They’re two of probably the most well-known and common cartridges for private protection and legislation enforcement, one within the wheelgun world and one within the semi-auto world. They’re usually in contrast as a result of they each grew to become common for a similar causes, which is why the .38 Particular vs 9mm argument will likely be legitimate so long as each are carried for protection.
Whereas legislation enforcement within the U.S. has nearly solely converted to 9mm, for a lot of a long time, the go-to cartridge for individuals who additionally carried a badge was the versatile and controllable low-velocity .38 Particular in a sturdy six-gun. However occasions change.
At the moment, the 9mm and .38 Particular exist in tandem, pulling totally different duties. Whereas some take into account the .38 to be antiquated, each are nonetheless valued by many shooters for his or her capabilities as self-defense rounds. In some methods, with trendy bullet know-how, each are higher than ever. Right here’s how they stack up.
.38 Particular vs. 9mm Specs
.38 Particular
- Launched: 1898
- Designer: Smith & Wesson
- Dad or mum Case: .38 Lengthy Colt
- Case Kind: rimmed, straight
- Bullet Diameter: 9.1mm / .357 inches
- Case Size: 29.3mm / 1.155 inches
- Total Size: 39.4mm / 1.55 inches
- Max Strain (SAAMI): 17,500 psi
- Bullet Mass: 8.1 grams (125 grain) – 10.24 grams (158 grain)
- Velocity: 755 fps – 1,150 fps
9x19mm Parabellum
- Launched: 1902
- Designer: Georg Luger
- Dad or mum Case: 7.65x21mm Parabellum
- Case Kind: rimless, straight
- Bullet Diameter: 9.01mm / 0.355 inches
- Case Size: 19.15mm / 0.754 inches
- Total Size: 29.69mm / 1.169 inches
- Max Strain (SAAMI): 35,000 psi
- Bullet Mass: 7.45 grams (115 grain) – 8.04 grams (124 grain)
- Velocity: 1,180 fps – 1,345 fps
.38 Particular vs 9mm Historical past
.38 Particular Historical past
Folks have a tendency to think about the .38 Particular because the older of the 2 cartridges, and that’s true, however solely by 4 years.
A Black Powder Cartridge
The .38 Particular hit the gun world in 1898, on the cusp of a brand new century and a brand new trendy age of firearms. The rimmed, centerfire, straight-walled cartridge designed by Smith & Wesson went on to develop into the usual service cartridge for almost all of American police departments from the Twenties by the Nineteen Nineties. It additionally noticed responsibility on the frontlines of World Warfare I, World Warfare II, the Korean Warfare, and within the jungles of Vietnam.
The .38 Particular was created as an enchancment to the underwhelming .38 Lengthy Colt, which famously displayed a scarcity of enough stopping energy within the Philippine-American Warfare.
It was designed from the beginning by S&W to be a high-velocity revolver spherical (for the time) that may remedy the penetration issues of the .38 LC by growing pace as a substitute of bullet mass. Primarily, it was the reverse method taken by John Browning with the .45 ACP.
Consider it or not, the unique .38 Particular was launched as a black powder cartridge and it was designed for the decrease pressures of that propellant. However inside a yr, its recognition pushed S&W to modify it to a contemporary smokeless powder load. The spherical went on to be revered for its accuracy at defensive distances and its manageable recoil, even in small revolvers.
The “.38” within the identify refers back to the tough diameter of the brass case when loaded, not the bullet diameter, which is 0.357 inches.
The unique .38 Particular held a better cost than its predecessor and pushed a 158-grain bullet about 150 fps quicker than the .38 LC. Within the Twenties, as police started to battle bootleggers and the organized crime that was spawned by Prohibition, a law-enforcement model of the cartridge was made by Western Cartridge dubbed the .38 Tremendous Police, although its heavy bullets tended to tumble and it wasn’t common. Nonetheless, legislation enforcement had been turned on to the .38 Particular.
Prohibition Period and Adoption by Regulation Enforcement
Photograph by woodsnorth / Adobe Inventory
In 1930, S&W launched its first large-frame revolver chambered in .38 Particular with a 5-inch barrel and stuck sights. It was clearly meant to be an obligation gun and the Smith & Wesson 38/44 Heavy Obligation was used as such. A couple of yr later, the .38/44 Outdoorsman was launched with a 6.5-inch barrel and adjustable sights.
