Sometimes Less Is More

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Interesting thing about “conventional wisdom” or “things everybody knows” — they’re frequently wrong. You know, simple examples like “the earth is flat” or “the sun revolves around the earth”… these are plainly obvious things to anyone with eyes, right? Look around you, and you’ll see that the earth is flat — except for the tiny complication that, in fact, it isn’t. And the prevailing notion that the sun revolved around the earth was not only widely accepted “fact”, it was literally heresy against the Church to say otherwise… even though, in actuality, it was wrong.

It doesn’t really matter how widespread a belief is, does it, if it turns out to be wrong?

Sometimes I think people hide behind false beliefs because “there’s strength in numbers”. If lots of people believe the same thing, then nobody could blame YOU if you believed it too, right? You know, the old “everybody’s doing it” argument?

But — wouldn’t you rather be “right” than “popular”? Hmmm, even as I type that I can acknowledge that there’s probably a lot of people who would disagree… oh well, to each their own, I guess… I know I’d certainly rather believe what is true, regardless of how many other people agree.

Where am I headed with this? Just that I’m challenging one of the most dearly cherished beliefs among shooters: Muzzle Energy, Muzzle Velocity, and specifically the idea that More Kinetic Energy Is Better.

Shriek! Sacrilege!

Of COURSE more is better! How could anyone suggest otherwise? Heretic!

Yeah, I know… heretic. Kind of like that whole sun-revolves-around-the-earth thing, right? Here’s the thing — to me, it doesn’t matter what we WANT to believe, all that matters to me is what is TRUE. I’ll gladly change my beliefs to line up with the truth, any time. Never been one to go along with the crowd anyway.

So let’s talk about “Muzzle Energy”. This is one of the most common ways, and most obvious ways, that shooters judge the effectiveness of ammo. The more “energy” a round has, the better, right? Who could argue with that? I mean, the common conception is that the faster the round, the better. Seriously, if you had a choice between two rounds that use the identical same bullet, and one is rated at 1000 feet per second, and the other is rated at 900 feet per second, and they’re the same price, wouldn’t you have to be a raging idiot to buy the 900fps version?

What if I told you the 900fps version actually penetrates deeper and performs better than the 1000fps version?

For some of you, that feeling you’re experiencing right now is called “cognitive dissonance” — where your brain hurts, trying to reconcile two conflicting “truths” — you know (or at least want to believe) that I’m right, or else why would you be reading this article? But simultaneously, you also know that “more = better” because … hey, come on, it’s faster, therefore it MUST be better, we all know that…

Testing Trumps Theory, Every Time

So here’s where testing comes into play, and where I can demonstrate what I’m talking about and how it’s different. Let’s take the example of Speer Gold Dots in .380 ACP. I got pretty solid results with these out of the 2.84″ barrel Taurus TCP, averaging about 920 feet per second and 11.71″ of penetration through ClearBallistics gel. From a Bersa Thunder 3.5″ barrel, I got substantially higher velocities, averaging 980 feet per second. That’s great, right? That’s “better”, right?

So here’s the head-smacking part — why did I get an average of only 9.5″ of penetration from the 980 fps Bersa Thunder, whereas the exact same bullets delivered 23% more penetration from the shorter-barrel, slower TCP?

It’s Not What You’ve Got, It’s How You Use It

Unquestionably, the Bersa Thunder’s longer barrel resulted in more energy in the bullet than the TCP’s shorter barrel did. By my calculations, the TCP delivered 169 foot/lbs of muzzle energy, whereas the Bersa delivered 192 ft/lbs! That’s a pretty huge difference, yet the relative effectiveness of the bullets were exactly the opposite — the TCP bullets penetrated deeply enough to cause an incapacitating hit, nearly meeting the FBI’s specification for a minimum of 12″ of penetration, whereas the exact same bullet from the Bersa came up way short, not even reaching 10″.

Why? Because the bullets from the Bersa, travelling at such a higher rate of speed, impacted the ballistic gel much faster and spent all that additional energy on EXPANSION, not on PENETRATION. The bullets from the Bersa did indeed have a lot more energy, and they spent it on forcing the bullet to open up to a bigger diameter. The bullets from the Bersa expanded to an average diameter of .515″, whereas the slower bullets from the TCP expanded to only .447″. That’s a difference in overall diameter of about 15%, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but it made a much bigger difference in the penetration (about 23%). The smaller bullet was able to slip deeper into the ballistic gel than the bigger bullet could, even though the bigger-expanded bullet had a lot more energy to it. And, all other things being equal, the bullet that penetrates more is more likely to reach the vital structures of the body and cause an incapacitating hit, than the shallower bullet.

