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These small pocket pistols are the easiest EDC pieces to tote around – and carry comfort truly matters a great gun left at home will do you no good in a moment of need.There’s a delicate dance played by those who carry a. 380 firearms are hard to beat when it comes to concealability. Regardless of caliber choice, training is a must. 9mm pistols have more recoil and a larger footprint, but in particularly small guns the. If sheer stopping power is what you need in a firearm, or you want to ensure the cheapest per-round cost of ownership, the 9mm is generally the way to go. The choice, then, is a function of priorities.
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380 or Glock 43 in 9mm will both deliver rounds on target to good effect in properly trained hands. The usability of a pistol designed for self-defense is often the most important consideration.380 or 9mm for Concealed Carry?īoth rounds are more than adequate for concealed carry – a Glock 42 in. The lack of recoil energy, when compared to 9mm cartridges, means it’s controllable even when used in very small firearms. 380 could still be found with relative ease. The COVID demand surge made 9mm ammunition pure unobtanium, while boxes of. While that’s usually badgenerally not a good thing, it can work in your favor in the event of an ammo shortage.
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380 ammo is usually a little more expensive than 9mm. Similarly, they’re light enough for handbags or backpacks, should you choose to carry off-body or need a lightweight backpacking pistol.Ī third reason is a kind of counter-intuitive one –. It’s fairly easy to conceal any of the firearms we just listed – regardless of carry style. 380 is very popular in pocket pistol form factors that are unbeatable for concealed carry. Self-defense oriented hollow point rounds will stop your target just as well in both. 380 will matter only marginally to the recipient of those shots. While a bit of an exaggeration, the point stands: if you hit your target the difference in energy between 9mm and. Otherwise, we’d all be walking around with a. The key, then, is to carry a gun that you can shoot well – not the one that delivers the most lethal force per round. But we think there’s a little more to the story when defining effective stopping power.įirst and foremost, stopping power means the ability to stop a target. 380 in terms of stopping power when it comes to the energy delivered on target.
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380 does just fine in smaller form factors. These kinds of considerations make defining the “best” round a little more nuanced than simply looking at raw power output. The 9mm has more energy – which produces more recoil and requires more strength to control.Īdditionally, the 9mm cartridge benefits from longer barrels due to the additional powder within the case, so 9mm pistols tend to be larger – whereas the.
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That additional power comes with a few downsides. 380 is the shorter of the two while both rounds share the same 9mm (or. The simplest way to tell these two rounds apart (aside from checking the headstamps) would be to stand them next to each other: the. 380 has several names, amongst them “9mm Kurtz.” If you remember any of your high school German, you’ll know that Kurtz simply means “short” – which is why you’ll sometimes hear the. The round we now call “9mm” is also referred to as the “9mm Luger” whereas the. 380 to excel in some truly tiny form factors the larger 9mm round wouldn’t accommodate. Its small size, short case, and small powder load means the ballistics hold up well even when fired out of a very short barrel. In that pistol we can see a perfect use case for the. So much adventure for such a small cartridge! Al Capone carried one in his coat pocket, Bonnie Parker smuggled an M1908 into the jail holding Clive Barrow and used it to break him out, and bank robber John Dillinger was carrying an M1908 when he was shot by FBI agents on July 22, 1934.
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