Barely anyone had those for the same reason cops didn't- they were expensive and seen as unreliable. And the advantage offered by a 1911 over a S&W Model 10 isn't that much
No, because the most popular gun was... a revolver
https://i.imgur.com/HMGM1nc.png
why did the US cops use revolvers for so many years?
Non meme answer is that semi autos tended to be lower in reliability, and usually getting spare mags was a hassle. Usually a gun came with 1, maybe 2, and they were generally hand fitted to the gun. This is much truer in the early 1900s-40s, after which you FINALLY start to see manufacturing reach a point that even lower cost guns had guaranteed interchangeable mags that wouldnt have hiccups.
Now add on the department concern of police losing mags. The idea that infantry would lose mags (which were expensive) was pretty common up into WW2. For a revolver, speed cylinders were far cheaper and the gun itself was pretty much impossible to separate from its internal magazine. Lose your 1911 mag? Useless. But no one accidentally drops or loses the entire cylinder out of a Model 10.
Because america was majority-white and a high-trust, high social capital society.
Notice how European police now have machine pistols. That's America's future.
Anon they just matched what was common threats at the time. Bootlegging Irish and Italians have sawed offs and chicago typewriters? Time to break out the Colt Monitors and Remington Model 8s. Railroad workers protesting and rioting at Blaire Mountain? Time to call the national guard to deploy machine guns and literal mustard gas. Then when prohibition ended they kept those in reserve for >insert draft riot >insert miner union riot >insert race riot
Police doctrine favored revolvers for reasons they percieved as practical. The Miami Dade shootout would end the same if they had modern glock 45s instead, because the FBIs plan was fricked from the beginning and they chose to try to just walk up and ambush an ex army ranger with 3 tours in Vietnam and his buddy
Also worth noting that jn the Miami shootout, they had access to MP5s and some guys in the operation were even carrying them, but the guys who actually engaged that day decided for whatever reason- "nah, snub noses and shotguns will do just fine"
It may sound dumb today, but the tactic of >just get as close as possible in plainclothes and then everyone pulls out their guns and badges
Was viewed as a valid police tactic. High reward, cuz if it works the suspect was surrounded. The problem is that if this failed, you were made and they'd light you up. Which is what happened when sneaking up on a guy who operated harder than the entire fbi team combined, and has probably been ambushed so many times he had Spidey Sense that tingled whenever a gun was near him.
Similar things happened with Bonnie and Clyde and other bank robbers where police would try to ambush them coming out, only for it to emwd in an orchestra of gunfire. Until they just decided to set up a killzone for B&C that is and the era of bank robbers ended. But even in prohibition that tactic was going strong
That... explains a lot as to why bank robberies have gone way down. Sadly cops had to skin their knees a ton to figure it our
2 years ago
Anonymous
Bank robbing went down because the payout went down. The era of >point gun at manager to open bank vault
Is over, because your typical bank holds less than like $10k. Even $5k. And between that and things like time delay vault door, silent alarms, and the sheer heat generated from robbing a bank (every cop gets a boner from it), it just isnt worth going to a federal pen for a take that winds up being maybe $10,000. And thats if a surprise dye pack doesnt ruin it and you dont get caught.
You can embezzle 10k via ponzi scheme easier than you can get away with a bank heist. A bank heist is just quicker.
2 years ago
Anonymous
hacking is how all the big heists happen now and its usually people targeting foreign countries that dont extradite or going after crypto since its unregulated and harder to get law enforcement to give a shit about it
its a lot harder to track someone down when theres political hurdles to go through because the two countries it happens in arent friendly with each other and when the hack happens, its usually all over and embezzled across 100 different accounts within an hour
if law enforcement gets lucky, they can catch a few of these accounts and only stop like 20% of the hackers payout at most
they were at a disadvantage, especially against professional bank robbers in the 30s like dillenger
they were rolling around with BARs and thompsons
it just wasnt a serious issue, outside of a few groups like dillenger and bonnie & clyde, they never needed bigger guns than a revolver outside of maybe a 12 gauge when they knew it was a schizo with a gun or to put a dying animal out of its misery
there was a shootout in the 70s where bank robbers outgunned cops and made a helicopter land during the chase
the Hollywood shootout was what really changed things because they were wearing armor, police pistols werent doing shit against them
a civilian gave a cop an AR-15 during the shootout and thats why they replaced shotguns with rifles in police cruisers
They didnt replace shotguns with rifles. My old dept we had both. Notth Hollywood was essentially worst case scenario. Heavily armored full auto wielding bank robbers? Not a common thing but it scared the shit out of agencies around the country since every town and county has a bank. For most police applications a shotgun works great
>Notice how European police now have machine pistols. That's America's future.
You are aware that the vast majority of cops in this country have a fricking AR in the cruiser, right?
>Because america was majority-white and a high-trust, high social capital society.
That's a lot less important a reason than you think. The cities have been multi-ethnic and low-trust since very early on. A bigger reason is that the USA, like all other countries with a legal tradition based in Germanic Common Law, has civilian cops instead of paramilitary gendarmes. US Police are civilians, and would ordinarily be expected to only be as armed as any other civilian, which generally means a pistol for self-protection. Cops aren't soldiers, and they aren't meant to be.
>US Police are civilians, and would ordinarily be expected to only be as armed as any other civilian >every male aged 17 to 65 is a member of the civilian militia, no man is a civilian
Kinda reaches a deadlock here when the 2A is brought into it. However, modern police departments are not to be found anywhere in the US Constitution as they're a modern invention. Before cities began to commission their own "professional" police departments, the way it worked for the US was how it had been under English law, which is that men were chosen to serve in their local police force by a draft for a set period of time, akin to military service except you aren't being deployed. There was still a permanent sheriff's department and deputies who knew the law best, but for general peacekeeping all you needed was the local posse or draftees who can stop the worst offenses from happening, such as violent crime and theft.
I still think we should return to this way of things, because rather than making the police a lofty upper class meant solely to keep the "peons" in line, they become like the Finnish where it's expected that every man will be one at some point and so it's not something special to everyone else, just a civil service.
We also have nothing to lose by returning to this tradition, as modern cops are cowards who only use their guns when they're shooting unarmed people or patriots who've stopped a crime themselves, when it comes to things like Uvalde they piss their pants and cry for almost 2 hours before finally doing something after the threat has already been neutralized. At the least a drafted posse system would mean most men there would have their own kids inside the building and would be prompted to go in and save them rather than protect their jobs, as the police service is just a civil service and not their permanent employment so they won't give much of a shit if some fat commissioner decides to fire them for doing their jobs.
> US Police are civilians
Most cops see themselves as a higher caste of society than most civilians. They're given wide spanning privileges and protections. If cops are civilians, then they certainly aren't treated like it.
