New professional. 32 mag revolver

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You're absolutely correct that perceived recoil is a useful tool in the firearms industry. It is SPECIFICALLY and ESPECIALLY useful when doing things like fitting a shotgun stock to a competition shooter. In that instance you can make a number of adjustments to reduce felt recoil to the shooter such as adjust the length of pull, the cheek weld, stock plate thickness and so on. And hopefully you decrease their shooting fatigue thus leading to higher scores.

That said, perceived recoil has jack shit to do with ACTUAL recoil which is a force expressed in foot lbs that acts in the opposite direction of the projectile in flight. Now there are a crapload of factors that come into this. Since you like the .357 you can for instance, reduce perceived recoil by adjusting projectile weight, powder load, speed at which the powder burns, or even the weight of the firearm itself. What you can't change, is the hand strength of the individual holding the gun. Can you train anyone to be more efficient with absorbing recoil. Of course you can. Can you overcome the raw physics involved with trying to force a petite young lady with small hands overcoming +P loads? No, you can't. Not without changing the full house .357 loads to .38 wadcutters or whatever she can handle. But then you've just gone and adjusted the ACTUAL recoil. And in fact, you can also adjust the ACTUAL recoil by doing some of the same things you would do to adjust PERCEIVED recoil, like change projectile weight, use less powder and so on.

And I know, you're going to say you never said you could or couldn’t do that. But your statement that if they can't handle .357 they likely can't handle .32 implies that there is clearly no good reason to vary caliber, projectile weight, loading, and weapon size if the shooter can't shoot a .357 to begin with. Apparently the only good reason to change the loading of a round is for penetration purposes such as big game hunting.

And good lord, if you take a PPK/S (which I have) and a PK380 (which I also have) to the range, the straight blowback design of the PPK/S will have different felt (perceived) recoil than the PK380 which has a Delayed Tilt Barrel Design. One isn't necessarily "more" than the other, it's just different. This is perceptible even when shooting ammo from the same lot. My wife likes them both. She hates my Smith 640 with full house loads. The ACTUAL recoil in that case is the issue. It has shit to do with perception.

 

The differences in shooting a M640and the PPK/S or PK380 has it more to do than with just the cartridge.

 

Now you're either just being stubborn or you're trolling.

I literally said that there are a variety of factors including type of action (Straight Blowback, Browning Tilt Barrel), firearm weight, how tightly or loosely the pistol is fitted (especially on 1911's), and THEN various factors with the cartridge.

That said, the VAST difference in both ACTUAL and PERCEIVED recoil between shooting full house .357mag in a Smith 640 and say .380+p out of a PPK/S absolutely IS the cartridge and the ACTUAL recoil. The ACTUAL recoil between those two will be the determining factor in how a shooter PERCEIVES the recoil based on various factors with the shooter. And training and recoil control is just ONE of those aspects. Physical limitations is another.

There's a reason not everyone makes it through BUD/S and becomes a S.E.A.L. . Hell, even guys that make it through Hell Week get admin dropped in the last weeks of the course. Admin dropped means that there is SOME physical factor that prevents them from becoming full blown SEALS. This factor often isn't the candidates fault, it may have something to do with bone density, or lung capacity. But for some reason the instructors can't move them out of the training phase because in combat they could become a liability. This is the hardest part of the SEAL instructors job because the guys they are dropping have the heart and the mental determination but not the physical ability.

Get it?

Not everyone has the physical ability to shoot .357 regularly or accurately. Period. Some people just weren't built for it. But a shitload more people are built to shoot .32. Why? Because a smaller projectile traveling away from the shooter at less velocity produces less ACTUAL recoil pushing back at the shooter. This translates to less PERCEIVED recoil based on factors such as gun design, gun weight, and shooter training.

You've barely scratched the surface of the technical knowledge out there. Now go educate yourself.

 

.380 recoil the worst you ever felt? You need to get out there and shoot some more guns. Worst recoil I ever felt in a handgun was a .454 Casull with handloaded hardcast bullets. It kicked even more so than the .500 S&W.

 

I think you may be more right than you know.

I can't really believe that anyone can be this combination of stupid, arrogant, and self righteous all in one rolled up package.

 

I stand by my original statement but I'm not going to gang up on anyone. If leghog comes back with a legitimate reply that is illogical I'll tackle that. I remember being young with an absolute metric shit-ton of rounds downrange and I was bloody positive I knew as much as Larry Vickers about everything. Maybe he's like I was at one time and has shot a bunch and thinks his results apply to everyone. That said, they don't. I don't tell people what is best for them and I appreciate when that favor is returned. YMMV.

 

Why not? Our previous President certainly was.

 

Dang! There are a lot of ex-spurt opinions here.