To go along with the beefy new wheel gun, a juiced up spherical topped with 158-grain metal-tipped bullet was quickly launched, and legislation enforcement who had been in search of a spherical that might penetrate vehicles and physique armor of the day, effectively, they dug it.
Gun makers began designing their .38 revolvers, just like the traditional Colt Official Police revolver, to be more durable in an effort to deal with greater pressures and thus started the hunt to load the .38 Particular hotter and warmer. This finally led S&W to develop the legendary .357 Magnum, which hit retailer cabinets in 1935.
It was round then that the size measurements of this household of cartridges offered some security considerations, which shooters ought to nonetheless pay attention to. Whereas the diameters of the .38 Brief Colt, .38 Particular, and .357 Magnum are equivalent, they differ in size, however solely barely — simply sufficient to not be backward suitable.
You’ll be able to shoot .38 SC in a .38 Particular Revolver, for instance, and you may shoot each in a .357, however the .357 Magnum is just too excessive strain for weapons chambered for the shorter cartridges. Normally they received’t match, however don’t strive it, and when you’ve got something that even remotely resembles a classic firearm, double test the chambering and by no means use +P hundreds or magnum hundreds in weapons that weren’t made for them.
WWII and Past
After the U.S. joined World Warfare II, some aircrews had been issued S&W Victory revolvers, which had been merely Mannequin 10 M&P revolvers repurposed for the battle effort. Throughout WWII, practically 600,000 of those revolvers had been despatched to the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa beneath the Lend-Lease program, largely chambered in the same British .38/200.
For his or her .38s, the Individuals used a brand new steel-jacketed, copper flash-coated bullet developed by Springfield Armory that met the circumstances of the Hague Conference. It pushed a 158-grain bullet about 850 fps from a 4-inch barrel.
Within the Fifties, the Air Pressure adopted the M41 ball cartridge — a .38 Particular with a 130-grain full steel jacket bullet transferring at 725 fps. It was a light-weight load meant to extend the lifetime of the Air Pressure’s S&W M12 revolvers that had aluminum cylinders and frames. By the Nineteen Sixties, a warmer model of the M41 was issued with the identical 130-grain bullet transferring at 950 fps from a 6-inch Military revolver.
These revolvers normally served as sidearms for personnel in assist roles who weren’t carrying an M1911.
Within the Nineteen Seventies, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was nonetheless carrying .38 Specials, and in 1971 the company launched a brand new .38 Particular +P spherical that they known as the “FBI Load.” It was topped with a 158-grain non-jacketed comfortable lead semi-wadcutter hole level bullet designed to increase at common .38 Particular velocities. The load proved efficient, and was subsequently adopted by a number of main police departments.
However the workhorse .38 wasn’t finished. Ultimately, Federal and Winchester launched the primary .38 Particular +P+ hundreds meant for specifically designed .38 revolvers and for .357 Magnum revolvers with a velocity of about 1,100 fps. Some hundreds have pushed the cartridge even quicker.
Nevertheless, the hurdle the .38 Particular couldn’t overcome, ultimately, was the restricted capability of a wheelgun.
9x19mm Historical past
The 9mm cartridge was launched 4 years after the .38 with very totally different origins and a really totally different path to changing into the popular U.S. legislation enforcement spherical.
From Austria With Love
The rimless, tapered 9x19mm Parabellum was created by Austrian firearm designer Georg Luger in 1901 as a extra highly effective total handgun cartridge for a selected, early semi-auto pistol: the Luger. That’s why the cartridge has the alternate identify of “9mm Luger.” The German navy wished a handgun spherical with extra juice, and Luger answered the decision.
The unique Luger pistol, patented in 1908, was a refined model of the Borchardt C-93 pistol, chambered for the 7.65x21mm Parabellum — the 9mm’s guardian cartridge. The “parabellum” is derived from the latin motto utilized by the lengthy defunct German arms firm Deutsche Waffen-und Munitionsfabriken (DWM): “Si vis pacem, para bellum” (if you’d like peace, put together for battle.).
The Luger pistol chambered in 9mm grew to become the German P08, a legend of WWI and WWII battlefields. The gun and cartridge had been offered to the British Small Arms Committee and three prototypes had been despatched to the U.S. Military for testing on the Springfield Arsenal in 1903.
It was readily adopted by the German military and navy and the 9mm grew to become the usual German pistol cartridge by each world wars. The spherical was light-weight, quick, and was more practical heading in the right direction than revolver rounds of the day due to that prime velocity. And the excessive pressures the 9mm generated promoted dependable biking in semi-autos.