>Because america was majority-white and a high-trust, high social capital society.
That's a lot less important a reason than you think. The cities have been multi-ethnic and low-trust since very early on. A bigger reason is that the USA, like all other countries with a legal tradition based in Germanic Common Law, has civilian cops instead of paramilitary gendarmes. US Police are civilians, and would ordinarily be expected to only be as armed as any other civilian, which generally means a pistol for self-protection. Cops aren't soldiers, and they aren't meant to be.
makes excellent points. Although high trust and homogenous, both France and Italy have historically had paramilitary police force toting SMGs etc even back in the 50s, and cops still carried revolvers in 80s NYC.
>Notice how European police now have machine pistols. That's America's future.
That has always been a thing pleb.
Most European countries have a distinction between metropolitan/local beat cops and gendarmeries. Beat cops are minimally armed, having only a handgun (if they are even armed at all) and do most of the street level policing while gerndarmes have those rifles & smgs and get called when the regular police can't handle like counter-terrorist BS or high level hostage taking.
Meanwhile burgers give mere patrolmen fricking ARs.
>ages >only started with the immigrations via boats in NY >they had fully assimilated by 1930s at least
It was only different with the Irish who were mostly notorious criminals but assimilated around teh same time as itallians did after the era of dillinger, minus the mob.
>fully assimilated by the 30s
Lol
Lmao
No. Irish and Italians were still discriminated against. Catholics in general were presumed to have bizzaro land dual loyalty, hence we never had a catholic president until the 60s despite catholicism being the 2nd largest single denomination for a long time. Of 46 presidents, TWO have been Catholic, (JFK, Biden) and that is heavily linked in Irish/Italian discrimination
America had higher murder rates in the before WWII and quite high murder rates after the 60s--90s crime wave.
Military gear for police didn't become a norm until the 2000s, when crime was plunging. Crime began to surge before immigration reform, and plunged at the height of mass migration.
America was more violent in the 80s and 1910s than today. "White" wasn't an identity in 1910. You had massive immigration restrictions passed because Italians, Poles, and the Irish were seen as violent, degenerate outsiders. Anti-Catholic sentiment was huge too.
We're in the second most peaceful era in US history.
Revolvers were commonly used into the 1990s when violent crime was at its post-WWII peak. Even this era didn't have a homicide rate as high as the 19th century.
Ehhhh crime stats and their reporting have shifted quite a lot, accounting for a "drop" in crime. Facts on the ground are different. I left LE in 2021 and around 2019-2020 we had something called the NIBRS update to our reporting software. Basically only counted the most serious crime on the report. So if you had a B&E, damage to property, ADW w/ serious injury, and a larceny, all in the same report, only the most serious crime would be reported to the FBI. Likewise, if you have one report and multiple counts of a similiar crime, say multiple assaults or multiple larcenies, it only lets you add one of each "class" to the report, however you still charge all of them. Basically the data is manipulated.
>Implying data collection wasn't significantly more shit in 1910 or 1950.
Same shit has always gone on, but you can't hide dead bodies and we know homicides were way higher in the past.
Muggings didn't get reported in 1980s NYC or 1920s Chicago because they were incredibly commonplace. Mafia involvement in the government from 1920-1940 makes gang influence today look like child's play.
You're moronic. You live in the most safe and least criminal period in American history. Even with the COVID/Floyd riots and thefts we are still markedly lower than the last crime boom of the 80s. You have been living in peace and panic if even a slight change happens, imagining it to be a call to war. When really all it is, is anger and lashing out and that's why we had one summer of shit and then nothing.
Reliability compared to the semi autos of the time, familiarity with the equipment that they already owned personally, and most of all, the round count difference was like 1 or 2 rounds depending on what single stack they were facing up against. It was really with things like the CZ75, glock, ruger p series; all the wonder 9's that they were finally outgunned and needed to switch
They were reliable and they were available.
When autopistols became reliable and available they made the change to those.
No, because the most popular gun was... a revolver
[...]
Non meme answer is that semi autos tended to be lower in reliability, and usually getting spare mags was a hassle. Usually a gun came with 1, maybe 2, and they were generally hand fitted to the gun. This is much truer in the early 1900s-40s, after which you FINALLY start to see manufacturing reach a point that even lower cost guns had guaranteed interchangeable mags that wouldnt have hiccups.
Now add on the department concern of police losing mags. The idea that infantry would lose mags (which were expensive) was pretty common up into WW2. For a revolver, speed cylinders were far cheaper and the gun itself was pretty much impossible to separate from its internal magazine. Lose your 1911 mag? Useless. But no one accidentally drops or loses the entire cylinder out of a Model 10.
[...]
Anon they just matched what was common threats at the time. Bootlegging Irish and Italians have sawed offs and chicago typewriters? Time to break out the Colt Monitors and Remington Model 8s. Railroad workers protesting and rioting at Blaire Mountain? Time to call the national guard to deploy machine guns and literal mustard gas. Then when prohibition ended they kept those in reserve for >insert draft riot >insert miner union riot >insert race riot
Police doctrine favored revolvers for reasons they percieved as practical. The Miami Dade shootout would end the same if they had modern glock 45s instead, because the FBIs plan was fricked from the beginning and they chose to try to just walk up and ambush an ex army ranger with 3 tours in Vietnam and his buddy
>reliability >reliability >reliability
Where did this meme come from? the automatic pistol was in common use for 95 years before police entertained the idea, largely driven by "unreliable" as an excuse. but this is obviously ridiculous so where did this idea come from?
Aside from the ammo concerns mentioned earlier, the average American prior to the 80s-90s likely only had experience with shitty saturday night special tier semis unless they were in the military.
Well take the 1911. Even now, a lot of them don't like hollow points. See how that could build mistrust in police forces. They bought what they knew until that was no longer effective
Semi-autos pre-1980 didnt cycle combat or defensive ammo very well and there wasnt much of it developed for semi-autos. Thats part of where the idea of 9mm being useless comes from, is its shitty hollowpoint or ball days when cops compared it to the very healthy revolver combat loads. >story time
When I first started there was a boomer at my first agency who pitched a b***h fir when we thought about switching to 9mm from .40 cal. He had already retired once (30 years with state ALE) and took the job due to divorces and boredom. remembered back in the day when. He remembered in the 1980s when another agent he worked with had shot a suspect multiple times with shitty 9mm loads and the suspect killed him with a .45 or something and survived to go to prison. After that ALE switched to a larger round, probably .40, .45 or 10mm. I know they rocked .357 sig for awhile in the 2000s before switching to Kimber 1911s, and now Glocks. Anyway, you get a handful of incidents like that in every state or region and before long nobody wants to use that shitty 9mm with its anemic ammo when they can carry proven "combat load" .38 +P+ or a magnum round.