If More Isn’t Better, Then Why Is More Better?

So here’s where we bring it full circle. The natural inclination is to want more, and it seems obvious that we should want more, but — it all depends in how you use it. You CAN do more, with more. Having more energy at your disposal gives you more options than you’d have with less energy. But if it’s not used wisely, it won’t help, and that’s the key. As a bullet designer, spending too much of your available energy on expansion can result in an excessively shallow-penetrating bullet (as I discovered in my tests of the Winchester PDX1, for example). Spending too much of your energy on penetration can result in wasted energy (as in the case of full-metal jacket bullets, which usually penetrate way too deeply and frequently will overpenetrate and exit the body, thus wasting their energy). The ideal situation is where the designer crafts a bullet that expends enough of its energy on getting adequate penetration (ideally 15″, a minimum of 12″, and a maximum of 18″) and then uses any leftover energy for expansion. That would be the ideal tradeoff resulting in the most effective bullet design for self defense purposes. And if there’s so much energy at your disposal that even after you’ve achieved adequate penetration and nice expansion that you still have energy to spare, you can make good use of that additional energy by making the bullet heavier; the more energy you have, the heavier the bullet you can push. And in that context, having more energy can be a great thing — take the example of 9mm vs. .380 ACP. It’s a great illustration because the bullets are in fact identical diameters; the .380 ACP is also known as the “9mm Kurtz” or “9mm Short” or, sometimes, by the 9x17mm nomenclature, whereas the 9mm is also known as the “9mm Luger” and as a 9x19mm. Same diameter, sometimes even the same bullet, but the 9mm Luger cartridge is capable of much higher power. Whereas the .380 is a marginal cartridge in terms of power, the 9mm is much more powerful, and while the .380 requires very careful and meticulous controlling of expansion to achieve the desired penetration, the 9mm has so much energy that it can easily achieve both great expansion and great penetration, even with heavier bullets (the typical .380 hollowpoint is usually about 90 grains, whereas with the 9mm they are usually at least 115 grains and can be as heavy as 147 grains).

So more can be better, when it’s used appropriately. Or more can ruin the balance and give you results opposite of what you intended! Don’t get caught up in thinking that “more always = better”, especially when it’s applied to a term like Muzzle Energy. More can actually get in the way of better performance, as demonstrated by my .380 Gold Dot tests, or my tests of HPR XTP, where the HPR rounds are specifically loaded to less muzzle energy than the Hornady Custom, and actually perform better than the Hornady Custom, even though Hornady Custom uses the exact same XTP bullet, just with more muzzle energy.

Okay, So How Do I Choose The Best For MY Gun?

So how do you know when the ammo makers get the balance right? That’s not an easy question to answer, but the first thing to do is: IGNORE THEIR MARKETING. Ignore claims for muzzle energy and “energy transfer” and “energy dump” and “hydrostatic shock” and “stopping power”. Marketing is marketing, it’s designed to appeal to emotions, which is exactly the opposite of what you should be basing your decisions on. Only valid testing can reveal what will work best — and, only testing that is conducted from a barrel similar to that in your gun, will provide answers that are valid for you! As given in the example above, Gold Dots from a TCP might be quite effective, and the exact same Gold Dots from a Bersa Thunder might be much less effective!

The ideal solution would be for you to test your ammo from your gun. Knowing that not everyone will, or even can, conduct such testing, the next best thing is to look for tests and reviews that were competently done, by people who know what they’re doing, and that were conducted from guns with similar barrel lengths to yours. For the .380, I’ve conducted extensive testing from a TCP, which has a 2.84″ barrel, and as such my results should be directly applicable to those with similar barrel lengths, such as the Ruger LCP (2.75″ barrel) or Beretta Pico (2.7″ barrel) or Sig 238 (2.7″ barrel), etc. But my results would likely not be directly applicable for a Bersa Thunder (3.5″ barrel) or Walther PPK (3.35″ barrel). Those barrels are long enough that they make a significant difference in velocity and muzzle energy, and those differences will mean that the bullet may very well behave differently in how it allocates that energy (in terms of the balance between penetration and expansion).

