No, I'm not talking about round guns vs. flat guns, I'm talking about flat meplats vs. round-nosed ammo.
That quote Caleb's dropping in that Instagram post there is something that NYPD veteran Pat Rogers was quite fond of pointing out. Rather a lot of dudes have been dropped by plain old 158gr lead round nosed .38 Special over the decades. It's not a round that lacks for penetration, after all. If you draw that imaginary line between the bad guy's armpits and put a 158gr LRN projectile right in the middle of it, it's going to work just fine.
The one weakness of the load is one it shares with pretty much all other round-nosed projectiles, whether the mild .32 Smith & Wesson Long 98gr LRN or the mighty .45ACP 230gr FMJ, and that's when a round-nosed projectile meets curved bone, like a rib or a skull, weird stuff can happen. There's a reason Jim Cirillo (himself no stranger to putting .38 Special bullets into bad guys) spends a huge chunk of his book Guns, Bullets, and Gunfights* nerding out over bullet shapes that are more resistant to that tendency.
Of course, the flat meplats and sharp shoulders that make wadcutters and semiwadcutters more resistant to glancing off bone and more efficient at tissue damage also make them easier to fumble on a speedy reload, with those flat surfaces and corners hanging up on the edges of the charge holes, especially if said edges haven't been chamfered.
This is why, if you drill down in the comments at Caleb's instagram post, while he may have SWC in the cylinder, he's got LRN in the speed strip. Likewise, I may have 148gr Federal Gold Medal Match wadcutters in a J-frame, but if I have a reload, it's going to be something with some ogive to it.
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| 47-year old S&W Model 37, 10-year old Dark Star Gear holster, and an HKS speedloader full of Disco-era 95gr +P Silvertips |
*If you haven't read Cirillo's book, you're wrong and should fix that, soonest.
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