The idea of 9mm being useless comes from the days before good ammo was developed for it and it was being compared to established defensive revolver loads. Modern defensive 9mm is excellent. Ballistics have come a long way. But back in the day you and I wouldve been at the LGS arguing about the best revolver load and debating which revolver meta was best.
Now can they still be viable for self defense? Yes. I carry one, a S&W Model 36; 38 special +p is still 38 special +p. But in a police role, they are completely outgunned. I'm just trying to prevent a crackhead from jumping my ass, they might be going into a crack den full of multiple crackheads. Police Warfare has evolved.
It's been pretty well proven everyone from gas station robbers to mall/school/gas station shooters are primarily using ar15s now. Often in groups of 2-3 people. Same with home invasions.
At minimum you should be carrying 14+1. A lot of smaller guns will support it and 15 rounds is enough to get you out of a sticky situation where you're possibly outgunned too.
For my jobs, I wanted something small, concealable, preferably fitting in a cargo pocket. A trusty used revolver with a well broken in trigger gets the job done, tho I do plan on upgrading eventually
I'm saying basic fricking criminals hitting up small gas stations and other common threats are now more likely to have an ar15, are you moronic homosexual? Of course you are.
Are you the moron? That situation was resolved with only one shot fired from a shotgun. That was all it took to send homeboy and his crew fleeing.
2 years ago
Anonymous
It's almost as if a shotgun has more intimidation factor, power, and lethality than a small snubnose 38 special revolver.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Intimidation? yes. power and lethality? sort of, 00 buck has similar terminal ballistics to FMJ 38. special but just with multiple projectiles at once.
Regardless I think it's pretty clear that merely getting shot was enough to make the would-be robber give up, and lethality or the size of the gun didn't play a factor in this case.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>shooting 12 slightly stronger 38 projectiles with 1 trigger pull is superior to a cuck wheel gun
I’m shocked
2 years ago
Anonymous
To be fair, if I miss with a pump action, it's going to take way longer to get back on target than me letting loose with the next 4 rounds in the cylinder of my Model 36 with 120 grain +p pushing it to 9mm levels
That guy took one shotgun blast and he was done. As I recall, I got 5 rounds of .38 hollow points on tap that I can fire far faster than a shotty
2 years ago
Anonymous
That guys moronic bc he thinks every criminal uses ARs all the time but I gotta correct you anyway. >.38 beats shotgun due to speed
Per projectile you still lose to a shotgun. 00 buckshot is 8-9 projectiles per trigger pull. Hence the nickname "poor mans submachine gun". And why in the golden age of the revolver the shotgun was an artillery piece. Not that either are any less effective today.
Hi, I'm the guy you replied to. First it's not my last pistol, not even close. I do plan on upgrading, to something like a Ruger MAX-9. But I chose it because honestly, it called to me. It sat in the used case for over a year at a budget price, and I just really liked it; it's nice to shoot,ammo is common, and it's a good trainer for a 1st time pistol owner like me with its low maintenance requirements.
The FBI ballistic tests in the 80’s pretty much changed how everyone looked at weapons, and before police started getting a shitton of DoD hand me downs most departments either didn’t have the money for those fancy new pistols (remember the time frame here) or didn’t see them as necessary for what they would realistically deal with. It wasn’t until they started getting gear to larp as wannabe soldiers with for almost free that they changed their tune, double so with more and more departments getting overturned by state/federal police.
tldr times have changed and so have the weapons
>DoD hand me downs
Exactly. At the time cost was a major factor for not switching. It wasn't really until uncle Sam started giving guns and grants out that police decided to upgrade, that, and the Wonder 9 boom forcing their hand
Its not even just small arms, they’d get entire MRAPs and shit. Imagine if small town sheriffs in the 60’s had access to M113’s and Shermans and shit because Kennedy let them have it.
I imagine that one hollywood heist and the birth of SWAT had a lot to do with it too. Every cop in the US thought they had to deal with HEAT tier bank heist in the 90s.
One of the reasons I think is that the people in charge are always 10-15 years behind the trend and stuck in their ways. I'll tell you about my department's firearm history
>State agency >Sometime in the 1920s, a trooper is killed by bootleggers he pulled over when he was searching their car. One of them grabbed his revolver from behind and shot him with it >Department responds by requiring everyone use a cross draw holster for the next 70 years unstead of reminding everyone not to turn their back on people you think are comitting a felony >The times finally prompt leadership to switch to semi. They choose the P226 for the sole fact that DA/SA is "like a revolver" >Fall for the .40 meme a few years later and switch to that
>Sometime in the late 90s/early 00s some moron legs himself in the locker room with his P226 with no witnesses around >He claims "it just went off" even though everyone I've talked to who knew him said he was a moron and was most likely fricking around >Despite the fact that no department armorer, several independent gunsmiths, and Sig themselves can't find anything wrong with the gun, Tpr. moron is taken at his word >The captain who gets final say over ordnance decides we should switch to the P226 DAK to prevent this because "it reminds me of my old revolver" >Everyone hates it amd marksmanship scores tank >Finally in the mid 2010s, the department decides to go back to 9mm and switch to glock while they're at it. Now everyone is issued a 17 and 26 >We still aren't allowed to put optics on our rifles- even if we by them ourselves >We are only allowed to cary our issued weapons off duty
I was issued a revolver by my department until the year 2016 as a backup. Amd my choices for off duty carry were that or a full size P226
Glock 26. Because I have the choice of that or a Glock 17. As for why the department chose it, I have no idea. Other than Glock knows how to woo PDs apparently.
It may have also had something to do with interchangeability. With the P226, they bought P229s for detectives amd people who generally didn't need a full size gun. Now everybody gets the 17 and 26. Same mags, same holsters (generally), and same manual of arms. I heard they also looked at S&W (presumably the M&P 9 and 9c) and something else from SIG. Not sure what though since the p320 series had either wasn't out yet or had juuuust came out
That's an interesting perspective to hear from a active duty officer. I fully believe though that it's glock's marketing; every department in my area uses them. I just find it sad really, there are more guns than glock out there
i worked in a police department for a lil bit and i saw one of them walk in with a UMP with an EOTech XP2 on it
did they change the sight rules recently or does it vary from state to state or department to department?
They're in the process of approving issued red dots. I sort of get it. They don't want people making a bunch of stupid changes to their issued guns that the department is responsible for. I think back to that dweeb who shot the unarmed guy in the hotel hallway who had the "you're fricked" dustcover on his AR. As much as I'd like to be able to better customize my own gear, there's plenty of people I work with who just wouldn't be able to helpselves from doing homosexual shit like that
i cant imagine the dumb, unreliable shit cops would put on their guns too
i could see cops throwing on amazon optics that cant hold zero because it looks cool but then cant hit shit when its time to use it
i cant imagine the dumb, unreliable shit cops would put on their guns too
i could see cops throwing on amazon optics that cant hold zero because it looks cool but then cant hit shit when its time to use it
It police forces today had any semblance of competency, this would be a great litmus test. Everybody gets free reign to setup their guns however they want, but have to be approved first. Any edgy punisher skulls, pirate references, FRICK YOU YOU FRICKING b***h I'LL KILL YOUR FAMILY on the dust cover, etc, would be an instant removal from the force.
