The Taurus 9mm Ultralite Revolver. Yes, Taurus has it listed as discontinued, but http://www.discountgundealer.com says that they've got 52 left. (It was 53, but I just bought one.)

Why?

Well, anybody who -- like me -- thinks that a hot .38 is a reasonable carry round is going to have no argument against 9mm.

Just to pick two relatively comparable rounds:

the Federal .38 SPL 129 grain HydraShoks send a 129-grain bullet out at 980 FPS; muzzle energy 235 foot-pounds;

the Federal 9mm 135 grain HydraShoks send a 135-grain bullet out at 1060 FPS; muzzle energy 337 foot-pounds.

(Actually, I'm more likely to carry the Federal 105-grain EFMJ rounds -- 1230 FPS; 353 foot-pounds -- or the 147-grain HydraShoks -- 1000 FPS; 326 foot-pounds. I've been given reason, recently, to reconsider COM as point of aim*, and while I'm not sure that the 147-grain 9mm is up to it, it's certainly at least as good a choice as less energetic, lighter .38s.)

Combine the size, weight, carryability, and pointability of an ultralight DAO snubby revolver and the increased energy of a 9mm -- even in standard pressure rounds; the Taurus should easily be able to handle +P rounds -- and I think we've got a winner.


___________
*Yes, I know that's heresy. Gimme a while to think and research on it some before I come out as an actual heretic, rather than somebody contemplating heresy. Not irrelevantly: anybody got any reliable stats/tests on what it actually takes to break the pelvic bone? Realworld reports of shots to the pelvis being both successful and unsuccessful? All I've got right now is Cirillo's anecdotal accounts...

Sounds just about perfect..

If you like moon clips

Well, if you can tolerate them. That said, most revolver folks don't make a religion out of carrying a reload. (I tend to carry a Bianchi Speedstrip, but I'm unusual.)

Joel,

I would be very interested in hearing a range report about your purchase. Last year at bill’s shooter show this model was on my list to check out.
Unfortunately, it was not a good experience. When I got it on the range it fired 1 shot & the cylinder jammed, the hammer froze & that was it for the demo gun.
While talking to the representative for Taurus he let me know that I was the first person to try out that pistol, he was sorry but it was the only one of that model he had.

Dorian

Sure. That said, I'm unworried. I know from previous experience that Taurus really does mean their lifetime warranty -- if it breaks, they'll make it right.

Price?

$428.07, including shipping and tax. ($384 base price.) Less than $50 more than my usual recommendation...
...if it was coming from the same source.

Arguably, by the way, the real buy there in revolvers right now there is the Taurus 605 in .357 (under $300 before tax and shipping.)

And, that said, if I was going to carry something that heavy, I've already got a better choice in that size, more or less -- my Charter Arms Bulldog, in .44 Special.

But I'd rather go with this particular 9mm -- it's lighter, it's at least arguably a better design than a Centennial (the docked hammer gives you something -- the hammer -- to push on while reholstering that will keep the hammer from coming back; it's a bit of extra safety), and while I can handle 9mm in a revolver quite handily (I used to have a S&W 940; I foolishly sold it off when I was regularly carrying a semiauto) .357 in a snubby is, in my experience, a bit much.

Another interesting revolver there is the Taurus Tracker in .44 Magnum. If I was going to carry a medium-sized revolver, I'd think seriously about it. 34 ounces -- about ten ounces more than my Bulldog -- but a full four-inch tube, and the option of carrying either .44 Magnum or .44 Special. (There's also the .41 Magnum, but buying ammo for it is a real pain.)

Is the weight right? It says that is weighs 22.2 oz on the Taurus web page. That seems kind of heavy compared to a S&W 642 at 15.0 oz. At 22.2 oz it put it in the weight class of an all steel S&W 640.

I thought Titanium was suppose to be light?

I'm not sure. My guess is that it'll be lighter -- all the Taurus Titanium revolvers I've handled are, including my .44 Special one.

Hmm, I don't have any actual stats, unfortunately, but I'll ask one of my EMT instructors. He seems to know how much pressure it takes to break most of the bones in the body.

