.357 Sig

I have long been a fan of the .357 Sig round. I kind of look at the listing of 9mm stuff as: 9mm short, 9mm, and 9mm Mag. They ALL shoot 9mm bullets. Nowadays they ALL shoot decent ballistics - the .380 is no longer your auntie's round. 95 gr at over 1k fps is serious stuff.

ANYWHOOOO, I am bumming about on the internet and discover my favorite round in a Sig P239. I talk to the guy and buy the gun. I get it - and it doesn't work. Won't load the mags. And they're two Sig .40 mags. So I send the gun back to the dude, who messes around with it for a bit.

Turns out it's an OLD P239 police turn-in. Like 5 digit serial number. Back then, the .357 Sig P239's used a dedicated .357 Sig magazine, which these days is a bazillion dollars each. AND I am thinking won't hold a .40 round. So after a little haggling, the guy agrees to send me another P239 - in .40. And I can then get the .357 Sig barrel as a drop-in and have the best of both worlds. Meanwhile he gets to buy one of those expensive .357 Sig mags and then sell the gun for a higher price, to include the mag cost. So I guess we both made out fine.

On this point, I have to hand it to Glock. You get a 17 Glock mag, it fits ALL 17 Glocks. Likewise any Glock model. Sigs get hinkey. Love the guns, but they screw around with mags too much.

Gotta say, I love paying $22 or less for factory mags, instead of $50, or even more.

There's a report on the Ft. Hood shooting. The bastard used a 5.7x27 pistol, and it inflicted far more incapacitations and kills than could have been expected. The thought is that the old, discredited hydrostatic shock theory might actually be true.

That means your .357 SIG is once more a very interesting caliber. Hopefully, Glock will bring out their .357 SIG in the Gen 5 soon, as will Ruger in their PCC.

I saw that somewhere.

The problem with all this is that "studies" are often done in sterile circumstances, whereas in real life the results become different. You see that in the calibre wars that pop up when news is slow. All the theoretical benefits of this round over the next seem often to go away when you look at data. The question, then, is which is the right idea to follow.

Shooting data have long held that calibre means little except for the 158 gr round of .357 Mag. Interestingly, the .357 Sig 125 round has similar results. Maybe it IS hydrostatic pressure. Or something else we don't recognize yet.

I like the round because when I talk to cops, they tell you the round stops people like nothing since the .357 Mag did. That is anecdotal, but then I watch videos of penetrating car doors, and it again looks so much better than the other stuff. So I carry it. And when my 239 arrives, I'm going to start looking for a replacement barrel in .357 Sig. Make it like my 229. (And I still have the .357 Sig barrel for the 226 I gave my daughter. Her's is in .40, which I'll let her learn how to shoot properly.)