If you’ve been on gun forums for more than 30 seconds, you will likely have seen someone post about the greatest “manstopping” handgun cartridge of all time, the .357 Magnum 125 grain JHP. The question though is how much of that legend of the .357 is internet lore and how much is actual fact?
The history of the .357 Magnum is a pretty fun read for people interested in the development of firearms and ballistics. It was developed during the same period as the .38 Super for largely the same reasons – the .38 Special wasn’t getting the job done at barrier penetration. I’ll leave the full history details out for a later post, but the end result was that the .38 Special was “blown up” into the .357 Magnum, which is why revolvers chambered in .357 Magnum can shoot and safely chamber .38 Special, but not vice versa.
Once the gun was established though, it becomes difficult to pin down where the stories started about the 125 grain JHP round’s stopping power. Although, one recurring theme seems to pop up – the Marshall and Sanow “1-shot stop” study, which had the .357 Magnum round in various calibers scoring near the top. We’re not going to get in to a discussion about the M&S study here, because it’s not germane to this post other than it appears to be at least the internet source of where the Legend of the .357 Magnum began. On top of that, a couple of fairly simple google searches will turn up several anecdotes by shooters who claim to have witnessed people being shot or shot people with the 125 grain JHP load with truly spectacular, and in some cases downright theatrical results. The reason the above sentence is qualified with “claim” is simply because it would be impossible to verify every single anecdote by a random forum member. Some of the stories are quite likely true, just as some of them are quite likely false. That being said, I’ve had former LE officers regale me with tales of the stopping power of the 125 grain JHP round they carried on duty.
One of the few bits of hard data I was able to find was from Firearms Tactical, which shows data from some of the gel tests done with .357 Magnum ammo. Unfortunately, because no one uses .357 Magnum any more, the data is dated, the page was last updated in 1998, and much of the date is from 15-20 years ago. Here’s the full page. The data gets interesting when you scroll down to the bottom and read the FBI data on the various loads. Nearly all of the 20 year old bullet designs have data that would look really weird to someone used to testing modern bonded JHPs. My favorite is the 1989 test data of a 158 grain Hydra-Shok from a Model 13, which clearly failed to expand for sierra and zipped through the gel like the federal government through our tax dollars.
The lack of hard data makes it difficult to draw any true conclusions about modern .357 Magnum loads. The smart money is to bet that if you have a .357 Magnum loaded with a modern hollowpoint bullet that it’s going to perform pretty well. It is worth noting that there has been a lot of time and money spent by ammo companies to get 9mm, and by extension .357 Sig to perform like the 125 grain JHP. If I was picking a modern .357 for personal defense, I’d probably go with the Winchester PDX 125 grain JHP. It’s loaded with a modern bonded hollow point bullet at around 1300 FPS, and I’ve been generally impressed with the PDX handgun rounds.
So is the stopping power of the .357 Magnum better than other calibers or is it just myth? I think that the .357 Magnum clearly outperformed the calibers of its day, from the 1930s all the way to the 1980s. In the modern era of handgun performance, you’re probably just as well off with a 9mm as a .357 Magnum. But if the word “Magnum” makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, you’re definitely not going to be undergunned with one.
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