I Tested .22LR, .380, 9mm, .40 & .45 ACP — A Clear Winner!

I used to tell people at the range that if you’re going to carry a pistol, carry a real one. By “real” I meant big. Forty-five caliber, steel frame, the kind of gun that makes a box of ammunition feel like a down payment. Then I put five calibers on one bench, side by side, and the round I’d been quietly dismissing for most of my adult life made me look like a fool. Not because it hit harder. That’s the part nobody expects. In this video: A head to head comparison of five handgun calibers on the same bench with the same questions, the twenty two Long Rifle, the three eighty ACP, the nine millimeter, the forty Smith and Wesson, and the forty five ACP Why the twenty two remains the single best training cartridge on the bench, with essentially no recoil and this past fall’s bulk pricing running around six or seven cents a round, against the real tradeoff of rimfire reliability issues that get worse in semi automatic pistols The counterintuitive economics of the three eighty, where a smaller, less powerful cartridge actually costs more per round than nine millimeter because of lower production volume, and why that tradeoff still makes sense for true pocket carry guns like the Ruger LCP Max How gel testing inconsistency between labs, with the same three eighty defensive load showing penetration results that varied by several inches between two respected testing outlets, reveals why no single number from a website should be treated as gospel The nine millimeter’s unglamorous rise to the top of nearly every practical category, cheapest centerfire ammunition this fall at roughly twenty seven cents a round, the most magazine capacity for a given gun size, and consistently high shootability in a reasonably sized pistol The real story behind the FBI’s departure from and eventual return to nine millimeter, including the 1986 Miami shootout that triggered the original move toward larger calibers, and the agency’s own later conclusion that era’s bullet technology, not the caliber itself, was the actual problem The forty Smith and Wesson’s rise through the 1990s as the law enforcement standard, its shared pressure ceiling with nine millimeter at roughly thirty five thousand pounds per square inch despite pushing a heavier bullet, and the FBI Training Division’s pivotal 2014 memo finding that agency shooters were measurably faster and more accurate with nine millimeter than with the forty How the forty’s decline in police popularity turned it into a genuine bargain for civilian buyers today, with used pistols often priced well below comparable nine millimeter models and the ammunition price gap narrower than most people assume The forty five ACP’s distinct shooting character, its comparatively low operating pressure around twenty one thousand pounds per square inch producing a “push” rather than a “snap” in a full size steel pistol, set against its real limitations in magazine capacity, grip width, and the highest ammunition cost of the five at around forty two cents a round The core realization that reframes the whole comparison: the nine millimeter doesn’t win every single category outright, but it’s never worse than second in any of them, while the deeper question isn’t which bullet hits hardest but which cartridge you’ll actually afford to practice with regularly A fancy forty five sitting in a drawer with ammunition too expensive to shoot regularly does nothing for anyone. A plain nine millimeter practiced with until it feels like part of your hand is a different story entirely. Which caliber did you start with, and which one did you end up keeping?