![]() In common usage, the 9mm is the same as the 9mm Luger. So what is the difference between the 9mm and the 9mm Luger? This article is going to help explain why confusion exists in the naming of ammunition, as well as common terms like cartridge, caliber, and chambering. That’s perfectly fine because, once again, we’ve all been there. Maybe you, the reader, are new to guns at this very moment. We dropped all 9mm Luger recommendations for 90- and 100-grain bullets from later Speer reloading manuals after the Revolution.At some point, all of us are new to firearms. 380 Auto cartridge were miserable performers in Euro pistols because they loaded to about 1.005 to 1.050 inches. Suffice it to say that the very short 90- to 100-grain bullets whose profiles were optimized for the. Seating FMJs to the vicinity of 1.135 to 1.150 inches made for better feeding in the Euro pistols without causing issues with U.S.-built pistols.īullet COL and profile issues with expanding bullets could fill its own book, so I'll not cover that here. It was common to see COLs of 1.110 to 1.125 inches for FMJ-RN loads. ammo was mated could deal with COLs well under the industry max COL of 1.169 inches. The S&W and Colt 9mm pistols to which most pre-Revolution U.S. It also meant developing propellants that better duplicated what the European pistols were accustomed to eating and working with bullet shape, cartridge overall length (COL), and profiles.ĬOL research helped a lot. That meant buying a lot of test pistols for final acceptance function testing. The ammomakers here ramped up research into the new pistols. police choices during the Revolution were developed around very different ammo than American factories were producing. The SIG, Beretta, and Glock pistols that made up the majority of U.S. In Europe, where the 9mm Luger cartridge has been refined over decades of military and police use, propellants were slower burning, and the 124-grain (8-gram) bullet was standard. Most 9mm Luger ammo was loaded with propellants that also worked well in the. When the 9mm Luger cartridge was a low-volume (and expensive) product, it was not economically feasible for many factories to inventory special propellants for it. The 124-grain pressures ran a little higher, but seldom more than 30,000 psi.Īdding to the problem was the selection of noncanister propellants. A typical 115-grain load would make the nominal velocity of about 1,125 to 1,150 fps at well under the 9mm's maximum average pressure (MAP) of 35,000 psi it was common for those loads to run about 26,000 psi. Winchester and CCI-Speer loaded 115-grain FMJ bullets, and Remington and Federal loaded 123- and 124-grain bullets but with the velocity reduced to accommodate the extra payload. 9mm Luger ammo was loaded on the "light" side. ammo was usually written off to, "They're not built to commercial specs." However, law enforcement went with high-grade European pistols based on military designs, and that led to a lot of research to make the 9mm Luger the cartridge it is today.īefore the Revolution, a lot of U.S. The fact that military-surplus 9mm pistols were finicky with U.S. ![]() That limited selection made it easy for ammomakers to create a limited line of 9mm ammo that worked. S&W had the Model 39 and its evolutionary spin-offs, and Colt offered its Government Model and Commander pistols in 9mm. There were few 9mm Luger handguns built in the U.S. The change was not painless, especially for the shooting sports industry. 38 Special in ammo sales volume when many North American law enforcement agencies transitioned to semi-auto pistols. ![]() ![]() Considering how long that cartridge had been around, the path to American acceptance was not as smooth as you'd suspect. I had a ringside seat to a revolution - the 9mm Luger Revolution. ![]()
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