The 9mm in World Warfare II
The Luger P08 was produced till 1943 and issued by 1945 . It had an amazing popularity for accuracy and reliability (although the motion could possibly be a bit finicky in battlefield circumstances), however its complicated design was sluggish and costly to fabricate.
The P08 was changed by the cheaper and easier Walther P38 earlier than the top of the battle, additionally chambered in 9mm, which was the primary locked-breech DA/SA pistol. In case you ever have the possibility to deal with one, you’ll discover plenty of similarities to the later Beretta 92 collection of 9mm handguns.
However let’s take a step again. In 1935, a design for a high-capacity semi-auto 9mm handgun begun by the legendary John Moses Browning was accomplished by gun designers at FN Herstal in Belgium who produced the primary Browning “Excessive Energy” pistol. The identify referred to the spectacular capability of the pistol’s double-stack journal: 13 rounds; greater than double the capability of revolvers of the day and the 9mm Walther P38.
In the course of the battle, when Belgium was occupied by Nazi Germany, the FN manufacturing facility was utilized by the Wehrmacht to construct the Hello-Energy because the “9mm Pistole 640(b),” for the reason that Germans already had ammo for it.
In the meantime, FN Herstal continued to construct the pistol for Allied forces on the opposite facet of the Atlantic in Canada on the John Inglis and Firm plant. And so, the 9mm grew to become one of many only a few cartridges utilized by each the Allied and Axis forces in the course of the battle.
After the battle, the 9mm cartridge was later adopted as the usual pistol and submachine gun cartridge of NATO and plenty of impartial nations. Due to the excessive journal capability provided by 9mm handguns, because the a long time handed and the ammo received higher, an increasing number of legislation enforcement businesses took be aware, and so did the U.S. navy.
The Military ditched the getting older M1911 in .45 ACP for the 9mm Beretta M9 in 1985. This 9mm pistol went on to interchange the 1911 in each department of the navy. Plenty of massive and small police departments switched from their .38 Particular revolvers to 9mm semi-autos within the Eighties and Nineteen Nineties till the 9mm grew to become the dominant cartridge for legislation enforcement within the U.S.
The FBI Adopts the 9mm
After the notorious “FBI Miami shootout” in 1986, the Bureau started to reevaluate the knowledge of carrying revolvers as main service weapons within the trendy age. Ultimately, the company switched semi-autos. Although it took variety of years (extra on that in a bit), the Bureau lastly settled on the 9mm.
When the FBI started to ask questions, so did different businesses. Within the late Eighties, the LAPD started the change to 9mm Beretta 92 collection pistols in 1986, whereas the NYPD quickly switched to 9mm SIG Sauer pistols after which Glocks. Almost all legislation enforcement businesses adopted swimsuit within the following years.
These trendy 9mm semi-autos had been extra highly effective than a .38 Particular, far simpler to regulate for the typical shooter than a .357 Magnum, and provided, even within the smallest service pistols, at the very least double a revolver’s capability. Plus, they got here with the quicker reload pace and better total carry capability of magazines.
One thing else occurred within the Eighties that was fairly essential for the 9mm: the introduction of the primary Glocks. The Glock 17 got here out of Austria — the birthplace of the 9mm — in 1982, adopted by the Glock 19 in 1988.
The handguns set a brand new customary for pistols for many years to return, particularly responsibility pistols for legislation enforcement, they usually had been each chambered in 9mm solely. This helped cement the cartridge as the new self-defense and legislation enforcement spherical heading into the twenty first century.
Efficiency
| Cartridge | Bullet Weight (grains) | Muzzle Velocity (fps) | Muzzle Power (ft. lbs.) | Max Strain (SAAMI) |
| .38 Lengthy Colt | 150 | 777 | 201 | 12,000 |
| .38 S&W | 145 | 650 | 136 | 14,500 |
| .38 S&W Particular | 158 | 940 | 310 | 17,000 |
| .38 Particular +P | 158 | 910 | 351 | 18,500 |
| .38 Particular +P+ | 110 | 1,100 | 295 | 22,000 |
| .380 ACP | 100 | 895 | 178 | 21,500 |
| 9mm | 115 | 1,300 | 420 | 35,000 |
| .357 Magnum | 158 | 1,350 | 639 | 35,000 |
| .357 SIG | 125 | 1,450 | 585 | 40,000 |
.38 Particular Efficiency
Contemplating it was developed for black powder, it’s no shock the .38 Particular is inherently a low-pressure spherical. In reality, it has one of many lowest chamber pressures you’ll find right now.