There is probably an ideal-performing round for your gun, whatever the barrel length. But you can’t rely on “muzzle energy” or “muzzle velocity” comparisons to find that round. Only proper testing will reveal what the best round is — and it may very well be the round with the least muzzle energy, or the slowest velocity. As an informed member of the self defense community, we have to be okay with that. It’s not about bragging rights, it’s about effective performance. After all, I’m okay with my bullet moving slower, so long as it renders the attacker incapacitated.

How Effective is a Hit from a Raging Judge?

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As a follow-up to my recent article http://shootingthebull.net/blog/how-effective-is-a-hit-from-a-judge/, I decided to find out how effective a .454 Casull hit would be from a Raging Judge Magnum. Now, I’m not advocating that you use a .454 Casull as a personal defense weapon; the sheer power of the cartridge introduces complications that may not be worth the benefit — the massive recoil would make getting a second shot off rather tricky, the overpenetration would be extreme, and if you happened to miss, the destructive power of that wild round and the liability concerns (if it misses your target, it’s still going to hit something) all lead me to think that it’s probably not the best idea to use a .454 Casull as a personal defense round.

But — it should make for some pretty spectacular footage, right?

So I took the Raging Judge to the range, loaded it up with a Speer Handgun Hunting Deep Curl .454 Casull rounds, and fired one into a block of ClearBallistics synthetic ballistic gelatin. And the results were… noteworthy. But before I show you what the Raging Judge .454 did to the gel block, let’s first put it into context — I’m going to show you what a full-power full-size service pistol with premium defensive ammo does. So in the video below you’ll find two shots: first is a Glock 21 .45 ACP, firing the excellent Federal Premium HST +P hollowpoint rounds. This is about as good as it gets for a conventional handgun, and you can see the shock of impact and the penetration and damage that a premium big-bore hollowpoint can do. Then, it’s followed up by the Raging Judge Magnum shooting the Speer DCHP .454 Casull into another ClearBallistics gelatin block. Enjoy.

The .45 ACP hits hard, sure, but nothing at all like the .454 Casull. It picks up the entire 18-lb block of gel, entirely off the table, and shoves another 18-lb block clean off the screen! It destroyed the table, and the temporary stretch cavity is so huge that it’d likely rip and shred flesh just like a high-powered rifle would. Nor surprisingly, considering the .454 Casull round is delivering rifle-caliber energy and while the velocity isn’t quite up to high-power rifle levels, the bullet is nearly twice the weight of a standard .308 rifle’s projectile, so there’s still a tremendous amount of damage being done.

.45 ACP is one of my favorite calibers, and it’s a potent and proven manstopper, but this sure does put it in perspective!

How Effective Is A Hit From A Judge?

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As anyone who’s googled “Taurus Judge” knows, there’s been an ongoing (and frequently vitriolic) debate over how effective a Judge is, as a defensive weapon. Most will acknowledge that the .45 Colt is an effective round, but there’s tremendous controversy over the effectiveness of buckshot from a Judge.

I attempted to address this in my video review of the Judge Public Defender Part 2: As A Shotgun, below:

However, I’m still exploring ways to quantify just how effective a hit from the handgun shotgun revolver would be. We know that the Judge (with the proper ammo) can penetrate very deeply; in my own ballistics gelatin tests and in tests from others, we’ve seen well in excess of 16″ of penetration, even up to 20″. But how do four .36-caliber buckshot balls compare, in terms of incapacitating effectiveness, against an expanding hollowpoint from something like a .45 ACP? Is there even any way to compare them?

Comparing the effectiveness of different cartridges, and finding a way to quantify their relative effectiveness, has been a popular topic since at least 1904, when the Thompson-LaGarde tests were conducted to find out how many shots from various calibers it took to incapacitate a steer. Since then we’ve seen a variety of “factors” or “formulas”, such as the TKO (“Taylor Knock Out Factor”) or the Marshall-Sanow “One Shot Stop” percentage, all attempting to classify or compare relative cartridge power, and all substantially flawed in one way or another. The Thompson-LaGarde steer tests are in fact very valid for hunters of large animals over 1,000 pounds, but for the purpose of defending against an attacking human they’re much less relevant because they’re based on dropping massive animals. The TKO factor is highly unscientific and was never meant to be applied to handgun rounds anyway, and the Marshall-Sanow database has been seriously discredited by several leading members of the IWBA.

