I'm old enough to remember the 1980s and the articles that were written. And frankly, I don't recall reading many complaints about the recoil and blast of that round. I worked for the NRA back when the media was yapping about the so-called cop-killer bullets (steel bullets clad in copper or teflon. We were trying to keep it secret so cop-killing criminals wouldn't use cop-killer bullets against law enforcement. Gun writer Massad Ayoob assisted in this, but the great secret we all were trying to keep the idiot media from finding out was that the .357 125-gr JHP would defeat many of those same vests. We didn't want the media to spearhead a national campaign to outlaw standard ammoo of any type.In absolute performance, a full power 125jhp is still the bomb. Why consider anything else? Because the muzzle blast and recoil are significant.
The .357 125gr JHP is as close as you can come to a "magic bullet" as one can get.
I'm old enough to remember the 1980s and the articles that were written. And frankly, I don't recall reading many complaints about the recoil and blast of that round. I worked for the NRA back when the media was yapping about the so-called cop-killer bullets (steel bullets clad in copper or teflon. We were trying to keep it secret so cop-killing criminals wouldn't use cop-killer bullets against law enforcement. Gun writer Massad Ayoob assisted in this, but the great secret we all were trying to keep the idiot media from finding out was that the .357 125-gr JHP would defeat many of those same vests. We didn't want the media to spearhead a national campaign to outlaw standard ammoo of any type.
It's no problem now, but back then there were calls to ban all Teflon-coated ammo, whether they penetrated bullet-resistant ammo or not. As for the stats we were watching, instead of cop killers using cop-killer bullets to kill cops, they simply aimed for the heads. Many of those deaths, in fact, came because of the media publicity.
Quite right, but they still tried to ban all Teflon-coated bullets, even those that wouldn't penetrate body armor. They were stupid beyond belief. One bill that was aimed at machine guns (guns that fired multiple projectiles with a single pull of the trigger) inadvertently would have banned shotguns!The Teflon was used solely to protect the handgun bores...it didn't anything extra to assist in defeating body armor.
Boy, that's a name from the past! And yes, the media publicized it so much that cop killers began aiming at the heads. One bad guy waited on some stairs and killed two cops coming up the stairs to his apartment. Both cops were shot in the head from behind. Even though steel bullets can be easily made using a steel rod cut into pieces and hand-loaded, the cop killers went for the head. We even got blamed for those killings, even though the media was clearly at fault. The blood, as you say, was clearly on their hands.The Washington Post and NYC Congressman Mario Biaggi led the way to ban so-called "cop-killer" bullets and continually publicized that officers were wearing body armor...against the pleas from police groups, the NRA and others. Once the word was out about the prevalence of soft body armor the incidents of police being shot in the head rose pretty dramatically if I remember.
What is the current wisdom on HD ammo for .357?
It used to be 125 gr JHP. Still? I see a lot of offerings in 158 gr JHP.
Asking for a friend of course.