42 or 357?

What with all the Russian spies and other menacing characters around my neighborhood, I have thought in light of my advancing age that I ought to get a piece for my drawer.  You know, for punks.

Apart from the usual objections of "morality" I also have struggled with the national problem of overabundance: there are so many options, it is genuinely difficult to make a rational choice.  But I am making some progress.  I am not a sportsman or drug dealer, so long guns and Wonder Nines are out.  It needs to be something small, ideally concealable, but able to, you know, perforate baddies.

I had been considering the Walther PPK.  The merits of this fine firearm need hardly be rehearsed here, and how many personal defense weapons have such an impressive pop culture pedigree?



More prosaically, the slide burn issue has been addressed (after eighty years) with an extended tang.  It's a very good gun, as the estimable Hickock45 attests.

But the PPK has its problems.  It is hard work to shoot: the slide is stiff, and it kicks hard.  With some practice you can get proficient with it, but it's hard to imagine, in a sudden household firefight, tossing it to my wife and having her wield it effectively.  And in reality, most other compact guns have the same problem: the ones with stopping power are hard to shoot, and the ones that are easy to shoot may be too mild to achieve the desired results.

And there the matter stood with me, until the Glock 42 swam into my ken.  Glock took a lot of heat for the 42 because they decided to chamber it for .380 ACP instead of 9 mm.  This makes the gun more expensive to operate because 9mm ammunition is cheap and abundant:  it can be found on deserted beaches and school playgrounds all over America.  The .380 ACP, by contrast, must be bought in a store, with money, instead of stripping it from the bodies of the men who were so foolish as to betray you.

The PPK, which also uses .380 ACP is certainly the prettier of the two:

But the Glock has one huge advantage over the PPK and other "concealed carry" weapons:

[A]fter getting the hang of one of those little 9mm’s, switching over to the Glock 42 feels like cheating. With almost no effort at all, the front sight simply snaps back onto target after each shot. If all centerfire handgun calibers were equally effective for self-defense, the favorable combination of small size and light recoil found in the Glock 42 would instantly render obsolete dozens of other carry guns that are either more difficult to shoot or more difficult to carry.  (link)

So...have a couple of these babies around the house, toss them to the wife and kids when trouble starts, and the bad guys are going to learn what "downrange" really means.

But, the nagging thought pursues me...as appealing as it is to shoot people, what's the point if the ammo isn't up the the job.  We've all heard these "I emptied my Beretta Bobcat into a perp and he didn't even drop his milkshake" stories.  When we shoot someone, we want them to know they've been shot, and fall down without unwanted additional activity.

I am of two minds about this.  One part of me notes that this particular round has a long history of killing people, including (according to Wikipedia) the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife Sophia.  That must count for something.  And when friends tell me the round has poor stopping power, I notice none of them accept my offer to be shot with the harmless ineffective little pea shooter.

On the other hand, this is not a game, and as a rawboned Alaskan used to negotiating safe passage with brown bears and wolverines, I know just how important it is that the things we shoot, stay shot.

As I think about it, most gunfights are over very, very quickly.  Whomever puts a round into their target first probably wins - if the round is up to the job.  So, reframing the question, is there a reliable and easy-to-operate small weapon that can put serious ammo to work instead of these .380 Lucky Charms or whatever you call them.  Well, I can think of 38 reasons to consider a J-Frame...



"Remarkably accurate and easy to shoot for a gun this small," Hickock says.

But only five shots.  Well, would you rather have five 38s or six 380s?  It's a difficult question.  My current thought is that the greater power of the .38 round in the J-Frame is not enough to offset the shooting ergonomics of the Glock 42.

But...you know...some of those J-Frames can handle a .357 Magnum load.  Oh yes.  Yes they can.

Tactical Tim says "you can have five rounds of .357 Magnum on your person for just a touch over one pound."  Therapy for carpal tunnel syndrome not included:



So are you going to go with the one that loves you, or are you going with the one you love?  I really admire the understated murder efficiency of the Glock 42, but as a middle aged man I'm not sure I want more potency issues to worry about.  The M&P 340 resolves those questions with total finality, but at what cost?

At what cost?