BLUF:
They’re not a bad round to carry in a snubbie
Snubnose Revolver Ballistic Gelatin Tests
When I was a kid back in the early 1980s, my parents had some rural land where we spent weekends hiking, hunting, and shooting guns. A man up the road from my parents’ place was a well known “gun guy.” He shot constantly and often offered to let young Greg shoot all his cool guns. One day my Dad and I were visiting him and I saw a gun on his kitchen table that I hadn’t seen before. I asked if I could look at it.
The man knew I was a safe gun handler, even at my young age. He said “It’s loaded. It’s a Smith and Wesson revolver. You know how to unload it. Point it towards the ground, unload it, and then you can check it out.”
I took it out of the leather belt holster and carefully unloaded it. It turned out to be a two-inch Smith and Wesson Model 10 round butt. It was loaded with target wadcutters. I knew what the bullets were because I bought a $5.00 box of wadcutter reloads at the local gun shop to shoot in my Smith and Wesson Model 19 every weekend I visited my parents’ rural property.
Even at age 14, I knew that wadcutters were target loads. My dad’s police revolvers were all filled with the “Treasury Load” 110 grain +P+ jacketed hollowpoints that were in vogue at the time.
The man explained that this was the gun his wife carried when she walked around in the woods on their property. I asked him about why it was loaded with wadcutters. He explained that most hollowpoint .38 ammunition didn’t expand well out of two-inch barrels. He said that the wadcutters would penetrate deeply, would cut a sharp hole, and had mild recoil.
He then made the statement: “Out of a short barrel, the wadcutters perform better than the hollowpoints.”
Internally, I laughed. Everyone knew hollowpoints were better for defensive use than target wadcutters.