So where can we turn to get an impartial, scientific, quantifiable assessment of the damaging factor and the incapacitating capability of a particular handgun round? As in — how can we reliably speculate on how effective a bullet will be in stopping an attacker?

The FBI, the International Wound Ballistics Association, and leading trauma surgeons, combat medics, emergency-room physicians and others came together in multiple summits and determined, by consensus, that a bullet needs to be able to penetrate at least 12″, and ideally no more than 18″, in order to be able to inflict an incapacitating wound. You can read the FBI report here.

The conclusions from the FBI report are pretty simple to grasp — a bullet needs to penetrate deep enough to hit the vital organs, and the larger the bullet, the more tissue will be damaged, so bigger = better, so long as adequate penetration is achieved first.

However, that doesn’t help us determine how to rank bullets against each other in terms of comparative effectiveness. The FBI report gives us a metric to measure “pass/fail” of any particular bullet, but in reality that’s a pretty strict measuring stick — a bullet that penetrates 11.5″ would be classified as a “fail” even though it should seem pretty obvious that an 11.5″ penetrating bullet is by no means guaranteed to fail. It won’t be as effective as a 14″-penetrating bullet, sure, but that doesn’t mean it would be totally ineffective either!

So how can we address the popular need of wanting to be able to determine, classify, and compare bullet effectiveness? Duncan MacPherson, NASA rocket scientist and founding member of the International Wound Ballistics Association, publishes his attempt at a Wound Trama Incapacitation (WTI) factor in his excellent book “Bullet Penetration: Modeling the Dynamics and the Incapacitation Resulting from Wound Trauma“. Unfortunately the book is out of print, and the only way to get a copy is to scour ebay or used bookstores or buy a used copy off Amazon, but if you’re interested in the subject, it’s a fascinating examination of what really, really happens when a bullet impacts flesh.

In the last chapter of the book, MacPherson presents a mathematical model for determining the incapacitation likelihood of any particular cartridge. Now, by “incapacitation”, he means damaging the attacker so much that the attacker is forced to stop attacking. MacPherson approaches it from the medically-validated aspect of how much tissue is damaged, and how deeply the bullet penetrates. He doesn’t rely on mysticism like “energy dumps” or “hydrostatic shock” or other non-quantifiable and highly disputed concepts; instead he relies on the science of wound ballistics, the examination of trauma victims, the realities of bullet hits, and the use of science to determine how much damage a particular bullet will do, and how much damage a typical human attacker could withstand before their body forces them to shut down.

Taking 300 pages of utterly brilliant mathematical modeling and physical science and boiling it all together and distilling it down to a simple number is a bold task, but once all is said and done, the conclusion reached is that a bullet that penetrates deeply enough and destroys 40 grams of tissue is a pretty good candidate for incapacitating a target. There’s much more to it than that, of course, and if you want to truly understand it you’ll have to get the book, but the model MacPherson uses assigns different values and weighting to different penetration depths, it takes into account velocities, it assigns different factors to hollowpoints, or wadcutters, or roundnose projectiles, etc. It’s quite detailed and excellently done, but once it’s all boiled down and accurately accounted for, the net result is: how much tissue is disrupted? If it’s a big-enough hit, and deep enough, it stands a good chance of incapacitating the attacker.

Based on his model, I’ve calculated the mass of tissue destroyed for my favorite rounds from two Judges, the Public Defender (the smallest of Judges and the “weakest”) and the Raging Judge Magnum (the largest of Judges and the “most powerful” Judge pistol).

The two rounds I’m using are the Federal 410 Handgun 000 buckshot, and the NobelSport .40-caliber buckshot.

In the Federal .410 000 round, there are four pellets of .36″ diameter and 63.5 grains apiece in the 2.5″ shell, for a total payload of 254 grains of lead. In the 3″ shell, there’s an additional pellet, bringing the lead payload up to almost 318 grains.

In the NobelSport cartridge, there are three pellets of .40″ diameter and 90 grains apiece in the 2.5″ shell, for a total payload of 270 grains of lead. In the 3″ shell there’s an additional pellet, bringing the total lead payload up to 360 grains(!)

