It is supremely accurate for demanding target shooting, sufficiently powerful for self defense, a good choice for small game and varmint hunting, and easy to plink with. New shooters often start out with light target loads in a .38 Special, while experienced shooters load heavy, fast cartridges for more serious work.
The Special accepts a wide range of bullet weights and profiles, and there are more choices in the .38 caliber than in virtually any other. There are flat bullets for premier target shooting, hollowpoint bullets loaded to the cartridge’s maximum pressure intended for self defense, light bullets for small game hunting and competition, heavy bullets for larger game, and varieties that make informal plinking economical. It’s easy to reload, has readily available components, accepts a huge variety of powders, and the cases can be reused many times. If one wanted to standardize on a single caliber for everything, a good argument could be made for the .38 Special.
The .357 Magnum
If there were ever an election held for the best self defense cartridge of all time, the .357 Magnum would have a very strong caucus. Introduced by a partnership of Smith & Wesson and Winchester in 1934, the .357 was nothing more than a lengthened .38 Special case, giving more room for powder and hence higher velocities. The .357 gained an immediate following for its raw power combined with the .38 Special’s superb accuracy.
The Magnum produces very high velocities compared to the Special, but with that increase in power comes a corresponding increase in recoil and muzzle blast. The Magnum has proven a reliable performer in self defense applications and a terrific medium to large game cartridge, as well as a consistent winner in many kinds of handgun competitions. Since the .357 Magnum revolver will also shoot the .38 Special round, an excellent case can be made for a .357 revolver being the perfect ‘do everything’ gun.
Cartridge nomenclature is anything but logical, let alone consistent. The .38 Special was named because the outside of the case measures approximately .380 inches in diameter. The bullet sits inside the case, so it has to be of smaller diameter, and so the .38 Special uses bullets that measure .357 inches. If that seems logical, why is the .357 Magnum, which uses the same diameter case and bullet, so named? It’s been said that the .357 was used so as to avoid confusion with the Special round. Despite the difference in name the two cartridges share the same bullets, and .38 Special can be fired in revolvers chambered for the .357 Magnum. The reverse is not true, because the Magnum cartridge is physically longer and won’t fit in the shorter Special chamber. Why, then, are the .44 Special and .44 Magnum, which have the exact same relationship as the .38/.357, not named differently? The answer is lost to history!
The .41 Magnum
Often credited to (or blamed on) the late Bill Jordan, the .41 Magnum was originally intended to be a medium-power police service cartridge. Something got lost in translation, however, and what appeared from the collaboration between Smith & Wesson and Remington was instead a fire-breathing hunting round. The .41 throws a 180-grain bullet out of a six-inch barrel in excess of 1,300 fps!
Sadly it never gained much market share but it did endear itself to the people who chose to shoot it. The .41 Magnum has earned a small but almost fanatical following among handgun hunters, who prefer the round’s lighter recoil and flatter trajectory over the .44 Magnum while retaining terminal effectiveness that almost duplicates the mighty .44. Guns for the .41 are invariably large-framed revolvers most suited to hunting and handgun silhouette competition. Probably not a good choice for a self-defense round, owing to the virtual certainty of over-penetration at any reasonable distance.
The .44 Special and Magnum
The ‘forty-fours’ share the same relationship that the .38 Special/.357 Magnum do: the latter being a lengthened, more powerful version of the Special which predates it. The Special was introduced in 1908, while the Magnum appeared in 1955. The Special demonstrates modest recoil for the caliber, while the Magnum has a deserved reputation as a recoil monster.
The Special is a superbly accurate target cartridge, and while suitable for self defense suffers from a lack of variety in factory ammunition. The Magnum shares the Special’s inherent accuracy and adds a healthy dose of raw power. (Who can forget the first Dirty Harry movie, with Clint Eastwood brandishing a S&W Model 29 and intoning, “This is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world”?) The .44 Magnum is a superb hunting round, capable of taking all manner of North American big game plus not a few of the African species. It is generally considered overly powerful for self defense, but there are those who would argue otherwise.
The .44 Magnum is not a round for a beginner. While not the heaviest recoiling handgun round, it’s still a handful for those who are not experienced in recoil control. In a short barrel the muzzle blast is considerable.
The .45 Colt
The .45 Colt (colloquially, if not entirely accurately, referred to as the .45 Long Colt) is one of our oldest cartridges, originating during the black powder era of the 1870s. Originally designed as a service cartridge to be chambered in the Colt 1873 Single Action Army (the ‘Peacemaker’), the .45 Colt survived the military’s transition to autoloading pistols primarily because of a nice mix of attributes: good accuracy, terminal effectiveness, easy reload-ability, and long brass life.
In recent years it has become fashionable to handload the .45 Colt to extreme velocities for those revolvers that can take the stress. The result of this ‘hot-rodding’ experimentation was the introduction of the .454 Casull, essentially a Magnum version of the old round. (The .460 S&W Magnum can be thought of as a Magnum-Magnum .45 Colt, being essentially a lengthened Casull.) The .45 Colt makes a fine hunting and target round, but defensive ammunition is a bit hard to come by. Revolvers for this round are large and not usually of a size for efficient concealed carry.
The .45ACP
Wait, isn’t the .45ACP also known as the .45 Auto? Yes, it is, but it’s been chambered in revolvers for a very long time.
The .45ACP was introduced in 1905 for the U.S. Army, but didn’t get much of a foothold until the 1911 pattern pistol was approved in – you guessed it – 1911. It became our standard issue handgun cartridge, but when World War I broke out we had a problem: we couldn’t produce enough 1911 pistols to equip everyone who needed a sidearm. An interim solution was to ask Colt and Smith & Wesson to re-chamber their large frame revolvers for the standard .45ACP cartridge.
.45ACP cartridges were originally chambered in revolvers using half-moon clips, on left, which evolved to the modern full-moon clip on right.
Moonclips aren’t limited to the .45 – the 9mm auto cartridge has been sporadically chambered in revolvers, requiring the use of 9mm moon clips.
Since the ACP had no rim, it could not be ejected from a revolver cylinder. The solution was the invention of the half-moon clip, holding three rounds of ammunition and allowing simultaneous extraction and ejection. (Over time the half-moons were combined into a single full moon clip holding six rounds.) These modified revolvers were adopted in 1917 and served through the war, with many being sold as surplus in the 1930s.
The surplus guns were very popular with civilians, and new models were produced as well. This popularity resulted in the creation of the .45 Auto Rim cartridge, which was nothing more than the ACP with a rimmed base. This allowed the owner of a 1917 or later revolver to use a .45 cartridge without the need for the bothersome clips. Though not proving to be terribly popular,
