.38 Smith & Wesson Special
One of the all time great revolver cartridges,
the .38 Smith & Wesson Special was introduced in 1902. For many years,
a revolver in .38 Special represented the classic sidearm for lawmen, but
it is now rapidly losing ground to various high capacity autoloaders chambered
in 9mm Parabellum. Even so, a man who can actually place six shots from his
.38 will always be more effective then another who sprays 15
9mm bullets
all over the landscape. In its favor, some experts believe the relatively
new +P loadings of the .38 Special make it a much better cartridge for self
defense use than the
9mm Parabellum
can ever be, especially when its loaded with bullets weighing 150 grains
and more.
In addition to being one of our most useful revolver cartridges for self
defense applications, the .38 Special is also one of the most accurate handgun
cartridges ever designed. When loaded with top quality cast or swaged bullets
at 700 to 800 fps and fired in a heavy barrel revolver, the old .38 is capable
of punching tiny groups in paper targets with the best of them.Recent accuracy
tests with 3.0 grains of
HP38 behind the
Speer, Bull-X, and Hornady 148 grain
Hollow base wadcutter bullets produced 12 shot groups of less than 2 inches
at 50 yards from a custom Jarett PPC revolver fired in a ransome rest.
The .38 Special does not soak up as much limelight as cartridges of more
recent introduction, but it is too good to ever completely die. Like other
classics of its breed, the .38 Special will continue to be one of the great
all American classics for many decades to come.
Source: Hodgdon Data Manual, 26th Edition
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