I've been a fan of the 10mm cartridge since it was announced, and I still am. For several years I had an EAA Witness so chambered, and while I liked it, I didn't carry it or shoot it very often. One reason was that it threw brass ridiculous distances, and while that's not a big issue in a self-defense scenario, it could have been if I ever had to use it. In the back of my mind I could hear an overzealous Prosecutor telling the jury that "while the accused claims he fired from this location, his spent brass casings were actually found 25 yards away, so he's clearly lying. What else is he lying about?"
Interestingly enough, the 10mm Witness and my 40 Witness Match had basically identical magazines, and one day at the range I made the mistake of loading 40's in the 10mm mags. And they ran just fine!......with the added benefit that since the 10mm pistol had much heavier springs, the fired 40 brass was neatly deposited in a nice pile just to my right, not in the next zip code. This shot shows my original (1990) Witness 40 on the bottom, with the 10mm above it. The 40 Witness was built on a slightly smaller frame, before EAA enlarged it to accomodate everything from 9mm and 38 Super to 40 S&W, 45ACP and 10mm.
There's also the issue of overpenetration. The 40 S&W firing a 180-grain bullet is already known for plowing through a lot of flesh, sometimes zipping right through if the hollow points are plugged up, or simply too hard to expand reliably. Add a couple hundred more fps of velocity and things can get even worse, especially with the heavy bullets. A 180-grain .401" bullet has a much higher sectional density rating than say, a 125-grain 357, and thus penetrates far deeper.
In addition, the 10mm is a seriously high-pressure cartridge, with a maximum average pressure of 44,400 PSI, right up there with the older 357 Magnum ballistics, before they were watered down to suit The Suits. (The 9mm and 40 are still hot by today's standards, averaging around 34,000 PSI, but that's still a big step down from what the 10mm was designed to do.) I don't know what pressure levels modern 10mm ammo is loaded to, but some of it is downright stunning when you touch one off, especially if you're used to the 38 Special or 45ACP.
The first time I touched off a 10mm round with my son nearby, he reacted like he'd been sucker-punched in the side of the face, and he was at least 12 feet off to my left. I still have the video, and you can clearly hear his astonishment at the level of power it delivered, not to mention the blast it creates. This is a kid who has been shooting with me since he was four, and has helped me shoot some of my more overzealous and ill-advised handloads for two decades.....he is no stranger to magnum-level loads. We even shot a video of me chronographing those same handloads, he was laughing hysterically because there were a few empty cases in a plastic coffee can a foot from the muzzle, and with each shot the empties jumped 15-20 inches up out of the can. The concussion is severe with hot loads, make no mistake.
I love the 10mm for what it's capable of, Jeff Cooper once said that the 10mm has as much energy at 200 yards than the 45ACP has at the muzzle, and I believe it. I watched a video review of the Hi-Point 10mm carbine today, and the reviewer mentioned the fact that the carbine is as heavy as an AR-15, but still has a spring-loaded buttplate to alleviate some of the recoil. He also said that despite that feature, he was getting smacked in the chops with each shot, despite the fact that the gun also has a padded cheekpiece!
Do I need that kind of power in a defensive handgun? Frankly, no. Bear in mind, I carried a lowly 38 Special revolver for a great deal of my working years, and felt perfectly content with its ability to put people down. I switched to a 40 S&W later on, not because of the power issue but because it held more ammo and was faster to reload.
But back to the 10mm......it was born and brought to production largely because of the FBI Masscre in Miami in the 80's, the Feds spent a LOT of time and taxpayer dollars trying to find the best weapon for their Field Agents in the ensuing years, and yet once it was out in the field it was deemed too powerful and uncontrollable for their agents to use. So they loaded it down from 1200 fps to 900-950, the famous "10mm Lite" load, which in turn birthed the 40 S&W, which gave the same ballistics in a smaller case, and thus a smaller, lighter and easier to carry pistol. 10mm gun sales suffered as a result, until it was resuscitated as the perfect Hunter's Cartridge, for those who preferred to carry a semi-auto. In that role, it shines quite brightly on pigs, deer, and smaller critters.
Modern ammo is nearly always good stuff, I haven't seen many loads that don't do close to what's advertised (but there are some!) yet I still think the 10mm is more than I need to put down a miscreant. Shot placement and bullet design still trump all else, and there are a lot more 10mm loads for defense than there used to be. I tested a few several years ago, and these were my favorites.
Were I to carry a 10mm for defense, my choice would most certainly involve the lighter bullets, most likely the 155's at around 1150 fps tops, less might be better to mitigate the blast and recoil. I did a fair amount of testing with those, and managed to push a 165-grain bullet to 1143 fps from the 4.5" barrel of the Witness, a load that was stout but not too fierce from that all-steel pistol. I also ran a 135-grain Nosler to 1350 fps but it was downright obnoxious to shoot, the recoil wasn't bad but the blast was pretty horrendous. The latter load would be okay for self-defense in summer when light clothing is involved (or against small critters) but I'd expect shallow wounds and devastating fragmentation at those velocities.
Give me a factory 10mm load with a Gold Dot 155 grain bullet at 1000 fps, and I'd be perfectly confident in its ability to drop a bad guy, as well as my own ability to shoot it well at speed. (The 40 S&W, by the way, can do just that.) There are no predators where I live other than the 2-legged variety, and frankly, they're not that hard to kill with decent bullets in the right place. I typically carry a 45 with a short barrel, but I'm also just as happy with a 40, or even a 38 Special given a barrel of 3-inches or more.