Within the .38 Particular you may have a 126-year-old cartridge that fires medium-sized bullets slowly. However the recreation modifications a bit once you get into the beforehand talked about +P and +P+ hundreds, which have chamber pressures of round 20,000 psi and produce about 20 % extra muzzle power than common .38 hundreds.
However the efficiency nonetheless isn’t exceptional — you find yourself with a spherical that shoots someplace between a .380 ACP and a 9mm. In fact, the longer the barrel, the higher the efficiency. Excessive-pressure .38 Specials can carry out fairly effectively from a carbine barrel, which is cool when you’ve got a lever gun chambered for .357 Magnum.
So, why is the .38 Particular nonetheless round? As a result of it’s controllable.
Excessive strain or excessive velocity rounds are a handful in a short-barreled handgun. Anybody who has ever fired a snubby .44 Magnum, or one thing bigger, is aware of that the lighter the gun and shorter the barrel, the extra punishing it may be on the wrists, and the slower follow-up pictures are.
A .38 Particular in a tiny, featherweight aluminum-framed revolver with a 1-inch barrel like an S&W J-frame, remains to be manageable for many shooters and surprisingly correct. And snubby revolvers nonetheless have their place as main easily-concealable CCW firearms and as backup weapons for individuals who really feel they want them.
Learn Subsequent: Greatest Revolvers
9mm Efficiency
Handgun shooters have adopted the 9mm in droves for 2 causes, journal capability and average recoil. Some individuals describe the recoil of very compact 9mm pistols as snappy, normally that means there’s a number of muzzle flip, which might be a difficulty for actually small weapons and small shooters. However in a full-size pistol, the recoil of a 9mm is extraordinarily manageable for almost all of shooters.
There was a time when the 9mm was known as underpowered by some — normally of us who carried .45s. Then got here the introduction of the .40 S&W and critics stated it will be the top of the 9mm. Regulation enforcement businesses all around the nation adopted the brand new cartridge, which was offered on being extra highly effective than a 9mm, which “might bounce off a windshield” whereas not taking on as a lot journal area as a .45.
In actuality, .40 S&W pistols did have a decreased magazine capability in comparison with their 9mm counterparts and the spherical generated greater pressures than a 9mm, that means it had extra recoil and it was tough on weapons. Plus, 9mm ammo know-how superior so shortly, quickly the .40 S&W’s ballistic benefits had been overshadowed by +P 9mm hundreds topped with trendy bullets.
After flip-flopping round from the 9mm to the 10mm to the .40 S&W after which again to the 9mm, the FBI launched a report in 2014 saying that when evaluating 9mm, .40 S&W, and .45 ACP cartridges developed for the company, the brand new propellants and bullet design utilized by trendy 9mm defensive hundreds had been similar to the opposite two bigger rounds whereas additionally delivering much less recoil, better magazine capability, and fewer put on on firearms.
After a short dalliance with the .40 S&W, many U.S. legislation enforcement businesses now use 9mm handguns — as many as 60 %, based on Newsweek.
Learn Subsequent: Greatest 9mm Ammo
Closing Ideas on the .38 Particular vs 9mm
Evaluating the .38 Particular vs 9mm is simply fascinating from the attitude of the historical past of legislation enforcement sidearms. At this level, there are such a lot of nice choices for self-defense concealed-carry semi-auto handguns in 9mm which can be designed to mitigate the additional recoil and muzzle flip from the speedy spherical that the one actual purpose to go along with a .38, even a +P load with a contemporary self-defense bullet, is as a result of an individual actually, actually likes carrying a revolver they usually don’t need the recoil of a .357 Magnum.
There’s nonetheless a spot for that ultra-compact profile of a 5-round wheelgun in .38. Nevertheless if you happen to dimension as much as a bigger revolver, the test marks within the professional column for the .38 are few.
That doesn’t imply the .38 doesn’t have its residence within the trendy self-defense panorama. It clearly does, and loads of individuals nonetheless desire to hold a compact revolver.
That stated, with regards to functionality and flexibility, the .38 can’t maintain a candle to the ever present and endlessly common 9mm, which has come to symbolize the proper steadiness of capability, velocity, energy, and accuracy for many handgun shooters for many functions.