In my last match, I made some observations that are relevant to the comment we often hear when discussing caliber.
It's common for people to say: "Use/carry the heaviest caliber you can handle/shoot well." but it's much rarer for someone to explain how you can tell what that means for you.
First of all, it's important to understand that it's not simply a matter of caliber. Besides the caliber, the weight of the gun, the size and shape of the grip, and even the action type of the gun will all play a part in this equation.
Here's how you can tell if you are shooting more gun/caliber than is prudent for you.
You should be able to take a good shooting grip on the gun and shoot a full cylinder/magazine at a reasonably rapid pace (making good hits) without having to adjust/readjust your grip. If you can't do that then you need to work on your shooting, you need to consider another firearm/caliber combination, or both.
Now, don't assume that just because you CAN shoot a string without readjusting your grip that you are home free. This isn't a test that will tell you that everything is as it should be, it's a test to determine if there's an obvious problem. If you can keep a good grip all the way through a shot string then you can start looking at shot times and accuracy to determine if you're performing well.
If you can't shoot a good shot string without having to readjust your grip then your ability to make good hits in a timely fashion will be significantly impaired when using that weapon system. Based on my observations at the match, you can expect your performance (in terms of a combination of time and hits) to degrade by somewhere around 40% to 50%.
Given the accepted difficulty in hitting a moving target while under extreme stress, in my opinion it's unwise to take on additional handicaps.
Taking this in perspective, we need to realize that while there's a lot of debate about the performance of the various commonly recommended handgun self-defense cartridges, there isn't any evidence that picking a .40 over a 9mm or a .357Mag over a .40, for example is going to provide anywhere near enough of a terminal performance benefit to overcome a 40% to 50% disadvantage in shooting performance. In fact, the best evidence suggests that any truly practical terminal performance benefits are so minimal as to be very difficult to prove objectively. If that weren't true, the debate would have been over long ago.
It's common for people to say: "Use/carry the heaviest caliber you can handle/shoot well." but it's much rarer for someone to explain how you can tell what that means for you.
First of all, it's important to understand that it's not simply a matter of caliber. Besides the caliber, the weight of the gun, the size and shape of the grip, and even the action type of the gun will all play a part in this equation.
Here's how you can tell if you are shooting more gun/caliber than is prudent for you.
You should be able to take a good shooting grip on the gun and shoot a full cylinder/magazine at a reasonably rapid pace (making good hits) without having to adjust/readjust your grip. If you can't do that then you need to work on your shooting, you need to consider another firearm/caliber combination, or both.
Now, don't assume that just because you CAN shoot a string without readjusting your grip that you are home free. This isn't a test that will tell you that everything is as it should be, it's a test to determine if there's an obvious problem. If you can keep a good grip all the way through a shot string then you can start looking at shot times and accuracy to determine if you're performing well.
If you can't shoot a good shot string without having to readjust your grip then your ability to make good hits in a timely fashion will be significantly impaired when using that weapon system. Based on my observations at the match, you can expect your performance (in terms of a combination of time and hits) to degrade by somewhere around 40% to 50%.
Given the accepted difficulty in hitting a moving target while under extreme stress, in my opinion it's unwise to take on additional handicaps.
Taking this in perspective, we need to realize that while there's a lot of debate about the performance of the various commonly recommended handgun self-defense cartridges, there isn't any evidence that picking a .40 over a 9mm or a .357Mag over a .40, for example is going to provide anywhere near enough of a terminal performance benefit to overcome a 40% to 50% disadvantage in shooting performance. In fact, the best evidence suggests that any truly practical terminal performance benefits are so minimal as to be very difficult to prove objectively. If that weren't true, the debate would have been over long ago.