Using the proper mathematical formula, the proper weighting for penetration, and the diameter of the bullets themselves, yields the following tissue damage results:

2.5″ Nobel: 66 grams

2.5″ Federal: 65.6 grams

3″ Nobel: 84 grams

3″ Federal: 82 grams

Each of these is well in excess of MacPherson’s desired threshold of 40 grams; the 3″ shells are actually over double the level necessary! Now, does this mean that each shot from a Judge will result in immediate incapacitation of an attacker? Of course not, there are never any “guarantees”, but in dealing with averages, it does mean that the shots from a Judge will likely be quite effective indeed. It should at least address the silly and baseless internet argument of “buckshot will just bounce off an attacker”.

For comparison, I ran a calculation on a .45 ACP +P round, Hornady Critical Duty 220 grain, at 951 fps, and 15″ of penetration. According to the Schwartz Quantitative Ammunition Selection formula for calculating the mass of the permanent wound cavity, and then applying the MacPherson WTI calculations, we get 69.82 grams of tissue disrupted. That’s right on par with the 2.5″ buckshot shells, and not quite as much as the 3″ shells. A good round of .45 ACP has long been known as an effective manstopper; the Judge 2.5″ rounds don’t destroy any more tissue despite having multiple projectiles, but on the other hand — they have multiple projectiles, which gives them multiple wound paths, which raises the prospect of turning a near-miss into a hit on a vital structure in the attacker’s body. The 3″ shells do provide more tissue disruption than the single .45 ACP hollowpoint, but not significantly more; their main advantage is not so much in the 19% additional tissue they disrupt, but in that they create four or five wound paths instead of one. Again, that gives more opportunity for a near-miss to become a hit.

So how effective is a Judge in stopping an attacker? Each blast from the 2.5″ shotgun shells (presuming you’re using the right ammo!) will disrupt as much tissue as a premium .45 ACP hollowpoint, but will give you three or four separate wound tracks, thus giving you three or four chances at hitting a critical or vital structure (such as the heart, major artery, or central nervous system). And if you’re using 3″ shells, you’ll get around 20% more tissue disruption than the 2.5″ shells, and another projectile for yet another opportunity at hitting something vital.

While we can’t predict the actual results in any actual individual shooting scenario, we can reasonably draw a broad conclusion: would a Judge with Federal .410 Handgun 000 buckshot or NobelSport buckshot be an effective manstopper? The test results say “hell yes.”

Why the Judge is more powerful than you think…

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In my recent review of the Taurus Judge Public Defender, I demonstrated its performance relative to another popular pistol. Now, before rehashing that, let’s just ask a simple question:

Which would you expect to be more powerful?

A .45 ACP pistol with a 3.3″ barrel
A .45 Colt pistol with a 2″ barrel

Seems like an easy question, doesn’t it? I mean, seems like a complete no-brainer: obviously, to any reasonable person, the 3.3″ barrel is going to produce higher velocities than the 2″ barrel, right?

Well, yes.

And no. Not when the 2″ barrel is on a Judge.

And that’s where it gets fun, when theory meets testing (and testing always wins!)

Now, in reality it is a well-established axiom of ballistics that longer barrels = higher velocity, up to a point. The longer the barrel is, the more distance the bullet will travel while still being contained in the sealed environment of the barrel, and that means the expanding gases from the burning gunpowder can push on the bullet longer, thus increasing its velocity. This is all obvious and well-understood. And the knock against a short barrel has always been that it’s possible for the bullet to exit the barrel before the expanding gases have fully expanded, so any further expansion they do will be out into the atmosphere and not pressing against the bullet. Accordingly, really short barrels have usually been pretty bad at generating decent velocities. And an inch or two can make either a significant difference, or a miniscule difference; it really depends on where the barrel length difference comes in. The difference between a 6″ barrel and an 8″ barrel might be minor, but the difference between a 1″ barrel and a 3″ barrel will be huge! In the longer 6″ barrel the expanding gases may have done most of their job pushing the bullet by the time that bullet exits the barrel; there may not be much more that will be gained from the 8″ barrel. However, on a 1″ barrel, the gases very likely will have just barely have started expanding by the time the bullet pops out of that tiny barrel! Any further expansion is just wasted.

And yet — I’ve just completed testing on the Judge Public Defender (2″ barrel) against the Springfield XDS (3.3″ barrel) and found them to deliver almost identical velocities when shooting identical-weight bullets loaded to the same ballistic performance. How is this possible?