I'll toss in my un-ex-spurt opinion. .357 revolvers come in a lot of flavors and weights. In my younger days I owned several S&W Model 19s, 66s, and a 5" Pre-27, I never had a problem with the recoil on any of them. I was once offered a chance to fire a 340PD. 11.8 ounce .357 magnum? I declined, as did everyone else at the range.

 

.380 in a PPK/S.

 

You sure you're not confusing recoil with slide bite?

 

Sorry bro, a .380 is a .380, no matter what firearm it's shot from. How about a 45-70 shot out of a derringer?

 

I may be about to take back what I said about ganging up...

In his earlier post he essentially said that the PPK was the worst recoiling gun he ever owned but he “learned to shoot it very well.”

What that basically says to me is that his recoil control was sub par and the PPK was kicking his ass for awhile and then his control got better and he got used to it. I think he’s translating learning to shoot a quite frankly soft shooting straight blowback pistol into “anyone can learn to shoot anything unless they can’t because I did.”

I’m all for people improving their training, but there is very little that is impressive about learning to run an already soft shooting pistol well. If he did it with a First Gen LCP it might be worth talking about but even then it’s still a .380. My wife runs the PPK/S like a champ. She fucking hates the LCP. And neither translates to her ability to handle .357/.44 with any regularity. There are a lot of factors in the topic of perceived vs actual recoil and I think leghog has his shit all out of order.

Training is good. Recoil control is good. Shooting guns with loads where the actual recoil beats the shit out of you regularly is asking to make your orthopedic surgeons Porsche payments. Perceived recoil my ass.

 

I have shot a .380 PPK and owned a SIG P232. Both are blowback and IMHO, kick a bit more than locked breach pistols. I also owned a SIG P238. It weighs the same, but is much more comfortable to shoot. Why? I don't know know for sure, but I read that the locked breach spreads the recoil impulse over a longer period.

In neither case, are they painful to shoot.

 

I've got a regular LCP, and the recoil is very snappish, bordering on unpleasant. My better half also hated it. But, when I added the Hogue slip on grip thing, it tamed it down a very noticeable bit. The wife still doesn't like it, but she can now shoot it effectively. But I'm glad she doesn't like it, it will stay in my pocket that way.

I do wish Ruger would come out with a .32acp LCP like the little Kel-tec. Still enough juice to reach the boiler room, but a more pleasant gun to shoot.

 

I don't have any problems shooting the LCP .380. It feels like a pea shooter to me. Compared to .357 and .44 magnum loads at least.

 

My wife hated the LCP Custom enough that we quickly bought her a G42/G43 pair. Identical setup with sights across all three of her Glocks and now she’s happy.

The LCP sits unused. Even with the upgraded trigger, the trigger on mine is pretty garbage and it still has tiny sights and annoying recoil profile. It’s not a gun I felt was viable to put the training time into when I have better options. I’ll run the PPK/S or PK380 any day over it. Or one of my NAA .22 Mag jobs.

And I shoot and carry 9x19 more than anything so it’s mostly a moot point.

 

This is interesting about perceived recoil vs actual recoil. I can tell you from personal experience that shooting a .54 cal Thompson Center grey hawk muzzle loading rifle with full power loads eventually bruised my shoulder and in addition caused me to develop a flinch noticed very clearly on a few misfires that affected my accuracy badly.

Perceived recoil affecting accuracy is a very real possibility. I even noticed a flinch develop with the heavy .357 magnum revolver that I found easy to shoot. That really surprised me, and you bet I did flinch with the .44 magnum. That was not too much of a surprise.

One way to train to diminish or eliminate flinching and how I discovered it when at the shooting range is to load most of the chambers of the revolver with empty shells among a couple of live rounds so you don't know which pull of the trigger is going to ignite a live round. If you have a flinch you will notice it upon squeezing the trigger on an empty case. This both makes you aware of the flinch and trains you to fire as if every chamber was empty or loaded with an empty shell, that is without a flinch.

Perceived recoil affecting accuracy due to flinching is a serious matter that is not limited to novices, even the most experienced professional target shooters have enough of an issue with it that they include flinching control in their practice routine.

My take on it is starting with a firearm that has too much recoil, like a snub nose revolver loaded with hot loads, can develop bad habits like flinching that gravely affect accuracy and can be hard to unlearn. I can't help but think that flinching when firing a snub nose can send bullets in a wildly unpredictable dispersal pattern that is very dangerous to bystanders.

Now that I think about it I can see why the shooting range I went to (an indoor range with relatively narrow lanes) did not have any snub nose revolvers or high power high recoil small pistols with short barrels to rent.

 

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Interesting idea that I'd not seen before (or more likely just forgot about) . Extra capacity is great . But , it would be pretty expensive to buy this rare ammo for target / plinking .

I know they have some hi-cap revolvers in .22lr but this .32 mag should have 2 to 3 times the kinetic energy .