Jacketed hollowpoints failed to expand at snubnose velocities when fired through gel or gel and plywood--acting almost like an FMJ (right).

SNUB-NOSED REVOLVERS HAVE BEEN popular as carry guns for a long time. Also, those who favor big main guns can be found packing a snubbie as a backup, but the short barrels that users favor for carry bring a price: lack of velocity.

That velocity loss means expanding bullets often don't expand. If your high-tech hollowpoint fails to expand, it works no better than a traditional lead roundnose. Also, the rounded nose of a jacketed hollowpoint can glance off of hard things like bone. But if you increased velocity (and chamber pressure) until you get enough to cause expansion, recoil becomes ferocious in a lightweight snubbie.

So let's go about this in a different direction. We all know placement matters more than expansion anyway. If a thug is about to punch your ticket, a lead roundnose through his sternum is much more favorable to your cause than an expanding bullet that only creases his stomach. Even if that bullet expands to the size of a five-gallon bucket, the poor placement means it is of little use.

So how about a bullet that works efficiently without expanding, that has good accuracy and whose soft recoil means easier shooting and practicing? What about full wadcutters?

Tale Of The Tape
.38 Special	Bullet Weight (gr.)	Muzzle Velocity (fps)	Penetrations Gel -- Gel/Wood (in.)	Average Group (in.)
Winchester FMJ	130	765	28 -- 24	3.0
Black Hills Blue JHP	125	735	24 -- 20	3.0
Remington HBWC	148	655	30 -- 24	2.0
Oregon Trails DEWC	148	657	36 -- 24	2.0
*Author's handload Notes: Accuracy tested off sandbags at 25 yards. Results are averages of three five-shot groups. Penetration is average of three shots, with gel surface 10 feet from the muzzle. Velocities measured with a CED M2 chronograph, screens centered 15 feet from the muzzle. Abbreviations: DEWC, double-end wadcutter; FMJ, full metal jacket; HBWC, hollow-base wadcutter; JHP, jacketed hollowpoint

Hear me out before you get all outraged. What are the advantages? Cast-lead bullet mavens from Elmer Keith to Veral Smith have demonstrated that the sharp edge of a bullet efficiently cuts in the wound track even without expanding. The late Jim Cirillo experimented with full wadcutter bullets when serving on the NYPD Stakeout Squad.

Where a rounded profile will shove vitals aside or glance off bone, the edge of a wadcutter or semi-wadcutter will slice or dig in. When I was shooting bowling pins, a popular bullet with revolver shooters was the "lead pencil": a 230-grain .358-diameter full wadcutter. It did not glance off of bowling pins.

You can hardly argue with the accuracy of wadcutter bullets. Target shooters have both demonstrated the efficiency of the bullet (clean holes in paper) and its accuracy. PPC shooters use wadcutters despite the learning curve in reloading their blunt profiles into the cylinder. They use them for the simple reason that few other bullets will shoot such tight groups.

For those who wonder about accuracy at a distance, the 50-yard 10 ring on a PPC target is about half the size of a sheet of typing paper, and competitors who expect to win expect to hit it almost every time. The X ring is less than half that, and the serious shooters are aiming only at the X ring. In other words, wadcutters deliver accuracy as far as you can hit.

The relatively soft recoil helps. Where a 125-grain JHP in .38 Special is doing all it can to generate 900 fps out of a snubbie (and usually failing), the sedate 148-grain wadcutter can be counted on to deliver all of its 700 fps from a four-inch barrel and close to that in a two-incher. The low recoil and muzzle blast both encourage practice and allow someone under stress to deliver as much accuracy as their skills can generate.

Another advantage of the wadcutter is one you might not think about: penetration. The FBI ballistic gel protocols assume that a bullet must penetrate an absolute minimum of 12 inches of gelatin in order for it to be considered an effective defensive load. And more is better, until the penetration exceeds 18 inches, then the extra penetration is considered wasted energy. There, the wadcutter bullet actually demonstrates an embarrassment of riches; it will easily penetrate well past the 12-inch mark, and depending on how hard an alloy the bullet is made of, more than 20 inches is possible.