At Least It Is Easy To Buy Ammo
Guns using cartridges started to replace firearms using the so-called percussion method in a major way within a decade after the end of the American Civil War. The advantages were that all you had to do was load a cartridge into a gun and shoot, which took less than five seconds even for the average gunslinger. With the percussion method the powder and ball had to be loaded separately, which meant you could get one round off every thirty seconds or so if you were pretty good.
So it was easier to reload, much less of a pain in the backside, and fast as fast could be. The only real drawback was that it was easy to assemble your own ammo in the field if you were using a percussion gun, and not easy at all if you were using a firearm set up for cartridges.
And so it became popular to buy a rifle and handgun which were chambered for the same ammunition. You only had to worry about one type of ammo rattling around in your saddlebags, and if one gun broke the other could still use whatever cartridges were left.
This commonality of ammunition makes a great deal of sense if one is out in the back of beyond, with the nearest general store or gun shop more than a week of hard riding away. Even today, many people concerned about emergency survival situations and the breakdown of our modern supply chains will look to acquire carbines and handguns that are chambered for the same caliber, and for the same reason that the pioneers in the Old West wanted to be able to shoot the same stuff out of all their guns. So why aren’t more people doing it?
There are two reasons, the first being that it is unlikely that civilization will break down to the point that you will need more than about 100 rounds before your local WalMart is restocked and open for business. The second is that handguns suck.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. Modern handguns are just great, technological marvels that are more finely built than a Swiss watch. Compare modern designs, fresh from factories that employ up-to-date manufacturing methods and metallurgy, and they beat the vast majority of stuff you could get during the height of the Old West era. Time and progress have marched on from the 19th Century.
No, what I meant was that handguns suck when compared to modern rifles.
Let me give you a quick example.
The .357 Magnum cartridge is considered to be a very effective and powerful handgun round, while the .223 rifle cartridge is widely denigrated as a “poodle shooter”. Yet, if you follow the links and check the ballistic data for each, you will find that the .223 delivers more than twice the energy than the .357 Magnum.
Energy isn’t the whole story when it comes to wounding potential, of course, but it does give a very good indication nonetheless. And the conclusions we can draw is that handguns just aren’t in the same class as rifles chambered for dedicated rifle ammunition.
There is still a selection of rifles being produced that are chambered for handgun ammo, and they are usually referred to as a “carbine”. The word just means a short and handy rifle, but people will know what you are talking about if you mention your “.357 Magnum carbine” or your “.45 ACP carbine”. It has become the accepted verbal shorthand.
So actual rifles are usually much, much more powerful than the carbines mentioned above. Does this doesn’t mean that carbines chambered for handgun ammo is a bad idea? No, not at all! In fact, it might be a very good idea indeed.
The fact that carbines are larger than handguns, and that they are fired while braced against the shoulder, means that the perceived recoil is almost unnoticeable even if you are using Magnum ammunition. A few of my students who were suffering from disabilities painful enough to keep them from using handguns, rifles, or shotguns for their defense had great success when they used carbines. Accurate, light, relatively inexpensive, easy to use. They were literally the answer to a few prayers.
They are also very versatile. Carbines chambered for .357 or .44 Magnum ammunition are accurate and powerful enough to be used for hunting, as well as being well suited for home defense. Save some money and only buy one gun.
To be frank, I don’t have any experience with using carbines for hunting. Most of my students were dirt poor, and money was extremely tight. This meant that the Hi Point carbine chambered for the 9mm Parabellum cartridge was the favorite.
(Picture source.)
I really don’t have anything bad to say about this particular firearm, and Mr. Completely has already written the definitive review. Oh, sure, there are guns out there that are better. Better looking, more durable, more capable. But none of those better guns can be had for the same price.
Is a carbine chambered for a handgun caliber a good idea? They certainly fit a niche.
September 12th, 2009 at 9:27 am
One of the most common inexpensive carbines I’ve seen is the lever-action .30-30. In my area, beat-up but still functional examples can go for $150 or even less (I have a Marlin carbine I bought for $120: it was a police confiscation that had been bounced off the concrete a couple of times; the finish was wrecked and the wood scarred, but it still shoots just fine). Add a sling and a buttstock shell holder, and you’re good to go.
The .30-30 cartridge gets a bad rap for being underpowered, and for deer at 200 yards it might be (I’m not a hunter so I couldn’t really say) but for thug at across-the-livingroom ranges a 125-grain hollowpoint at 2500 FPS will serve just fine.
I know it’s not pistol-caliber, but if you want to talk cheap longarms for defensive use, it deserves mention.
September 12th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Another consideration is that a carbine’s longer barrel can take some handgun rounds (The .357 for example) into “doesn’t suck” territory.
September 12th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
A handgun round that gains a decent amount of muzzle velocity by going from a 5″ barrel to a 16″ barrel must have one hell of a muzzle blast when fired from a handgun.
I would think coming up with the right balance to operate in both barrels would be tricky.
September 12th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
I found a website that compares handgun caliber velocities fired from pistols vs. carbines.
http://www.leverguns.com/articles/rifle_handgundata.htm
Just one example:
Ammo Ruger Security Six 6″ Rossi M-92 20″
Remington 165gr. Core Lokt HP 1255 fps 1664 fps
That’s about a 30% increase in velocity - increasing energy and ballistics as well.
September 12th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Guy: Google “Ballistics by the inch” and read their results. Turns out that the average .357 factory load gains ca.500 FPS in going from a 4″ handgun barrel to a 16″ carbine barrel- or, for the sui generis 125 grain Winchester JHP load, going from a tad over 1500 FPS to 2051 FPS (125 grains at 2000 FPS- no, that most certainly does NOT suck)…
…or you can just google for any online reviews of any .357 or .44 carbine and read what the reviewers were getting for muzzle velocity with factory ‘handgun’ ammo. Note that no trees were flattened by muzzle blasts in these tests.
