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If this is discussed elsewhere, pls forgive me. Another forum (Sigforum) has a post saying Tex DPS is going to 9mm 147 gr and dropping 357 Sig. Current Troopers will be grandfathered. This sounds like someone's pulling my leg. Anyone else aware of this?

longdog wrote:If this is discussed elsewhere, pls forgive me. Another forum (Sigforum) has a post saying Tex DPS is going to 9mm 147 gr and dropping 357 Sig. Current Troopers will be grandfathered. This sounds like someone's pulling my leg. Anyone else aware of this?

Wouldn't surprise me. There's a lot of good reasons to use 9mm these days. Speer Gold Dot or Hornady Critical Duty in +P have amazing performance. Lower overall training and maintenance costs as well, not to mention the ability to open up to more competitors for replacement duty weapons.

Can't say I would be against having the capacity and shoot-ability of the 9mm if I were a solo trooper in rural Texas.

And the .357sig is a lame choice of duty round. It takes the already bad .40, and makes it more expensive.


I hope they do it.

The Germans did pretty well with 9mm Parabellum....for awhile back in the 40's.

gigag04 wrote:And the .357sig is a lame choice of duty round. It takes the already bad .40, and makes it more expensive.


I hope they do it.

"bad 40".....I'll stick with my 40 over a 9 anyday. Where I came from we had a lot of success with the 40. We had tried 9 but it didn't have the effective stopping power we were looking for. I'll check with my friend who works DPS and see what he says about this. Could be merely for cost issues.

texanjoker wrote:

gigag04 wrote:And the .357sig is a lame choice of duty round. It takes the already bad .40, and makes it more expensive.


I hope they do it.

"bad 40".....I'll stick with my 40 over a 9 anyday. Where I came from we had a lot of success with the 40. We had tried 9 but it didn't have the effective stopping power we were looking for. I'll check with my friend who works DPS and see what he says about this. Could be merely for cost issues.

Given the .357 Sig is a 9mm bullet over a .40 case, you've got the worst of both worlds. Smaller hole AND a smaller magazine capacity.

Also, I'd be rather wary of anyone claiming "effective stopping power" for any pistol round, short of the .44 Magnum. Pistols just flat don't have effective stopping power in and of themselves; only if you knock the pins out from under an attacker or get a hit in the central nervous system will he be "stopped," and not always then. Even the much-vaunted and revered .45, my own favorite semi-auto pistol cartridge, won't "stop" anything unless it breaks a femur or hip, severs the spine, or bounces in the brainpan. It just leaves a slightly bigger hole. So, I either want to make bigger holes, or more of them.

And yes, I'm stuck with a .40 per department issue.

I hope all the departments go to 9mm - means more .40 on the shelf for me.

I agree that any pistol round is inadequate as discussed many times. I also say the 357 sig round has some advantages. I see no significant difference in capacity of 40 or 357 relative to a 9mm. In most full size pistols it is 15 compared to 17 rounds. If 15 is not enough then maybe more practices in order, but agreed more is always better. The 357 has been considered desirable because it matches the ballistics of the 357 mag that police and state troopers nation wide carried for many years. The 357 has a decent history of performing over a wide range of situations and barrier conditions. I think the 357 sig brings something to the shooter the others do not bring because of its higher velocity and they tend to be accurate as well. It is of course not a rifle but more punch for windshields or other obstructions. The ammo availability arguement is somewhat diffuse, since the 357 uses a 9mm projectile and a necked down 40 case. The 357 production is substantially less than 9mm and should not really effect the market place.

Of the "front line" self-defense and/or duty calibers, it seems to me that this is how they shake out.

.45 ACP, designed 1904, and still going strong.

9mm Luger, designed 1901, and still going strong.

10mm Auto, designed 1983, a very respectable enthusiast's cartridge, but mostly done as a commercial duty/SD round.

