Best Pistol Caliber for Self-Defense – Is the .45 ACP Outdated?

What is the best pistol caliber for self-defense? .45 ACP or 9mm? This is a storied debate, that generally ends with some agreement that the real determining fact is a shooter’s preference.

Arkansas–-(Ammoland.com)-According to The Yankee Marshal, the .45 ACP is out of date. Well, actually, he says it sucks. Since I’ve subscribed to his YouTube channel for a while now, his claim here doesn’t surprise me. He’s generally amusing and often provocative, and even when I disagree—especially when I disagree—I like seeing opposing views. His specific point in this video is that the old .45 limits magazine capacity and lacks enough hard-barrier penetration. At the same time, he says that we each have to make our own decisions on what we carry.

But is he right that the .45 isn’t such a good choice today?

I agree with him that the cartridge isn’t significantly better than the other standard calibers. The classic Thompson-LaGarde report basically said the same thing—they couldn’t find all that much difference among the cartridges that they tested, but the Army wanted a .45, so they decided the .45 was the best.

As Jeff Cooper observed long ago, the .45 ACP is the semiautomatic version of the .45 Colt the round that fed the Single Action Army, a cartridge that had proved its worth. But was the Old West shooter right when he said that he carried the .45 because Col. Colt doesn’t make a .46?  My notion is what I call the three ps: placement, penetration, and punch. Use a bullet that you can put on target that will go deep enough and do enough to stop a lethal attack, and good luck unto you. And while the subject of stopping power is a dense thicket of competing claims, many dubious, what evidence we do have suggests what I’ve said, that lots of handgun rounds will do the job.

With that being said, shouldn’t we all go with the 9mm Luger?

The Yankee Marshal didn’t say so—that hard-barrier penetration, again—but I’m going a step further to say that the .45 ACP still has a job to do.

What if, for example, you live in a state that limits you to ten rounds in the magazine? One of the good arguments for the 9mm is capacity, but if you’re arbitrarily limited to ten, there are good choices in handguns that are reasonably compact and hold ten cartridges—or close to that number—of the semiautomatic version of the good old round used in the Colt Single Action Army. Bigger may not always be better, and hollow points may not expand, but as the saying goes, there ain’t no such thing as a shrinking bullet.

And then there are all the little guns, the beguiling subcompacts that make us buy pants with large pockets. If your magazine will hold only six rounds, again and in a single-stack model, six 45s isn’t that much more difficult than six of any small caliber.

There is the matter of recoil to consider. And this is for you and your hands to figure out. In my own experience, given all the variation in handgun sizes and weights, recoil to me is not all that different among 9mm Luger, .40 S&W, and .45 ACP. Your range experience may vary. And that’s the point.

As The Yankee Marshal said, pick your caliber. But the .45 doesn’t suck, and it hasn’t lost its usefulness.

About Greg Camp

Greg Camp has taught English composition and literature since 1998 and is the author of six books, including a western, The Willing Spirit, and Each One, Teach One, with Ranjit Singh on gun politics in America. His books can be found on Amazon. He tweets @gregcampnc.

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