Barrel Lengths Are Measured Differently

The first key to understanding this mystery is to recognize that not all barrels are measured the same. The official barrel-measuring technique for rifles, shotguns, and semi-automatic pistols is to run a dowel down the barrel until it reaches the breech face (or where the back of the loaded cartridge would be); mark the dowel at that point, and then pull it out and measure it.

Using that technique with the Springfield XDS, we find that the marked dowel matches 3.3″, exactly what it should.

But with a revolver, that’s not how a barrel is measured! With a revolver, you only measure from the front of the revolver to the back of the barrel’s forcing cone. You don’t include any part of the cylinder. Measuring the Public Defender’s barrel in this way, we get exactly what we’d expect: 2″, just like the printed specifications say it should be.

And yet — when we stack the two pistols back to back, we see that they’re pretty much the same size, right?

And when we compare the ballistics, we find that they perform almost identically: Critical Defense 185 grain produces 870 feet per second from the 2″ Public Defender, and 901 feet per second from the 3.3″ XDS. And with “hot” loads shooting 200 grains at the highest pressure and fastest speeds I could find, the 2″ Public Defender shot at 940 feet per second, and the XDS shot at 970 feet per second. That’s a difference of about 3%, while the XDS’s barrel length is 65% longer than the Public Defender. How is this possible? How is the Public Defender delivering comparable performance, from a barrel that’s barely over half as long?

It’s The Cylinder, Silly!

Look at this picture of the Public Defender, and what stands out about it?

That giant cylinder, right? When you hear criticisms of the Judge, frequently the cylinder will be mentioned as a drawback because it’s what makes the gun so big. Interestingly enough, it’s also what makes the gun so much more powerful than you would otherwise expect!

Understand that with any revolver, the fact that they measure the barrel without including the chamber means that you’ll always have more performance from a revolver than you would from a semiautomatic of the exact same barrel length (because some of the semiauto’s barrel length is occupied by the bullet.) But in the Judge, it’s even more of a difference. Here’s a picture that shows the Public Defender with a .45 Colt bullet overlaid.

You can see that there’s about an inch of “free bore” from the end of the bullet to the start of the forcing cone. My actual measurement was 1 1/8″. How does that “free bore” affect the ballistic performance? Basically it adds another inch of “barrel length.” So, yes, in effect, any 2.5″-cylinder Judge actually has the ballistic performance of a gun with an inch longer barrel than it says it is, and any 3″-cylinder judge performs like a gun with a 1.5″ longer barrel than it’s rated as!

Verifying The Hypothesis

My hypothesis is that ballistically, the “free bore” area is basically extra unrifled barrel. The bullet doesn’t “know” whether it’s technically in the “barrel” or not; it just knows that it’s trapped in a sealed environment and that there are gases pushing against the back of it (and, okay, it doesn’t “know” that either, but I think you get what I’m saying). So whether the bullet is in the rifled “barrel” part or still in the freebore of the cylinder, it’s still in a sealed environment, being pushed forward by expanding gases, rifling or not. That additional time spent with the gases expanding results in additional velocity, exactly like a longer barrel would have. Whether it’s labeled “barrel” or “cylinder”, the result is the same.

This idea seems reasonable, but I wanted to take it a step further and actually test a 2″-barrel .45 Colt pistol against a 2″-barrel Judge, to see if there was a real-world, measurable difference in performance. While 2″-barrel .45 Colt pistols do exist, they’re not easy to find, and I was unable to source one; however, I was able to do the next best thing: I went to www.ballisticsbytheinch.com and looked up their performance results for .45 Colt rounds, and found that in the “real world weapons” section, they had indeed tested a 2″ .45 Colt (the Taurus 450 Ultralight). Using Federal 225-grain Semi-Wadcutter Hollow Point rounds, they got an average velocity of 681 feet per second from the 2″-barrel Taurus 450. So I went and chronographed that exact same round out of the 2″-barrel Public Defender and got … drum roll… 844 feet per second! A huge performance increase; the velocity was almost 25% faster out of the Judge Public Defender’s 2″ barrel, than it was from the Taurus 450’s 2″ barrel. Since the barrel length was identical (and probably was the same barrel, seeing as they’re from the same manufacturer), then what could account for the difference? Only the longer cylinder.

The net result is: for a Judge with a 2.5″ cylinder, you’re getting about an inch extra performance than you might otherwise have thought. And for a Judge with a 3″ cylinder, you’re getting about 1.5″ extra performance. A 3″-barrel, 2.5″-cylinder Judge will perform about as well as a 4″-barrel .45 Colt revolver. And a 3″-barrel, 3″-cylinder Magnum Judge will perform about as well as 4.5″-barrel .45 Colt revolver.

