38 revolvers, the designers made the case longer by 0.135″ so it could only be fired in a. To prevent people from shooting the much more powerful. 38 Special cartridge, Keith lengthened the case to accommodate a greater charge and higher velocity with the same bullet weight to generate more penetration, greater expansion and deliver more stopping power. 38 Special wasn’t getting through car doors and body armor, so Elmer Keith of Smith and Wesson fame designed the. 38’s Big Brotherĭuring the 1930s, criminals like bootleggers and gangsters outgunned the police using heavier caliber weapons like the. 38 Special would struggle with the +P and +P+ rounds and they are not recommended for revolvers that don’t have reinforced frames and are +P rated. 357 Magnum can comfortably handle the pressures of any of these rounds. 38 round so that it won’t fit into the cylinder of the. 357 Magnum cartridge is about 1/8 th” longer than a standard. While all the rounds are essentially the same, vast differences in velocity, muzzle energy, and chamber pressure need to be considered seriously before attempting to use rounds in a gun not chambered explicitly for that round. 38 Special is the 2 nd longest cartridge behind the. 38 rounds from certain caliber guns and not others.īelow are the lengths of the various rimmed. This is important to understand so that you can see the differences in the characteristics of this. 38 +P and +P+ rounds as a comparison – these will be under discussion in the next section. The ballistics table below shows each round as a standard load with the bullet weight, muzzle velocity and energy, and the maximum chamber pressure for each cartridge. Let’s look at these cartridges in comparison to each other so that you can see the slight differences and some ballistic data on each round. 38 S&W Special as properly termed is not confused with the. 38 refers to the case diameter, and while some cartridges like the. 38 caliber, as most cartridges in the group have an actual caliber of. 38 Special was adopted by law-enforcement agencies and used in guns like the Smith and Wesson M&P and the S&W Victory used in the Air Force and was in service from 1920 to 1990 when the larger capacity pistols took over. 38 and was the standard military sidearm until 1985 when the 9mm Beretta M92 replaced it. 45 ACP, which proved in the 1904 Thompson-Lagarde tests to have far more stopping power than the. 38 Long Colt was found to lack stopping power as the entire chamber could be emptied and not incapacitate the attacker. 38 Long Colt was that these tribesmen were often amped up on a natural form of PCP. 38 Long Colt, which was ineffective against the shields of Philippine Moro warriors during the Insurrection of 1898.Īnother factor in the poor performance of the. It was developed as an improved round over the.
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