GUNS Magazine The 9mm vs. .45 Debate Still Rages

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In the handgun world, one long-standing debate is 9mm versus .45 caliber. There are arguments on both sides and I hope you’ll forgive me if I sound like a politician when saying, “I basically agree with both opinions.” A very long-time .45 guy myself, I’ve found myself carrying a 9mm about three times as much as I wore a .45.

Brass flies as weak-hand-only .45 run starts.

“Because Reasons”

However, reasons need to be reasonable. I recognize in the same platforms, the 9mm version of essentially the same pistol will hold more rounds and will kick less. However, the current trope of “all the service calibers are the same in terms of ability to stop the threat” is somewhat questionable. And I recently came across a 9mm theme I have to question even more strongly: “You can shoot twice as fast with a 9mm as you can with a .45.”

Finding a little time on my hands, I went to my range with two functionally identical Springfield Armory 1911 pistols. I weighed the triggers — the 9mm was 4.61 lbs. and the .45, 4.87 lbs. Without the Lyman Digital trigger pull scale, I couldn’t tell the difference. Ammo was American Eagle full metal jacket, 115-gr. for the 9mm and 230-gr. for the .45 ACP. The electronic timer was a CED.

Big holes = .45, smaller = 9mm, 1-point difference in score.

Make Ready

I stood at five yards from an IPSC silhouette target, about the distance my friend and colleague Tom Givens has determined to be average between the combatants in the many gunfights his students have engaged and won. Time was measured from first shot to last in a five-shot string. I fired from a strong Isosceles stance, weight forward, wrists locked, using a max force crush grip with both hands.

The 9mm delivered five hits in 97/100ths of one second. The group clustered high in the center chest, four in the “A-zone” and one just above it. I gave it one point down, 24 out of 25 possible points, or 96 percent hit value. The .45 punched five holes in the A-zone in 1.01 seconds, 4/100ths of a second slower with 100 percent hit value. Using IPSCs Comstock Count scoring formula, score divided by time, was 24.74 with the 9mm and 24.75 for the .45. Group size, measured center to center between the farthest-flung shots, was 7.55" for the 9mm (one shot pulled low, the other four in 3.55"). With the .45 it was 3.65" for all five and 1.90" for the best four. The harder-kicking gun had actually scored better in terms of hits, taking 0.040 seconds longer. Four one-hundredths of one second is not a big difference …

Split times, the lapse between shots, averaged exactly a quarter second with the 9mm. With the .45, splits were 0.26, 0.24, 0.25, and 0.26, averaging 0.2525 of one second. I would expect this much difference or more between two runs with the same gun and ammo by the same shooter.

Weak hand only, 9mm was 1 point down but gave 0.02 sec. faster splits.

Further Testing

I tried the same thing one-hand only with either hand at three yards, the distance NRA chose for the one-hand stage of their Police Service Pistol Course. Dominant hand only, both 9mm and .45 gave me clean scores, with “shots 1 through 5” times of 0.97 and 1.04 respectively; break times averaged 0.25 seconds for the 9mm and 0.26 for the 0.45.

Non-dominant hand only is an important test bed for when you can’t get everything perfect. The 9mm dropped one point in 1.33 seconds for shots 1-5 (average splits: 0.37 sec), while the .45 put them all in the center zone of the IPSC target in 1.58 seconds (average splits: 0.39 sec).

Conclusions: Not a helluva lot of difference. Also, confirmation of what we already knew — two hands are better than one and we don’t colloquially call one of our hands the strong one and the other the weak for nothing.

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Mas suggests doing your own test to determine real world difference in control
between calibers. Results may be surprising

The Bottom Line

Every shooter needs to try this individually to see what the case really is for him or her. In the 9mm versus .45 debate, there are some immutable points and some debatable ones. For certain, the larger JHP of identical design will cut a wider wound channel than the smaller one at similar velocities and in the same pistol format, the magazine can hold more 9mm than .45 rounds. For sure, the 9mm kicks less, and while this can be hugely and even decisively important for new shooters, it’s bunk to say a shooter with good technique will hit with two 9mms for every one .45 round in the same time frame.

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The 9mm vs. .45 Debate Still Rages

The question of control

“Because Reasons”

Make Ready

Further Testing

The Bottom Line

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The 9mm vs. .45 Debate
Still Rages