>Sometime in the late 90s/early 00s some moron legs himself in the locker room with his P226 with no witnesses around >He claims "it just went off" even though everyone I've talked to who knew him said he was a moron and was most likely fricking around >Despite the fact that no department armorer, several independent gunsmiths, and Sig themselves can't find anything wrong with the gun, Tpr. moron is taken at his word >The captain who gets final say over ordnance decides we should switch to the P226 DAK to prevent this because "it reminds me of my old revolver" >Everyone hates it amd marksmanship scores tank >Finally in the mid 2010s, the department decides to go back to 9mm and switch to glock while they're at it. Now everyone is issued a 17 and 26 >We still aren't allowed to put optics on our rifles- even if we by them ourselves >We are only allowed to cary our issued weapons off duty
I was issued a revolver by my department until the year 2016 as a backup. Amd my choices for off duty carry were that or a full size P226
So I guess the point I'm trying to make is that these decisions are usually made a fudds in uniform who are very far removed from actually doing police work
After watching a bunch of semiautos jam from limpwristing in officer involved shooting videos I unironically believe that the cops should would still be better off with a good revolver.
Because they worked and later in the 60s-80s the discussion about penetration power specifically for engine blocks kept many 357s in service. The CHP actually used revolvers until the 90s due to the want to have a sidearm that could "disable" engines/pop through windshields.
>he discussion about penetration power specifically for engine blocks kept many 357s in service.
Doors, not engine blocks, a .357 will do frick all to an engine.
Maybe in US automatic pistols were seen as "military" weapons so unecessary for a civilian police? In brazil in contrast, the Police is a military organization so automatic pistols like Walther PPs and C96s and Lugers were fielded. Revolvers were more combina in the 70s to 90s for budgetary and maybe US influence.
I read somewhere that cops didn't like it walk around all day with a round in the chamber and revolvers were considered safer and more reliable and you could ready it with one hand.
Also it was a time where we still had a high trust society so shooting someone was a last resort.
>last resort
Lol, no, people got shot by cops plenty. They also would just beat the frick out of people.
>round in chamber
Revolvers, specifically the SAA, had a severe weakness that they WEREN'T safe for all 6 rounds to be loaded. The fact though is that non-FMJ bullets loaded like ass into semis. No one had a really good JHP style load. We live in an era where JHP ammos is basically "solved" and can reliably feed whether it is .45, .40, 9mm, 10mm, or .380. That is not what it was like 50 years ago.
FPBP but [...] makes excellent points. Although high trust and homogenous, both France and Italy have historically had paramilitary police force toting SMGs etc even back in the 50s, and cops still carried revolvers in 80s NYC.
Most people forget that post ww2, France and Italy actually had severe terrorism issues. Ireland too during the Troubles. France in particular had a huge amount of their colonies up in arms (Algeria notably, and French Indochina), and some of that came back to France. You had the Jackal (whom the famed book "Day of the Jackal" was based on) trying to shoot down airliners. You had fascist holdouts blowing up a whole train station. You had more fascist and commie groups in Italy and France and so on for YEARS after ww2, well armed in no small part because there were tons of ww2 weapons still floating around. Grenades, pistols, SMGs, whatever. Laws were loose, guns were plenty, and many people were pissed. France had its 9/11 moment decades ago, which is partly why after our 9/11 we basically started to catch up to the world that the French and such already existed in.
The fact is that American cops being lightly armed is a borderline blip that has more to do with the fact that we had mafias that were relatively constrained in what they did, whereas France/Italy/Greece etc had actual honest to god terror groups operating in their borders. Mexican cartels are one thing, but mexican cartels aren't looking to blow up an airliner of civilians for a political point.
If we had a monthly attack from Al Qaeda, which is what we feared when we were looking at the IRA or Europe's experience, we too would be seeing cops running around with MP9s.
>Revolvers, specifically the SAA, had a severe weakness that they WEREN'T safe for all 6 rounds to be loaded.
This is bullshit, post single action era revolvers had a hammer locking system, the gun would break before it went off without a trigger oull.
FRICK I forgot about Aesthetic Euroterror. >You had fascist holdouts blowing up a whole train station.
Forgot the specifics but that was Italy in the 70s, perp was a child actor and because of it a bunch of shady secret societies got exposed and disbanded, right?
Nope, the one I was talking about was France. Nationalist OAS perps. OAS killed about 2000 people between 61-63, a killcount the Americans cant comprehend outside 1 off terror attacks. But imagine if you will the US having 100 people a month killed in terror attacks, its unthinkable. Thats 2 Pulse Nightclub massacres a month. 2 vegas mandalay bay shootings a month
Even low pressure loads in revolvers that are "+p", now have good JHP loads. The one I use for my .38 is Federal Punch 120 grain +p. Tech for hollow points has come A LONG ASS WAY
Because that was adequate and reliable until the wonder 9 years in the 80s. Semi-autos before then didnt offer that big of an advantage over a revolver. Revolvers were also the accepted meta since the 1800s and most trainers and doctrine was that 6 well placed shots of .38, .357, .41, or .44 combat loads (sometimes depending on officer preferance) was better than .45 or 9mm ball ammo from a weapon that was finicky. Revolver for most calls, shotgun for hot ones. In a lot of places the revolver still would be adequate for most patrol uses, but its always better to outfit for a bad day than a good day. An unintended consequence of switching to a box 9mm is that police marksmenship has tanked. They used to have police pistol competitions and stuff.
reliability difference once was really a thing, and semiauto capacity was not much higher until wonder nines
for a one in a lifetime firefight semiauto was better, cuz it maximize the chance of average joe.
for a pro who is expected to win the firefight regardless and with few rounds, is a russian roulette situation, were risk of jamming and shit is cumulative.
the scenarios was more police revolver vs saturday night special wielded by uncapable shooters
Same reason why many cops still use .40. Boomers sticking to what they know plus local politics. One local town near me is all nuSigged out and another town still has M&P 15s and 40 Cal handguns.
Pretty well sums it up. More the master of none than the jack of all trades. It will certainly do the job, but it comes at a cost of less rounds and slightly more recoil than 9mm
You have a tv and movies understanding of police work. A humble six shooter in .38 is plenty of gun for most situations, if you actually practice how to shoot. Policing isn't the battlefield. Sure, there are better weapons in the world. You don't need them on a day by day basis.
