistol. Growing up when I did, I have always looked upon the 9mm Parabellum cartridge as strictly a European affair, so there is further irony for me in the fact that its development was due primarily to British and American armed forces.

In testing the Luger in its native 7.65mm chambering, both British and American armed forces requested a larger caliber (the Brits IIRC, wanted a 40 caliber cartridge.)

Georg Luger, along with DWM, developed the largest practical cartridge which could be chambered in the Luger with minimal changes: bore diameter, of course, as well as minor changes to the pistol's mainspring and the timing of the toggle lock.

American police switching from revolvers to automatics beginning in earnest in the 1970s spurred the development of more efficient hollowpoint ammunition for the 9mm, so that a while back we reached a point where 9mm hollowpoint ammunition is more efficient than larger calibers such as the .45 ACP and the .40S&W. Note that I say 'more efficient' and not necessarily more effective, but that efficiency, combined with the high capacities of 9mm pistols makes the 9x19 the sweet spot. And in so-called 'sub-compact' pistols, the 9x19 is king. Yes, there are promising contenders such as the .30 Super Carry but there is no way for this and other cartridges to usurp the 9x19. It's just not going to happen- not now or in the foreseeable future. There is no way that upstart cartridges will replace the tens of millions of 9x19mm pistols and the billions upon billions of 9mm cartridges in the possession of shooters.

So, again, for antipersonnel use, the 9mm may never be the only practical pistol cartridge, but today, it is by far the most practical pistol cartridge.

quote:

Originally posted by cslinger:
Or will we see a resurgence in larger bore calibers?

This depends on how far into the future and the past you're thinking.

The origin of gunpowder is unknown, and may have occurred in China, Turkey, or Europe. The first record describing the combination of Carcoal, Sulphur, and Saltpeter, to produce a rapidly burning or exploding powder is a coded writing by Franciscan monk Roger Bacon shortly before 1250. The earliest known depiction of a "fire lance" (think pre-cannon) is dated to 1128. The Xanadu Gun is the earliest existing example and is dated to 1298 and by 1350 we had "hand cannons" for individual soldiers.

For about 275 years a "touchhole" was used until the early 1400's when the "matchlock" came about. About 100 years later, the "wheellock" was introduced in the early 1500's followed by the "flintlocks" around 1560.

Granted, I'm using the firearm's action in my example and not caliber but given time and human ingenuity the 9mm will be replaced by something else that is much better.

My personal opinion, no matter what the future better thing might be ~ there will be people that are fascinated by our 2024 firearm technology. 896 years ago, we had the "fire lance" 896 years from now will be the year 2920. I expect there will be collectors thinking about how we viewed and used firearms and there will be a few 2024 era weapons in museums. I also have no doubt there will be a few families with their accessor's 1911s and M1 still that are family treasures just like today there are families that treasure muskets used in the Revolution.



www.YouTube.com/watch?v=EwHRjgVWFno




www.YouTube.com/watch?v=FdYK-Ha2eSE




www.YouTube.com/watch?v=JGs6vZR4xY4

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This message has been edited. Last edited by: sleepla8er,

I think .45 ACP will decline even further to a niche cartridge. Nostalgia is great and so are 1911's but I see fewer and fewer non-1911 options now.

10mm has picked up some steam of late, and there are a lot more options now than a few years ago. Curious if it will become the preferred "bigger" alternative to the 9mm. "Well it's one bigger, isn't it?"

.30 Carry is like .327 Federal Magnum. A great idea for carry guns that just won't get very far because of ammo prices and availability and people wanting to stick with standard options.

.380 will remain as the lower power alternative to 9mm in micro pistols.

Hope to remain practical, pragmatic and nostalgic all at the same time. my pic of Winchesters 9mm High pressure 147 Grain JHP would not load for me

I guess I might be a nonconformist. My carry gun in 1980 was a .357 mag. My carry gun in 2024 is a .357 mag. Yea, it's the same gun. Perhaps I'm an Elmer, but, if you shoot and train with the same gun for 44 years, you get pretty damn good with it. I'm too old to change now.