The issue isn’t the ammo, it’s the barrel. A longer barrel gives the same amount of powder a longer time to burn and the gases a larger volume to expand into; therefore, longer barrel generally equals higher velocity. Admittedly there’s a point of diminishing returns, but that’s generally so far out that you’re not likely to see it in a production gun.
The same thing works in the other direction. Going back to Ballistics By The Inch, you can see that when you use .357 in a very short barrel- say, the 2″ barrel that a lot of 5-shot snubbies use- you’re actually getting lower velocities than you would get if you were using a .38 Special in a 4″ barrel. Reason? there’s just not enough tube for the powder to burn completely and the gases to expand properly, and a lot of the energy gets wasted in fireball.
September 12th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
I wondered if pistol-caliber carbines would become popular for home-defense in Chicago when they banned handguns years ago… no way to know for sure if they caught on. I do know that some people opted for shotguns, but I don’t know how much practice they ever got since most of the area ranges are indoors and do not permit shotguns. Those same indoor ranges do allow rifles chambered for handgun loads, so choosing the carbine over a shotgun for home defense (in this area) might be a good idea if one values practice…
September 14th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Speaking from the experience of my .357 Magnum 2″ snubbie I’d say yes. Yes it does.
In fact, there’s enough muzzle blast that if there are three attackers a shot at the one in the middle will probably at least temporarily take out all three.
September 15th, 2009 at 10:16 pm
You have raised an interesting issue. I have been looking and can’t find any modern long arms that use common handgun ammunition. Does anyone have a list compiled on this? It does make great sense. As one who has about 9 different caliber arms about it could do to simplify.
September 17th, 2009 at 4:04 am
[...] explores the idea of using a carbine chambered in a pistol cartridge for home defense (emphasis [...]
September 17th, 2009 at 9:02 am
Couple of things… I’ve got a KelTec Sub2000 that shoots 40 S&W out of the same magazines that my Glock uses. Not only is it a carbine, but it folds in half for storage. It is SO much fun to take it to the range. Take it out of the little canvas tool bag I carry it in, swing it open, slap in the 33 round magazine and go bang-bang-bang-bang…-bang-bang (total of 33 times) and by the time you’re done you’ve at least got everyone’s attention.
Also, you said “it is unlikely that civilization will break down to the point that you will need more than about 100 rounds before your local WalMart is restocked and open for business”. Uh, have you tried to buy ammo in general (and pistol ammo in particular) at WalMart in the last 10 months?
And this is just because too many voters thought it would be fun to make history at the polls. Imagine how difficult it would be to buy ammo if there were ANY kind of societal breakdown or emergency or any situation where everyone thought it might be a good idea to get whatever ammo they could.
Even once WalMart was open for business, it would be a long long time before you had any realistic chance of buying ammo there. And I’ll bet they would limit everyone to one box per day, so even if you got lottery lucky and they had ammo when you went in and you were close enough to the front of the line that you could actually buy some you wouldn’t be getting much. If the ammo gods were really smiling on you, you might get a 100 count box, but that’s it.
September 17th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Just for the record, I had a .40 HiPoint carbine for over a year before I sold it because I simply did not fire it much after the initial hoopla of getting it. If I had pistol rounds to shoot, I put them down the pipe of my CCW piece. That being said, I never had a hiccup from the HiPoint and the one very minor issue I had with it (cosmetic) was rectified by the manufacturer in no time flat. They aren’t pretty, but they damn well work!
September 18th, 2009 at 2:43 am
[...] I mentioned in a previous post that rifles chambered for pistol ammo fill a specific niche. Some of my disabled students, for example, used them when reduced physical capabilities kept [...]
September 18th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
I remember an article in one of the gun magazines, some years ago, where the author ranted about the difference between short rifles and carbines. Apparently carbines have rings around the end of the stock & barrel, and possibly other differences, whereas short rifles are just rifles with short barrels.
Googleing it now, though, there seems to be no consensus in those definitions.
September 18th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Le Bolide, that sounds like it pertains to the distinction between a carbine and short rifle variants of a particular model of weapon (SMLE maybe?), not an across-the-board distinction.
Last “carbine” is etymologically related to Carabinier, a type of cavalry. Cavalry tended to carry shortened rifles about with them as full length rifles would have been too much of an encumbrance on horseback. Combat rifles are getting shorter and shorter, so by the standards of the 1890’s, the M16 would probably qualify as a carbine, as a number of cavalry weapons from the era had barrels 21 inches long!
A lot of people will say that a pistol caliber carbine gets the worst of both worlds; lousy pistol cal ballistics and the size of a rifle. IMO they have a few merits that tend to get overlooked and are worthy of discussion:
-Straight blowback PCCs like the hi-point are dead simple; they make an AK look complicated. This also means that they can be made relatively cheaply, and usually are. The hi-point is often to be had for cheaper than a good 9mm pistol.
-Hit probability will be substantially better with a stocked weapon than with a pistol, especially at longer ranges.
-9mm out of a 16″ tube isn’t quite as loud as 5.56mm out of the same length barrel or 9mm out of a pistol. In an HD situation where there isn’t time to put in plugs, this could be a very good thing.
-Some indoor shooting ranges don’t allow rifle calibers, but do allow rifles in pistol calibers.
-9mm at least is usually fairly cheap and widely available.
PCCs in magnum revolver cartridges typically aren’t as cheap, but they are usually a decent compromise between power and recoil. .357 in a rifle format is quite tame to most shooters, and that 16″ barrel can deliver anywhere between 50-70% more muzzle energy than out of a typical pistol.