I should also add family that went CHP inn70s/80s was forced to carry their duty revolvers loaded at the academy to help train and acclimate. Instructors there told my family they preferred revolvers as AD/NDs were a lot rarer and any incident would get you a boot from the academy
Because america was majority-white and a high-trust, high social capital society.
Notice how European police now have machine pistols. That's America's future.
But the ownership of automatics like 1911s and Savage pistols didn't put cops in disadvantage?
Barely anyone had those for the same reason cops didn't- they were expensive and seen as unreliable. And the advantage offered by a 1911 over a S&W Model 10 isn't that much
No, because the most popular gun was... a revolver
Non meme answer is that semi autos tended to be lower in reliability, and usually getting spare mags was a hassle. Usually a gun came with 1, maybe 2, and they were generally hand fitted to the gun. This is much truer in the early 1900s-40s, after which you FINALLY start to see manufacturing reach a point that even lower cost guns had guaranteed interchangeable mags that wouldnt have hiccups.
Now add on the department concern of police losing mags. The idea that infantry would lose mags (which were expensive) was pretty common up into WW2. For a revolver, speed cylinders were far cheaper and the gun itself was pretty much impossible to separate from its internal magazine. Lose your 1911 mag? Useless. But no one accidentally drops or loses the entire cylinder out of a Model 10.
Anon they just matched what was common threats at the time. Bootlegging Irish and Italians have sawed offs and chicago typewriters? Time to break out the Colt Monitors and Remington Model 8s. Railroad workers protesting and rioting at Blaire Mountain? Time to call the national guard to deploy machine guns and literal mustard gas. Then when prohibition ended they kept those in reserve for
>insert draft riot
>insert miner union riot
>insert race riot
Police doctrine favored revolvers for reasons they percieved as practical. The Miami Dade shootout would end the same if they had modern glock 45s instead, because the FBIs plan was fricked from the beginning and they chose to try to just walk up and ambush an ex army ranger with 3 tours in Vietnam and his buddy
Also worth noting that jn the Miami shootout, they had access to MP5s and some guys in the operation were even carrying them, but the guys who actually engaged that day decided for whatever reason- "nah, snub noses and shotguns will do just fine"
It may sound dumb today, but the tactic of
>just get as close as possible in plainclothes and then everyone pulls out their guns and badges
Was viewed as a valid police tactic. High reward, cuz if it works the suspect was surrounded. The problem is that if this failed, you were made and they'd light you up. Which is what happened when sneaking up on a guy who operated harder than the entire fbi team combined, and has probably been ambushed so many times he had Spidey Sense that tingled whenever a gun was near him.
Similar things happened with Bonnie and Clyde and other bank robbers where police would try to ambush them coming out, only for it to emwd in an orchestra of gunfire. Until they just decided to set up a killzone for B&C that is and the era of bank robbers ended. But even in prohibition that tactic was going strong
That... explains a lot as to why bank robberies have gone way down. Sadly cops had to skin their knees a ton to figure it our
Bank robbing went down because the payout went down. The era of
>point gun at manager to open bank vault
Is over, because your typical bank holds less than like $10k. Even $5k. And between that and things like time delay vault door, silent alarms, and the sheer heat generated from robbing a bank (every cop gets a boner from it), it just isnt worth going to a federal pen for a take that winds up being maybe $10,000. And thats if a surprise dye pack doesnt ruin it and you dont get caught.
You can embezzle 10k via ponzi scheme easier than you can get away with a bank heist. A bank heist is just quicker.
hacking is how all the big heists happen now and its usually people targeting foreign countries that dont extradite or going after crypto since its unregulated and harder to get law enforcement to give a shit about it
its a lot harder to track someone down when theres political hurdles to go through because the two countries it happens in arent friendly with each other and when the hack happens, its usually all over and embezzled across 100 different accounts within an hour
if law enforcement gets lucky, they can catch a few of these accounts and only stop like 20% of the hackers payout at most
hehe kat kitty
they were at a disadvantage, especially against professional bank robbers in the 30s like dillenger
they were rolling around with BARs and thompsons
it just wasnt a serious issue, outside of a few groups like dillenger and bonnie & clyde, they never needed bigger guns than a revolver outside of maybe a 12 gauge when they knew it was a schizo with a gun or to put a dying animal out of its misery
there was a shootout in the 70s where bank robbers outgunned cops and made a helicopter land during the chase
the Hollywood shootout was what really changed things because they were wearing armor, police pistols werent doing shit against them
a civilian gave a cop an AR-15 during the shootout and thats why they replaced shotguns with rifles in police cruisers
They didnt replace shotguns with rifles. My old dept we had both. Notth Hollywood was essentially worst case scenario. Heavily armored full auto wielding bank robbers? Not a common thing but it scared the shit out of agencies around the country since every town and county has a bank. For most police applications a shotgun works great
They have unlimited backup and full legal immunity, they were never at a "disadvantage".
>Notice how European police now have machine pistols. That's America's future.
You are aware that the vast majority of cops in this country have a fricking AR in the cruiser, right?
Yes that’s the point he was making dumbass
>Because america was majority-white and a high-trust, high social capital society.
That's a lot less important a reason than you think. The cities have been multi-ethnic and low-trust since very early on. A bigger reason is that the USA, like all other countries with a legal tradition based in Germanic Common Law, has civilian cops instead of paramilitary gendarmes. US Police are civilians, and would ordinarily be expected to only be as armed as any other civilian, which generally means a pistol for self-protection. Cops aren't soldiers, and they aren't meant to be.
>Cops aren't soldiers, and they aren't meant to be.
boy are they trying hard to be though
>US Police are civilians, and would ordinarily be expected to only be as armed as any other civilian
>every male aged 17 to 65 is a member of the civilian militia, no man is a civilian
Kinda reaches a deadlock here when the 2A is brought into it. However, modern police departments are not to be found anywhere in the US Constitution as they're a modern invention. Before cities began to commission their own "professional" police departments, the way it worked for the US was how it had been under English law, which is that men were chosen to serve in their local police force by a draft for a set period of time, akin to military service except you aren't being deployed. There was still a permanent sheriff's department and deputies who knew the law best, but for general peacekeeping all you needed was the local posse or draftees who can stop the worst offenses from happening, such as violent crime and theft.
I still think we should return to this way of things, because rather than making the police a lofty upper class meant solely to keep the "peons" in line, they become like the Finnish where it's expected that every man will be one at some point and so it's not something special to everyone else, just a civil service.
We also have nothing to lose by returning to this tradition, as modern cops are cowards who only use their guns when they're shooting unarmed people or patriots who've stopped a crime themselves, when it comes to things like Uvalde they piss their pants and cry for almost 2 hours before finally doing something after the threat has already been neutralized. At the least a drafted posse system would mean most men there would have their own kids inside the building and would be prompted to go in and save them rather than protect their jobs, as the police service is just a civil service and not their permanent employment so they won't give much of a shit if some fat commissioner decides to fire them for doing their jobs.