To answer your question, the 9mm is here to stay for quite a while. Load advances have settled it into the epitome of popularity. Rightfully so.

My own personal trajectory, having come up starting in the 80's I read the magazines, and drank the .45 ACP Kool Aid. My first gun was a Colt Government Model in .45. Shortly thereafter I owned an Sig P220 and carried it throughout the 90's. I carried back ups in 9mm, because that was the proper roll for such a "minor" cartridge.

In '99 I switched to .40 Caliber Glocks for 12 years, again 9mm was a "back up" caliber, but by 2005 I was having my doubts.

In the spring of 2011, I abandoned .40 S&W altogether, due to 12 years of an aggressive shooting style that was wreaking havoc with my elbows. I sold off all of my .40 Caliber Glocks and replaced them with 9mm Glocks, and never looked back. Now-a-days I shoot Shadow Systems guns.

In my more mature assessment of owning handguns for 36+ years, there was never anything 'wrong" with the 9mm cartridge, and with 2020 hindsight, I would have started life with a small battery of 9mm Sigs, a P226 likely being my first handgun. At the least I would have bypassed .40 altogether and switched to 9mm in '99, when a case of aluminum Blazer 9mm could be had for just under a hundred dollar$.

I know that's a lot, but as has been mentioned by others earlier, modern 9mm hits a sweet spot for dealing with most two legged predators of the species. And sure there are anecdotes of grown men soaking up multiple rounds of 9mm, but there are plenty of other such anecdotes of other pistol calibers doing the same thing. Yeah there will always be "specialty" pistol calibers, like 10mm, (which seems to be having a resurgence). The latter is a pistol caliber I would consider caarying, if I went crazy, and started taking up back country hiking and camping as a hobby.

The reality is we're well past the "caliber wars" of days of old, though many keep trying. But the cartridge technology itself has gone through a significant evolution in the last three plus decades, making its affectivenss fairly well quantitated. Further more there are a TON of guns in the caliber. Guns that fit a lot of hands well, in a cartridge with recoil characteristics more manageable across a larger spectrum of body types, the latter likely a consideration in adoption by multiple law enforcement agencies, at the local, state, and Federal levels.

So no it's not going anywhere, particularly for a self defense roll. I don't see calibers like .45, .40, 10mm, and .357 Sig fading out of existence, with the first three mentioned maintaining a level of popularity that keeps them at east in the .41 Magnum level. However the generations that strongly advocated for .45 ACP are aging out, and GenZ shooters, born within the last 25 years, likely having a greater amount of first exposure to handguns in 9mm, will be the determining factor in these trends.

9mm for urban carry is the best option, for woods carry it's the bigger brother 10mm.

That event led to the FBI’s abrupt abandonment of the 9mm because of all the bullets fired during the incident, one failed to travel far enough into the BG’s body to penetrate his heart. (Otherwise the bullet performed just as it was supposed to.)

If I remember the autopsy results, the Silver Tip severed his aorta. It was a non-survivable wound.

The only trouble is it took the wounded man a couple of minutes to die. He did a lot of damage during that time.

In a word: yes.

9mm is the most popular cartridge and it is the most popular cartridge amongst the people that shoot the most. There will remain interest in .45, 10mm, .40, .357 Sig, .38 Super, .380, etc., but that interest will be small and the majority of the people shooting those cartridges are not high volume shooters.

There will NOT be a new cartridge that will gain any real traction. It's not going to happen. It's no different than 5.56. There will be occasional new whiz-bang things, but they're not going to scale in a meaningful way. See 300 BLK, 6.8 SPC, 6.5 Grendel, 6 ARC, etc...those are all fine cartridges within their own limitiations and with their own followings, but no matter what they do and how they do it that is better that 5.56, they're not going to upend it.

The next "big" thing will not be a centerfire cartridge as we traditionally see it. I'm not sure what it will be, but it won't be anything like what we have now.