.40 S&W, designed 1990, fading due to lack of (in my opinion) versatility.

.357 Sig, designed 1994, nearly gone.

.45 GAP, whu' ....what? What's a GAP?

The last 4 of these cartridges all have varying degrees of potential, and their own cadre of adherents. The first two offer something tantalizing to consider......maybe in those two cartridges, the automatic pistol cartridge has already been perfected. All that remains is bullet design and powder charge for different applications. The 10mm is possibly more versatile than those two cartridges, but for whatever reasons the market isn't bearing it out so much.

The 9mm and .45 ACP cartridges will be around as long as we are still allowed to own pistols. But the .40 and the others are destined to eventually be deprecated out. It has little or nothing to do with their effectiveness. I'm not volunteering to stand in front of a .40. But at the end of the day, they all answer questions that either very few people were asking, or which were already answered by the 9mm and .45 ACP.

Some cartridges are forever, because they are just so good. '30.06 is like that. Others come and go.....not because they are bad cartridges, but because they either answer a question that's already been answered and are therefore superfluous in their category, or because they are limited in some aspect or other.

TAM, once again you hit the nail on the head. You always seem to do that with a vast amount of knowledge and a flair for the ability to put it in writing.

Like you, I believe some things....calibers....stand the test of time because they deserve to be there. I love .45acp, and used to carry one or two different models religiously until one day when a friend and fellow pistol competitor said something that hit home. We were eating lunch when we noticed some LEOs walking by carrying 1911 firearms. I won't get into the fact that they were not cocked and locked, however he made a valid point. he asked "Why would anyone who depended on their handgun to keep them alive limit themselves to 8 rounds?" At the time I was carrying a Kimber Ultra Stainless ( which I dearly love and can shoot quite well ) and it hit me...he's right. Bigger hole or not, his M&P with 18 rounds of 9mm had ten more rounds of fighting power. At the time I owned an M&P CORE with a Leupold Delta Point on it. As of Yesterday I own another CORE with iron sights no delta. I think I am hooked.

Now I can compete with the same fiream I carry, dot or no dot it's the same firearm, and I am VERY capable of shooting it. Makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.

The Annoyed Man wrote:Some cartridges are forever, because they are just so good. '30.06 is like that.

I wonder if there is a rifleman in the U.S. born before 1970 who hasn't experienced the .30-06 cartridge in some way.
One of the design characteristics of the .30-06 is that it is at the upper limit of recoil energy that most shooters can tolerate. The Ordnance Board had determined through testing, that recoil energy in excess of 20 ft-lb would induce a serious flinch in most soldiers. The formula they worked out, the recoil energy of an 8 pound rifle firing a 165 grain bullet at 2,900 feet per second is 20.1 foot-pounds force, was one of the major factors in the design of the .30-06 cartridge.
The testing though, utilized the average soldier at of turn of the 20th century, 5' 4" 145 lbs. We are on average 5 inches taller and 60 pounds heavier now. I wonder what the results would be of comparable testing now?

I wouldn't say .40 has lack of 'versatility.' There's a reason so many departments utilize it, but there's also a reason a lot are going away from it. That reason can only be guessed right now.

I'm no cop, but if I had the choice and worked in a large metropolitan, I would choose .40 over 9mm. If I worked rural areas, I certainly wouldn't mind a 9mm XDm with 19+1 capacity.

I had a chance to shoot a Sick looking coyote today just standing by my gate, with my 9mm Hornady Critical Duty in +P ammo. The first time I have fired that ammo. It was really smooth & accurate. At about 25 ft. I fired 3 time & hit him twice. The wound cavity was big.

Pecos wrote:I had a chance to too a Sick looking coyote today just standing by my gate, with my 9mm Hornady Critical Duty in +P ammo. The first time I have fired that ammo. It was really smooth & accurate. At about 25 ft. I fired 3 time & hit him twice. The wound cavity was big.

Did you hang him on the fence?