> US Police are civilians
Most cops see themselves as a higher caste of society than most civilians. They're given wide spanning privileges and protections. If cops are civilians, then they certainly aren't treated like it.
FPBP but
makes excellent points. Although high trust and homogenous, both France and Italy have historically had paramilitary police force toting SMGs etc even back in the 50s, and cops still carried revolvers in 80s NYC.
>Notice how European police now have machine pistols. That's America's future.
That has always been a thing pleb.
Most European countries have a distinction between metropolitan/local beat cops and gendarmeries. Beat cops are minimally armed, having only a handgun (if they are even armed at all) and do most of the street level policing while gerndarmes have those rifles & smgs and get called when the regular police can't handle like counter-terrorist BS or high level hostage taking.
Meanwhile burgers give mere patrolmen fricking ARs.
>majority white
Tell that to the Italians and Irish your WASP snow Black person ancestors deemed "NOT HUWITE" for ages.
>high-trust
That's the issue.
>ages
>only started with the immigrations via boats in NY
>they had fully assimilated by 1930s at least
It was only different with the Irish who were mostly notorious criminals but assimilated around teh same time as itallians did after the era of dillinger, minus the mob.
>fully assimilated by the 30s
Lol
Lmao
No. Irish and Italians were still discriminated against. Catholics in general were presumed to have bizzaro land dual loyalty, hence we never had a catholic president until the 60s despite catholicism being the 2nd largest single denomination for a long time. Of 46 presidents, TWO have been Catholic, (JFK, Biden) and that is heavily linked in Irish/Italian discrimination
So moronic it hurts.
>Notice how European police now have machine pistols
I could understand armored cars & mraps but what the frick do Cops need an M113 for?
We've gone that way in the US, just now with a AR in every squad car
America had higher murder rates in the before WWII and quite high murder rates after the 60s--90s crime wave.
Military gear for police didn't become a norm until the 2000s, when crime was plunging. Crime began to surge before immigration reform, and plunged at the height of mass migration.
America was more violent in the 80s and 1910s than today. "White" wasn't an identity in 1910. You had massive immigration restrictions passed because Italians, Poles, and the Irish were seen as violent, degenerate outsiders. Anti-Catholic sentiment was huge too.
We're in the second most peaceful era in US history.
Revolvers were commonly used into the 1990s when violent crime was at its post-WWII peak. Even this era didn't have a homicide rate as high as the 19th century.
Ehhhh crime stats and their reporting have shifted quite a lot, accounting for a "drop" in crime. Facts on the ground are different. I left LE in 2021 and around 2019-2020 we had something called the NIBRS update to our reporting software. Basically only counted the most serious crime on the report. So if you had a B&E, damage to property, ADW w/ serious injury, and a larceny, all in the same report, only the most serious crime would be reported to the FBI. Likewise, if you have one report and multiple counts of a similiar crime, say multiple assaults or multiple larcenies, it only lets you add one of each "class" to the report, however you still charge all of them. Basically the data is manipulated.
>Implying data collection wasn't significantly more shit in 1910 or 1950.
Same shit has always gone on, but you can't hide dead bodies and we know homicides were way higher in the past.
Muggings didn't get reported in 1980s NYC or 1920s Chicago because they were incredibly commonplace. Mafia involvement in the government from 1920-1940 makes gang influence today look like child's play.
I'm just saying the talking heads calling this a lull in crime are lying, I'm not disputing most of your point.
You're moronic. You live in the most safe and least criminal period in American history. Even with the COVID/Floyd riots and thefts we are still markedly lower than the last crime boom of the 80s. You have been living in peace and panic if even a slight change happens, imagining it to be a call to war. When really all it is, is anger and lashing out and that's why we had one summer of shit and then nothing.
fudds larping as cowboys. sad how modern cops are even worse.
they’re cool, man
Because police work predates slide action pistols.
Reliability compared to the semi autos of the time, familiarity with the equipment that they already owned personally, and most of all, the round count difference was like 1 or 2 rounds depending on what single stack they were facing up against. It was really with things like the CZ75, glock, ruger p series; all the wonder 9's that they were finally outgunned and needed to switch
>wonder 9s
This, there wasn't enough of a reason to switch to semiautos until the 70s and 80s.
>reliability
>reliability
>reliability
Where did this meme come from? the automatic pistol was in common use for 95 years before police entertained the idea, largely driven by "unreliable" as an excuse. but this is obviously ridiculous so where did this idea come from?
Aside from the ammo concerns mentioned earlier, the average American prior to the 80s-90s likely only had experience with shitty saturday night special tier semis unless they were in the military.
Don't forget that 1911s are fricking massive compared to model 10s.
It's been public perception that's detached from reality as shown in this thread.
Well take the 1911. Even now, a lot of them don't like hollow points. See how that could build mistrust in police forces. They bought what they knew until that was no longer effective
As said before, semi auto JHPs sucked colossal amounts of ass before about idk 1980. Revolvers didnt have that problem. It seats, it yeets
Semi-autos pre-1980 didnt cycle combat or defensive ammo very well and there wasnt much of it developed for semi-autos. Thats part of where the idea of 9mm being useless comes from, is its shitty hollowpoint or ball days when cops compared it to the very healthy revolver combat loads.
>story time
When I first started there was a boomer at my first agency who pitched a b***h fir when we thought about switching to 9mm from .40 cal. He had already retired once (30 years with state ALE) and took the job due to divorces and boredom. remembered back in the day when. He remembered in the 1980s when another agent he worked with had shot a suspect multiple times with shitty 9mm loads and the suspect killed him with a .45 or something and survived to go to prison. After that ALE switched to a larger round, probably .40, .45 or 10mm. I know they rocked .357 sig for awhile in the 2000s before switching to Kimber 1911s, and now Glocks. Anyway, you get a handful of incidents like that in every state or region and before long nobody wants to use that shitty 9mm with its anemic ammo when they can carry proven "combat load" .38 +P+ or a magnum round.
>the idea of 9mm being useless comes from
seething .45 gays, nothing else.
The idea of 9mm being useless comes from the days before good ammo was developed for it and it was being compared to established defensive revolver loads. Modern defensive 9mm is excellent. Ballistics have come a long way. But back in the day you and I wouldve been at the LGS arguing about the best revolver load and debating which revolver meta was best.
you list the cz75 before the beretta what the frick are you talking about jesus.
I was just throwing names out don't kill me lol
They were reliable and they were available.
When autopistols became reliable and available they made the change to those.
