.45 Resurgent?
The Good Old .45 ACP Is Making A Comeback
The bowling pin on its way off the table is from a 230-grain
+P .45 hit. The .45 ACP has been Mas’ choice since the sport
of pin shooting began in the mid-’70s.
I don’t know how to feel when other gun writers pick up on trends before I do. My friend and fellow gun writer Jim Tarr commented recently that .45 ACP was becoming more popular, as witness the fact when Springfield Armory updated their Tactical Response Pistol, all six options were chambered for the large caliber round. I had one of those TRPs in for testing along with another new .45 that had arrived simultaneously, the fifth generation of the G30, GLOCK’s most popular big-bore carry pistol.
Neither Springfield Armory nor GLOCK are going to make guns in a given caliber unless their market research and sales feedback indicates they’re going to sell.
That same day I had an exchange with my old friend Bill Wilson. A year or two before, he had mentioned his company Wilson Combat was manufacturing more 1911s in 9mm than in .45. Today, he told me, the .45 is indeed coming back and sales are 50/50 between the two calibers.
Dang! I hate being the last to know … but it’s not a bad thing to know.
You won’t see a 9mm expand like this. Federal HST 230-grain +P,
blood washed off after retrieval from optimal depth in a deceased hog.
Fired from a 5" barrel.
Market Drivers
Back in 1994 when Bill Clinton’s Assault Weapons Ban prohibited larger magazines than 10-round capacity for the decade to come, we saw more people buying smaller 9mms in 10-round format … and more people buying service/home defense-size handguns in .45, because if they couldn’t have more than 10 in the mag, they wanted them to be 10 big ones. The thinking was not illogical.
Though this stupid ban was “sunsetted” in 2004, more and more blue and purple states have enacted their own similar mag capacity limits. We shouldn’t be surprised the same responses are occurring in the marketplace.
There are other factors. We boomers grew up in an era when most of the dads in the neighborhood were WWII vets and some grandpas were WWI vets. We heard the war stories. Jeff Cooper’s “19 out of 20 one-shot stops with .45 hardball” may have been optimistic, but almost without exception those veterans were happy with the stopping power of the old 1911 and the 230-grain sluggers it spat forth. Their only complaints were accuracy and recoil, and those, my generation quickly learned, were both due to the crappy training of our forebears’ time.
To my generation, hearing “Colt .45 automatic,” like “Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum,” had a reassuring connotation of power. Do a YouTube search for the videos of another old friend, Dick Fairburn, who did a stopping power survey years ago with the readers of Police Marksman magazine, the results of which augmented his extensive law enforcement research on the matter. Dick finds .357 Magnum and .45 ACP pretty much comparable in terms of their fight-ending capabilities, and both a step beyond the 9mm.
Need a light, compact .45 for CCW? Colt CCO, S&W Shield and GLOCK 30 will all serve nicely.
I recently watched a body armor test that included data on back-face trauma, measuring the size of the cavities in Roma Plastilena #2 clay behind vests struck by bullets. I couldn’t help but notice the .45 ACP was almost the same as the .357 Magnum, only a couple of centimeters different in depth, and both markedly greater than the 9mm.
Over the years, I’ve done and supervised a lot of slaughterhouse testing of duty pistol ammunition on live animals, primarily hogs and steers. I’ve seen 9mm and ultra-light .357 Magnum projectiles fail to penetrate deeply enough for a quick, humane kill. But the single duty caliber that seemed best for the quickest and most decisive incapacitation was indeed the .45 ACP. And the .45’s recoil is much more controllable than that of the .357 Mag and up, if multiple shots are required.
I’ve dug 200-grain Speer and 230-grain HST +P .45 slugs out of dead hogs measuring a full inch edge-to-expanded edge. Ain’t gonna see that with a 9mm!
Go to a bowling pin match like my favorite such event, The Pin Shoot (www.pinshoot.com). Rules generally require the heavy tenpins to be blasted three feet back off their table to stop the timer. The .45s do this decisively and are the most popular choice in the game.
For 9mm, a “handicap” has to be offered: Either tipping the pin over is enough or the pins have to be set further back. Go to a GSSF match, where a third of the shooting is knocking over steel plates. In the “Pocket GLOCK” event allowing the .380, they realize those little bullets may not knock the plates over so there’s a dispensation saying just hitting one with the .380 is good enough. In the main events, 9mm bullets knock the plates over but in the Heavy Metal (service-sized .45 and 10mm) and Major Sub (subcompacts in the same calibers) .45 slugs slam the plates over. Contestants leave the match feeling they’ve learned a lesson …
Perspective
I ain’t knockin’ 9mm. I carry this caliber more than any other. More bullets in a time of multiple perps, perps with armor and perps on drugs that keep them up and running when hurt. I’m a firearms instructor who has to travel and can get twice as many 115-grain 9s as 230-grain .45s into the airline checked baggage weight limit of 11 lbs. But I have to admit when I’m carrying a .45, there is a comforted part of me that just purrs.
So, if you still rely on .45s or are thinking of buying your first one, don’t feel bad about it. There are reasons …