That said, you have a fair amount of tissue to go through with enough energy on the other side to punch an extremely strong bone. Just looking at myself, an for those who've seen me I'm a very thin guy, you have a minimum of 4" - 5" to go through before you reach the forward wall of my pelvis, if you shot me straight on. Again, I don't know what the pelvis takes but it takes approximately 1500 pounds per square inch of pressure to break a healthy femur. The pelvis is not much narrower than the femur, but it's a different shape. I don't know exactly how that will affect it with a bullet strike.

Please. Among things I've been recently reading is an argument about shooting to the pelvis rather than COM, which suggests (from, I think, insufficient data) that it may be a better physical stopper than a shot to COM. (In fact, Ayoob argues in favor of a pelvic shot in many circumstances, and one of his students has taken the leap from that to arguing that it is the best point of aim. I'm not yet convinced, but I'm capable of being persuaded, depending on the data available.) For it to be the right choice, one has to have at least adequate confidence, when compared to shooting to COM, that you'll get a hit in the first place, and greater confidence that either mechanical damage will stop the attack (a hole in the pelvic wall may not; a break through the pelvic bone or sufficient damage to the joint will make it physically impossible for the leg to support weight) or that the pain of a shot to that area will be sufficiently great.

(Which is where Cirillo comes in. He reports that in something around 20 pelvic shots by his stakeout squad, all attackers were stopped. That's obviously too small a number of reporters and incidents to decide the matter, but I find it intriguing, to say the least.)

Joel,
The guns I have bought from him I didn't have to pay shipping. Worth a phone call.
Mike

Alright, just got off the phone with my old EMT instructor. Here's what he said about the gunshot wounds that he's seen to the pelvis. May or may not be of any help to you, but there ya go.

Low power rounds like .22 tend to just richochet around. Probably not much help to you. Round like a .38 tend to stop short of the pelvis or just penetrate a little without busting anything. Rounds like a .45 tend to punch holes. We didn't go into the individual calibers and discuss it a lot, so there's probably a lot of room for invistigation and decision there. Just remember that it has to go through a minimum of 4 " of tissue, often more, then it has to break through a very strong bone.

One of the areas that we discussed was the pelvis' tendency to break in 2 places when it does break because of it's shape. That's what normally causes people to be unable to walk on a busted pelvis. With a gunshot wound to the pelvis, he said that usually it just punches a nasty hole in there, but doesn't actually cause a break that makes the girdle unstable. It's extremely painful because there are a lot of nerves in the area, but he said that if the person is hopped up on something it doesn't really affect their ability to move.

The other thing that we didn't discuss in a lot of detail, but is worthy of consideration, is that damage to the pelvis tends to cause significant blood loss, an average of 1500 cc's dumped. The femoral arteries run through there, after they branch off of the aorta (largest artery in the body about the inside diameter of a quarter) at about the top of the pelvis. You also have the iliac veins and several others. To give you an idea of the amount of blood going through the area you can look at this website at the bottom of the page. http://mywebpages.comcast.net/wnor/posteriorabdomen.htm

I don't know for sure what would happen, but the pelvis and the femur are the 2 most painful bones to break from what I've been told. I have heard of people ignoring femur fractures before because of endorphines and adrenaline and the like. I heard a story of one guy who was running a marathon and broke his femur in a pothole. He didn't know he broke it because of the amount of endorphines and stuff running through him, and his muscles actually clamped around the femur through the next 20 miles of the race. Thought he had a cramp. He got to the finish line, his body relaxed, and he collapsed in pain.

I don't know what might happen with a pelvis. I personally have it as a third option in the arsenal. Just some food for thought.

Edit to add: I suppose you have to evaluate what your intent is. In order to physically stop someone you have to interupt one or more of three things IMO. The ability to breath, move, or stay conscious. More passively, add to that the ability to see as well. COM shots tend to be more focused on interupting the ability to stay conscious, which is overall the best way of stopping an attack, again only IMO. Pelvic shots, to me, tend to be more focused on stopping the ability to move, but it only affects the lower half of the body if it works at all. People can still remain conscious after losing 1500 cc's of blood.

Very interesting, and definitely food for thought -- although my first thought is that his analysis seems to contradict Cirillo. (Note: that doesn't mean that I think anybody's wrong. Just that I'd like more data.)

Thanks for the fast response.

John Farnam (defense-training.com) favors starting at the navel and working his way up:



http://www.defense-training.com/quips/23Jan06.html



Of course, long-term fatality is not an issue, since we "shoot to stop," so I'm not sure why he even mentions it -- although he does train military as well as police.