Now can they still be viable for self defense? Yes. I carry one, a S&W Model 36; 38 special +p is still 38 special +p. But in a police role, they are completely outgunned. I'm just trying to prevent a crackhead from jumping my ass, they might be going into a crack den full of multiple crackheads. Police Warfare has evolved.
It's been pretty well proven everyone from gas station robbers to mall/school/gas station shooters are primarily using ar15s now. Often in groups of 2-3 people. Same with home invasions.
You may as well carry a compact 12+1.
At minimum you should be carrying 14+1. A lot of smaller guns will support it and 15 rounds is enough to get you out of a sticky situation where you're possibly outgunned too.
For my jobs, I wanted something small, concealable, preferably fitting in a cargo pocket. A trusty used revolver with a well broken in trigger gets the job done, tho I do plan on upgrading eventually
Lmao what the frick are you talking about? Go outside dipshit
I'm saying basic fricking criminals hitting up small gas stations and other common threats are now more likely to have an ar15, are you moronic homosexual? Of course you are.
Are you the moron? That situation was resolved with only one shot fired from a shotgun. That was all it took to send homeboy and his crew fleeing.
It's almost as if a shotgun has more intimidation factor, power, and lethality than a small snubnose 38 special revolver.
Intimidation? yes. power and lethality? sort of, 00 buck has similar terminal ballistics to FMJ 38. special but just with multiple projectiles at once.
Regardless I think it's pretty clear that merely getting shot was enough to make the would-be robber give up, and lethality or the size of the gun didn't play a factor in this case.
>shooting 12 slightly stronger 38 projectiles with 1 trigger pull is superior to a cuck wheel gun
I’m shocked
To be fair, if I miss with a pump action, it's going to take way longer to get back on target than me letting loose with the next 4 rounds in the cylinder of my Model 36 with 120 grain +p pushing it to 9mm levels
That guy took one shotgun blast and he was done. As I recall, I got 5 rounds of .38 hollow points on tap that I can fire far faster than a shotty
That guys moronic bc he thinks every criminal uses ARs all the time but I gotta correct you anyway.
>.38 beats shotgun due to speed
Per projectile you still lose to a shotgun. 00 buckshot is 8-9 projectiles per trigger pull. Hence the nickname "poor mans submachine gun". And why in the golden age of the revolver the shotgun was an artillery piece. Not that either are any less effective today.
For home defense I have my AR and my .357 for backup.
My man, just with me, it's my SKS and Model 36 in .38 for backup ( I'm broke ok lol)
Hi, I'm the guy you replied to. First it's not my last pistol, not even close. I do plan on upgrading, to something like a Ruger MAX-9. But I chose it because honestly, it called to me. It sat in the used case for over a year at a budget price, and I just really liked it; it's nice to shoot,ammo is common, and it's a good trainer for a 1st time pistol owner like me with its low maintenance requirements.
The FBI ballistic tests in the 80’s pretty much changed how everyone looked at weapons, and before police started getting a shitton of DoD hand me downs most departments either didn’t have the money for those fancy new pistols (remember the time frame here) or didn’t see them as necessary for what they would realistically deal with. It wasn’t until they started getting gear to larp as wannabe soldiers with for almost free that they changed their tune, double so with more and more departments getting overturned by state/federal police.
tldr times have changed and so have the weapons
>DoD hand me downs
Exactly. At the time cost was a major factor for not switching. It wasn't really until uncle Sam started giving guns and grants out that police decided to upgrade, that, and the Wonder 9 boom forcing their hand
Its not even just small arms, they’d get entire MRAPs and shit. Imagine if small town sheriffs in the 60’s had access to M113’s and Shermans and shit because Kennedy let them have it.
I imagine that one hollywood heist and the birth of SWAT had a lot to do with it too. Every cop in the US thought they had to deal with HEAT tier bank heist in the 90s.
beat it, toots.
One of the reasons I think is that the people in charge are always 10-15 years behind the trend and stuck in their ways. I'll tell you about my department's firearm history
>State agency
>Sometime in the 1920s, a trooper is killed by bootleggers he pulled over when he was searching their car. One of them grabbed his revolver from behind and shot him with it
>Department responds by requiring everyone use a cross draw holster for the next 70 years unstead of reminding everyone not to turn their back on people you think are comitting a felony
>The times finally prompt leadership to switch to semi. They choose the P226 for the sole fact that DA/SA is "like a revolver"
>Fall for the .40 meme a few years later and switch to that
>Sometime in the late 90s/early 00s some moron legs himself in the locker room with his P226 with no witnesses around
>He claims "it just went off" even though everyone I've talked to who knew him said he was a moron and was most likely fricking around
>Despite the fact that no department armorer, several independent gunsmiths, and Sig themselves can't find anything wrong with the gun, Tpr. moron is taken at his word
>The captain who gets final say over ordnance decides we should switch to the P226 DAK to prevent this because "it reminds me of my old revolver"
>Everyone hates it amd marksmanship scores tank
>Finally in the mid 2010s, the department decides to go back to 9mm and switch to glock while they're at it. Now everyone is issued a 17 and 26
>We still aren't allowed to put optics on our rifles- even if we by them ourselves
>We are only allowed to cary our issued weapons off duty
I was issued a revolver by my department until the year 2016 as a backup. Amd my choices for off duty carry were that or a full size P226
What do you carry now off duty if you don't mind me asking? And why glock? The FN 509 personally is a handgun I find underappeciated.
>why glock
Not him but i imagine it has to do with the fact that LEO agencies are buying glocks for like $350 a piece
Fair point, ngl. Still wish my poor FN 509 was represented in more than California of all places
Glock 26. Because I have the choice of that or a Glock 17. As for why the department chose it, I have no idea. Other than Glock knows how to woo PDs apparently.
It may have also had something to do with interchangeability. With the P226, they bought P229s for detectives amd people who generally didn't need a full size gun. Now everybody gets the 17 and 26. Same mags, same holsters (generally), and same manual of arms. I heard they also looked at S&W (presumably the M&P 9 and 9c) and something else from SIG. Not sure what though since the p320 series had either wasn't out yet or had juuuust came out
That's an interesting perspective to hear from a active duty officer. I fully believe though that it's glock's marketing; every department in my area uses them. I just find it sad really, there are more guns than glock out there
i worked in a police department for a lil bit and i saw one of them walk in with a UMP with an EOTech XP2 on it
did they change the sight rules recently or does it vary from state to state or department to department?