Now, what about when used as a shotgun? Here, the additional barrel length advantage is even more significant. Because a shotgun is typically measured back to the breech face, in order to get comparable measurements with the Judge we’d have to measure back to the breech face.

That’s almost 4 and three quarters inches; and that means that on the Judge Public Defender, it performs about comparably to a .410 shotgun with a 4.75″ barrel. That’s still tiny, but it’s a darn sight better than a 2″ barrel! And when you get into the longer-barreled Judges, the shotgun performance starts to get downright respectable: a 6.5″ barrel Raging Judge Magnum, with a 3″ chamber, is about effectively equivalent of a 9.5″ shotgun barrel. That’s not huge, but it’s pretty darn substantial.

So, take heart, Judge users: the cylinder giveth (performance), and it taketh away (compactness). But that big old cylinder isn’t “wasted space”, it’s actually working to make your pistol more powerful than you thought it was.

Judging The Judge: The Taurus Judge Public Defender

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Is there any product in the firearms community that’s caused as much controversy as the Taurus Judge? If there is, I’m not aware of it. I’ve read more reviews, comments, articles, posts, proclamations, missives, manifestos, and mumbo-jumbo about the Judge than anything else.

It’s kind of surreal to see so much vitriol being spouted from both sides, the fanatics and the haters, about one little product. And I’ve come to the conclusion that maybe a lot of it is driven by misunderstandings, or preconceived notions, or by resentment about something entirely unrelated (i.e., maybe people are lashing out against the Judge’s marketing campaign, or the perception that innocent/unknowing customers are being taken advantage of by being marketed such a product).

Now, while I can acknowledge that the fundamental purpose of the internet is to spawn arguments, I also have an abiding interest in simply answering questions. I believe that there are, indeed, answers, and when so many people have such opposing viewpoints, well — why not just get to the bottom of it? Why not test the product in a comprehensive manner, and see what it really, actually does?

After all, if it really is “ineffective” or “dangerous”, wouldn’t you want to know that? And if instead it really is “powerful” and “effective”, wouldn’t you want to know that? I know I would. But then again, maybe that’s just me, because … if the arguments were actually settled, what would the internet fight over?

Ah, actually, we never have to worry about that, because as long as there’s politics, there will be something for the internet to argue over. So, with that said, let’s get on with dispelling some misconceptions, burying some bulloney, and shedding some light on this whole Judge situation so that we, the community of those interested in self-defense, can evaluate the Judge based on knowing what its actual capabilities are.

The video is long… so long, I had to break it up in two parts. Hope you enjoy it, or at least find it useful!

Here’s Part 1, where I compare the Judge Public Defender as a compact .45-caliber pistol against a common, well-reviewed, well-performing concealed-carry .45-caliber pistol, the Springfield XDS:

And in Part 2, I examine the Public Defender as a shotgun, comparing it to a 12-gauge, demonstrating its use with buckshot and birdshot, and evaluating its performance when using Judge-specific ammo (i.e., ammo that was designed specifically for the Judge). There are ballistic gel tests, patterning charts, and some revealing conclusions that should forever answer the question as to whether the Public Defender is a powerful and/or effective defensive weapon.

Share your comments, and hey, if you feel like it, share the videos too. When you come across someone making uninformed or just plain incorrect statements about the Judge, well, now you can share the answers.

DeSantis Super Fly® Pocket Holster

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I’ve been pocket-carrying a Taurus 738 TCP for several months, and as any rational firearms owner will tell you, you don’t pocket-carry without a pocket holster.

There are approximately seventeen million different types of pocket holsters out there. Heck, even if you limit yourself to the lineup of one manufacturer (DeSantis in this case) they have six different pocket holsters for this particular pistol! How on Earth are you supposed to narrow it down and pick the best one?

The answer is obvious — forget the “best” one, and just get one that works. After scouring reviews, and my prior experience, I knew I wanted three main things for this particular application:

It had to be small
It had to not “print”
It had to be cheap

Regarding point 1, I mean, what’s the point of getting the tiniest pocket pistol, if the holster you choose is just going to make it bulky anyway? A small, thin, sleek holster was definitely high on my shopping list.