I still like the 10mm, but I'm not sure I really have a use for it in everyday life. My Kel-Tec 40 Carbins spit out bullets at close to what the 10mm will do from a pistol, and that's plenty.
But that Hi-Point 10mm Carbine still looks cool! :bandit:
Interestingly enough, the 10mm Witness and my 40 Witness Match had basically identical magazines, and one day at the range I made the mistake of loading 40's in the 10mm mags. And they ran just fine!......with the added benefit that since the 10mm pistol had much heavier springs, the fired 40 brass was neatly deposited in a nice pile just to my right, not in the next zip code. This shot shows my original (1990) Witness 40 on the bottom, with the 10mm above it. The 40 Witness was built on a slightly smaller frame, before EAA enlarged it to accomodate everything from 9mm and 38 Super to 40 S&W, 45ACP and 10mm.
There's also the issue of overpenetration. The 40 S&W firing a 180-grain bullet is already known for plowing through a lot of flesh, sometimes zipping right through if the hollow points are plugged up, or simply too hard to expand reliably. Add a couple hundred more fps of velocity and things can get even worse, especially with the heavy bullets. A 180-grain .401" bullet has a much higher sectional density rating than say, a 125-grain 357, and thus penetrates far deeper.
In addition, the 10mm is a seriously high-pressure cartridge, with a maximum average pressure of 44,400 PSI, right up there with the older 357 Magnum ballistics, before they were watered down to suit The Suits. (The 9mm and 40 are still hot by today's standards, averaging around 34,000 PSI, but that's still a big step down from what the 10mm was designed to do.) I don't know what pressure levels modern 10mm ammo is loaded to, but some of it is downright stunning when you touch one off, especially if you're used to the 38 Special or 45ACP.
The first time I touched off a 10mm round with my son nearby, he reacted like he'd been sucker-punched in the side of the face, and he was at least 12 feet off to my left. I still have the video, and you can clearly hear his astonishment at the level of power it delivered, not to mention the blast it creates. This is a kid who has been shooting with me since he was four, and has helped me shoot some of my more overzealous and ill-advised handloads for two decades.....he is no stranger to magnum-level loads. We even shot a video of me chronographing those same handloads, he was laughing hysterically because there were a few empty cases in a plastic coffee can a foot from the muzzle, and with each shot the empties jumped 15-20 inches up out of the can. The concussion is severe with hot loads, make no mistake.
I love the 10mm for what it's capable of, Jeff Cooper once said that the 10mm has as much energy at 200 yards than the 45ACP has at the muzzle, and I believe it. I watched a video review of the Hi-Point 10mm carbine today, and the reviewer mentioned the fact that the carbine is as heavy as an AR-15, but still has a spring-loaded buttplate to alleviate some of the recoil. He also said that despite that feature, he was getting smacked in the chops with each shot, despite the fact that the gun also has a padded cheekpiece!
Do I need that kind of power in a defensive handgun? Frankly, no. Bear in mind, I carried a lowly 38 Special revolver for a great deal of my working years, and felt perfectly content with its ability to put people down. I switched to a 40 S&W later on, not because of the power issue but because it held more ammo and was faster to reload.
But back to the 10mm......it was born and brought to production largely because of the FBI Masscre in Miami in the 80's, the Feds spent a LOT of time and taxpayer dollars trying to find the best weapon for their Field Agents in the ensuing years, and yet once it was out in the field it was deemed too powerful and uncontrollable for their agents to use. So they loaded it down from 1200 fps to 900-950, the famous "10mm Lite" load, which in turn birthed the 40 S&W, which gave the same ballistics in a smaller case, and thus a smaller, lighter and easier to carry pistol. 10mm gun sales suffered as a result, until it was resuscitated as the perfect Hunter's Cartridge, for those who preferred to carry a semi-auto. In that role, it shines quite brightly on pigs, deer, and smaller critters.
Modern ammo is nearly always good stuff, I haven't seen many loads that don't do close to what's advertised (but there are some!) yet I still think the 10mm is more than I need to put down a miscreant. Shot placement and bullet design still trump all else, and there are a lot more 10mm loads for defense than there used to be. I tested a few several years ago, and these were my favorites.
Were I to carry a 10mm for defense, my choice would most certainly involve the lighter bullets, most likely the 155's at around 1150 fps tops, less might be better to mitigate the blast and recoil. I did a fair amount of testing with those, and managed to push a 165-grain bullet to 1143 fps from the 4.5" barrel of the Witness, a load that was stout but not too fierce from that all-steel pistol. I also ran a 135-grain Nosler to 1350 fps but it was downright obnoxious to shoot, the recoil wasn't bad but the blast was pretty horrendous. The latter load would be okay for self-defense in summer when light clothing is involved (or against small critters) but I'd expect shallow wounds and devastating fragmentation at those velocities.
Give me a factory 10mm load with a Gold Dot 155 grain bullet at 1000 fps, and I'd be perfectly confident in its ability to drop a bad guy, as well as my own ability to shoot it well at speed. (The 40 S&W, by the way, can do just that.) There are no predators where I live other than the 2-legged variety, and frankly, they're not that hard to kill with decent bullets in the right place. I typically carry a 45 with a short barrel, but I'm also just as happy with a 40, or even a 38 Special given a barrel of 3-inches or more.
I still like the 10mm, but I'm not sure I really have a use for it in everyday life. My Kel-Tec 40 Carbins spit out bullets at close to what the 10mm will do from a pistol, and that's plenty.
But that Hi-Point 10mm Carbine still looks cool! :bandit:
