Tactical Tupperware takes a look at his top five. I was amused by this one:
.45gap  So I honestly don’t know why this round exist. My only guess is that at some point the boys at Glock took marketing advice from Apple and decided to be propitiatory because it seemed cool. However I think if you bought a gun in .45gap then your membership card in the gun snob club gets stamped lifetime member.
Our state police adopted the Glock 37 in .45 GAP. As a taxpayer, I would have accepted either the .40S&W or the .45ACP. Hell, I’d even take the .357 SIG if they really wanted to go for a boutique cartridge. But the fact that they’ve adopted the .45 GAP tells me whoever is in charge of procurement for the PA State Police is too susceptible to marketing literature and sales pitches, and not concerned enough about wasting our money.
I think there may be a good reason for an agency to adopt a .45 GAP pistol. Assuming the decision has been made that a .45 caliber round is preferable to a 9x19mm or .40S&W round, a .45 ACP pistol may be too big to fit all officers’ hands, especially women. .45 ACP double stack pistols tend to have considerably larger grips than 9mm or .40. In an agency that may have officers with hands that are too small to comfortably and properly grip a double-stack .45 ACP pistol, the .45 GAP allows use of a round with comparable ballistics in a smaller-framed platform. That Glock saw an issue with the size of the G21 can be inferred not only from the introduction of the .45 GAP round, but from the introduction of the G21SF, with its reduced grip circumference. There is apparently a demand for .45 pistols in a smaller frame than can fit .45 ACP rounds.
45GAP has a use in countries where 45ACP(due to being a “military” cartridge) is banned.
Maybe instead of sales literature, your state police succumbed to the fact that Glock was practically giving them away to get large agencies to adopt the proprietary cartridge. I bet they don’t replace them with a GAP the next time.
45GAP:45ACP::308:30-06
Which is why the real answer for a pistol is 9mm with modern JHP ammo…
So you’re saying these procurement officers had a GAP in their knowledge?
Huh, I didn’t realize the PSP used the GAP.
Also, it’s not like cops shoot so much that the ammo price difference will matter.
Unless training regimens are much more thorough there than I’ve heard of in general, the average cop might not shoot more than a magazine a year, if that.
Big deal.
(Hell, a cursory search shows more or less price parity for serious defensive loads, which is what I imagine/hope the State Police carry.)
Although the cost for defensive loads of .45 GAP may only be a bit higher than other cartridges, what about the cost of practice? A magazine per year is not nearly enough to be reasonably competent with a firearm. If a member of the PSP wants to hit the range on his own dime the cost of .45 GAP comes into play and means less practice, less practice means less competence. Wouldn’t it be better to have each officer shoot 2 or 3 thousand rounds a year than simply a single magazine?
Even if a 9 mm doesn’t have the same ballistic qualities, its cheaper and cheaper means more practice and more practice equals more competence…
I think he meant proprietary, not propitiatory.
Yeah.
Or maybe “whoever is in charge of procurement for the PA State Police†chose to make a propitiatory decision…
Well, it is my opinion that the 9x19mm cartridge is the best pistol cartridge. While it doesn’t have as much stopping power as a larger cartridge such as a .45 ACP for example, the advantages of using the former outweigh its disadvantages as well as the advantages of using the latter. A modern 9mm with a staggered column magazine can hold at least 15 rounds (more or less, depending on ther overall size of the pistol). It’s recoil is no where near that of a .45 ACP for example so if you find yourself in a CQB situation in which you need to fire a large volume of rounds in a very rapid succession, you can reaquire your target through the sights between shots A LOT more quickly than a .45 ACP for example due to the low recoil of a 9mm. So, if someone is a well-trained and experienced marksman who’s aiming anywhere above where inferior end of the sternum begins, he or she should be able to render the target in question harmless with a quick double-tap. It’s accurate, which is more important than stopping power.
Hell, they’d be better off woth full-strength 10mm, if they want a proven but still rare caliber. It’s done well by me for 25 years.
My favorite impractical pistol caliber is 65mm. When the book “Every Handgun is Pointed at You” claimed that gun manufacturers were making guns with bigger calibers, a higher number of rounds, and smaller than ever before, my reaction was, “Really? Then I want my 90-round 65mm pistol that can fit in the palm of my hand!”
Yes, I know: it would be impractical to make a gun that has a round that can’t fit in the palm of your hand, put ninety of those in a magazine, and then expect the resulting gun to fit in the palm of your hand. But then, this desire was a reaction to the book’s paranoia, which was so great, it couldn’t even recognize the set of conflicting requirements for pistols–choose two, because you sure as heck aren’t getting all three!
At least, not until we can discover the laws of physics that allow objects to be bigger inside than they are outside.
I’m going to college next year and doing N.R.O.T.C. and plan to become a SEAL. The SEAL Teams use the SIG P226 Navy, which uses the 9x19mm parabellum, so if it’s good enough for them (considering the missions and circumstances they find themselves in), it’s good enough for me.
And I just remembered something else. For people who want to bring up the “if they’re wearing body armor” argument, the guy’s REALLY big, they’re fucked up on khat (if you’re fighting Somali militia), or whatever it is Al-Qaeda insurgents are always fucked up on (I forget what it is) when our troops are figting them, etc., that’s fine, because a well-trained and experienced marksman who hits his or her target but the target doesn’t go down, all he or she has to do is keep squeezing the trigger until the target goes down. If everyone of those shots hit their mark (which they will with a good marksman), then the target WILL go down at some point, and it probably won’t take that many (real combat’s not a video game). Or instead, you can just aim for the head and fire a quick double tap when you first engage the target. A well-trained and experienced marksman should be able to make that shot no problem.