Last night I ran across a 2010 video from a famous gun guy on YouTube, Hickok45, who said he’d been asked to shoot different handgun calibers at one of his swinging steel plates so people could see the difference.
While he doesn’t put a lot of emphasis on it, saying it’s certainly not scientific and that he’s only doing it because people have asked for it, I thought it was actually a great demonstration of the knockdown power of each caliber.
Watch the video below:
I liked the video so much I decided to take screenshots of the steel plates as they reached their highest point after each different caliber shot, just to show how hard each caliber hit (I didn’t bother with the .22 because it barely moved). Being a novice when it comes to different calibers, I was a bit surprised by a few results.
Here are the screenshots:
38 SPECIAL – 158 GRAIN:
9MM – 124 GRAIN:
.40 S&W – 180 GRAIN:
.45 ACP – 230 GRAIN:
357 MAG – 158 GRAIN:
10MM – 180 GRAIN:
44 MAG – 240 GRAIN:
Here’s an even better way to see the difference. I added captions where there were none:
Pretty interesting eh? As I said I’m a novice when it comes to different handgun calibers as all I’ve shot so far is mainly 9mm. So I think I was most surprised by the 10mm. I had no idea it could hit so hard. And the 44 Magnum…well that’s just amazing.
I did expect the .40 S&W to hit harder than the 9mm, so it was nice to see that in action and the difference.
I was also surprised that there wasn’t much difference between the 38 Special and the 9mm, as well as the .45 ACP and the 357 Magnum. They seem to both hit with a very similar force.
So for those of you who’ve been around handguns for a while, did this work out like you thought it would? Was anything surprising?