As for point 2, go to any gun show, try any of the huge variety of pocket holsters they have, slip the pistol in your pocket and look down at it (or, ideally, in the mirror.) Every time I did that, I saw “gun”. The telltale shape is just too obvious to ignore. Now, in the past, that’s just what we had to live with, but nowadays multiple holster makers are directly addressing the problem, so why not choose from among those that offer anti-printing pocket holsters?

As for point 3 — okay, I don’t normally buy products to be cheap, especially when it comes to firearms; my primary factors are quality and suitability, and the price has to follow. But — the TCP is a bit of an experiment for me, and frankly, I don’t want to pour a ton of money into an experiment. The pistol itself was $199, after all. So I felt that a holster should, ideally, be reasonably inexpensive. I didn’t need the cheapest thing on the market, but I also didn’t think that $100 would be reasonable for a $199 pistol; I mean, if you have that much to spend, why not spend it on getting a more powerful pistol in the first place?

So after some extensive shopping and narrowing it down among the various candidates, I selected the DeSantis Super Fly. It hit all three of my criteria nicely: it’s thin and small, making for a very compact package overall. It has a detachable anti-printing flap. And, I got it off Amazon for about $30 including free shipping.

TCP in DeSantis Super Fly

Since receiving it, I’ve been using it for pretty much constant daily carry, and my entire review could be summed up with: “thumbs up”. It works. It does what it says it will. The sticky fabric keeps the pistol exactly in place in the pocket, and it’s shaped such that the grip is always perfectly presented; drawing the pistol is effortless. The trigger is fully covered, and the anti-printing flap does reduce the telltale “gun profile”. And it’s ambidextrous.

It’s really very good.

TCP in DeSantis Super Fly with anti-printing flap installed

After some continuous wear, I do have to say that the anti-printing flap has become somewhat curved, especially near the bottom right on the picture above, and the net effect is no longer a big square presentation in the pocket (like a wallet or a paperback book) but now it’s a bit more triangular. Which is not ideal, obviously; it looks a little more like a gun in the pocket now (because what else would you have in your pocket that looks basically triangular?) but I think it’s still vastly more concealed than a traditional holster which easily lets the profile of the handgrip stick out and print.

With or without the anti-printing flap installed, every time I’ve drawn the pistol the holster has stayed in the pocket like it’s supposed to. However, I’ll admit I’ve rarely taken the anti-printing flap off; with it off the holster becomes downright tiny, but then the shape in the pocket is much more recognizable as a pistol. I bought the Super Fly specifically because of the anti-printing flap so that’s the way I use it, and I do think it helps hold the pistol in position better with the anti-printing flap installed.

TCP in Desantis Super Fly with anti-printing flap removed

Other than the bending and curving that you’d almost expect to see on the anti-printing flap and the portion below the trigger guard, I can’t really say there’s any other signs of notable wear. It still looks good, there’s no frayed edges, it’s not coming apart… I mean, really, for $30, it performs great and has held up well and does pretty much exactly what you need. What more could you want?

I’ll tell you what more I could want. There’s one thing I wish the Super Fly provided, that it doesn’t, and that’s a convenient way to carry a second magazine. DeSantis makes a different holster, the Ammo Nemesis, which includes a pocket for a second mag, but it doesn’t have the anti-printing flap and it looks like it just takes up a lot more room in the pocket than I’d like. The Super Fly is so small it fits easily in my blue jeans front pocket. I’ve got other pistols and holsters that won’t, and require Dockers or cargo pants, but the TCP/Super Fly combo easily fits in any pants or shorts that I’ve got. I just wish it had a provision to carry a spare mag. As it is, I’ll probably work out something with Velcro and a commercial magazine pouch to come up with my own solution.

If I had it to do over again, would I buy the Super Fly again? Maybe. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but the Recluse has caught my eye and I might consider it over the Super Fly if I was buying from scratch. I haven’t tried the Recluse, so I don’t really know, but I like the Recluse’s trigger block and its built-in magazine pouch and anti-printing design. It’s 60% more expensive than the Super Fly, so that’s a factor, but I also prefer the two-sided coverage of the Super Fly over the one-sided coverage of the Recluse, so … I don’t know. I think if the Super Fly does ever wear out, I might replace it with a Recluse. Until then, I’m quite content with the Super Fly, it does the job and does it very well.

Shooting The Bull

We Bullieve in dispelling Bulloney.