They're in the process of approving issued red dots. I sort of get it. They don't want people making a bunch of stupid changes to their issued guns that the department is responsible for. I think back to that dweeb who shot the unarmed guy in the hotel hallway who had the "you're fricked" dustcover on his AR. As much as I'd like to be able to better customize my own gear, there's plenty of people I work with who just wouldn't be able to helpselves from doing homosexual shit like that
i cant imagine the dumb, unreliable shit cops would put on their guns too
i could see cops throwing on amazon optics that cant hold zero because it looks cool but then cant hit shit when its time to use it
It police forces today had any semblance of competency, this would be a great litmus test. Everybody gets free reign to setup their guns however they want, but have to be approved first. Any edgy punisher skulls, pirate references, FRICK YOU YOU FRICKING b***h I'LL KILL YOUR FAMILY on the dust cover, etc, would be an instant removal from the force.
Nah, it gets you a one way ticket to riding a desk and giving safety lessons to little kids. They're wannabe badasses, hell is low speed, high drag.
>free reign
Free REIN. Dumbass.
Based. Remember how that cop in ulvalde who checked his phone while clearing the building had a punisher skull as his wallpaper?
>clearing the building
You mean while they were stacked up in the front lobby for almost 2 hours doing nothing as a civilian did their job for them?
>checked his phone
IIRC,He was calling his wife who was a teacher there, also that's the same cop that killed SR
So I guess the point I'm trying to make is that these decisions are usually made a fudds in uniform who are very far removed from actually doing police work
because cops are stupid and lazy. the idea of having to hand fit a magazine to a cop is beyond them.
why do you think cops are always recommend the most bland braindead guns? because cops are unimaginative and not mechanically inclined.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/fbi-marks-30-years-since-bloody-south-florida-shootout/2272828/
fbi shootout with robbers. most of the fbi are armed with 38s. one robber has a mini 14
bloodiest shootout ever
A really solid video on the shootout, too, but I'm assuming plenty of people here have already watched it.
After watching a bunch of semiautos jam from limpwristing in officer involved shooting videos I unironically believe that the cops should would still be better off with a good revolver.
Because they worked and later in the 60s-80s the discussion about penetration power specifically for engine blocks kept many 357s in service. The CHP actually used revolvers until the 90s due to the want to have a sidearm that could "disable" engines/pop through windshields.
What's hilarious is most hits with anything on an engine "block" won't disable the engine. Hit the driver for best results.
It's probably the same meme as shooting the pelvis in case of body armor. No killing instinct to go for the driver/head.
No, you aim for the pelvic area because it is larger, almost always unarmored, and pelvis/hip injuries massively hamper mobility.
357 can knock an engine if aimed properly and with some luck. CHP obviously has a niche mission
>he discussion about penetration power specifically for engine blocks kept many 357s in service.
Doors, not engine blocks, a .357 will do frick all to an engine.
Maybe in US automatic pistols were seen as "military" weapons so unecessary for a civilian police? In brazil in contrast, the Police is a military organization so automatic pistols like Walther PPs and C96s and Lugers were fielded. Revolvers were more combina in the 70s to 90s for budgetary and maybe US influence.
fudds, simple as
I read somewhere that cops didn't like it walk around all day with a round in the chamber and revolvers were considered safer and more reliable and you could ready it with one hand.
Also it was a time where we still had a high trust society so shooting someone was a last resort.
>last resort
Lol, no, people got shot by cops plenty. They also would just beat the frick out of people.
>round in chamber
Revolvers, specifically the SAA, had a severe weakness that they WEREN'T safe for all 6 rounds to be loaded. The fact though is that non-FMJ bullets loaded like ass into semis. No one had a really good JHP style load. We live in an era where JHP ammos is basically "solved" and can reliably feed whether it is .45, .40, 9mm, 10mm, or .380. That is not what it was like 50 years ago.
Most people forget that post ww2, France and Italy actually had severe terrorism issues. Ireland too during the Troubles. France in particular had a huge amount of their colonies up in arms (Algeria notably, and French Indochina), and some of that came back to France. You had the Jackal (whom the famed book "Day of the Jackal" was based on) trying to shoot down airliners. You had fascist holdouts blowing up a whole train station. You had more fascist and commie groups in Italy and France and so on for YEARS after ww2, well armed in no small part because there were tons of ww2 weapons still floating around. Grenades, pistols, SMGs, whatever. Laws were loose, guns were plenty, and many people were pissed. France had its 9/11 moment decades ago, which is partly why after our 9/11 we basically started to catch up to the world that the French and such already existed in.
The fact is that American cops being lightly armed is a borderline blip that has more to do with the fact that we had mafias that were relatively constrained in what they did, whereas France/Italy/Greece etc had actual honest to god terror groups operating in their borders. Mexican cartels are one thing, but mexican cartels aren't looking to blow up an airliner of civilians for a political point.
If we had a monthly attack from Al Qaeda, which is what we feared when we were looking at the IRA or Europe's experience, we too would be seeing cops running around with MP9s.
>Revolvers, specifically the SAA, had a severe weakness that they WEREN'T safe for all 6 rounds to be loaded.
This is bullshit, post single action era revolvers had a hammer locking system, the gun would break before it went off without a trigger oull.
FRICK I forgot about Aesthetic Euroterror.
>You had fascist holdouts blowing up a whole train station.
Forgot the specifics but that was Italy in the 70s, perp was a child actor and because of it a bunch of shady secret societies got exposed and disbanded, right?
Nope, the one I was talking about was France. Nationalist OAS perps. OAS killed about 2000 people between 61-63, a killcount the Americans cant comprehend outside 1 off terror attacks. But imagine if you will the US having 100 people a month killed in terror attacks, its unthinkable. Thats 2 Pulse Nightclub massacres a month. 2 vegas mandalay bay shootings a month
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Vitry-Le-Fran%C3%A7ois_train_bombing
Even low pressure loads in revolvers that are "+p", now have good JHP loads. The one I use for my .38 is Federal Punch 120 grain +p. Tech for hollow points has come A LONG ASS WAY
Because that was adequate and reliable until the wonder 9 years in the 80s. Semi-autos before then didnt offer that big of an advantage over a revolver. Revolvers were also the accepted meta since the 1800s and most trainers and doctrine was that 6 well placed shots of .38, .357, .41, or .44 combat loads (sometimes depending on officer preferance) was better than .45 or 9mm ball ammo from a weapon that was finicky. Revolver for most calls, shotgun for hot ones. In a lot of places the revolver still would be adequate for most patrol uses, but its always better to outfit for a bad day than a good day. An unintended consequence of switching to a box 9mm is that police marksmenship has tanked. They used to have police pistol competitions and stuff.
It's called institutional momentum
>muh reliability
Blaming an ammunition problem on a mechanism.
Cost and expense
reliability difference once was really a thing, and semiauto capacity was not much higher until wonder nines
for a one in a lifetime firefight semiauto was better, cuz it maximize the chance of average joe.
for a pro who is expected to win the firefight regardless and with few rounds, is a russian roulette situation, were risk of jamming and shit is cumulative.
the scenarios was more police revolver vs saturday night special wielded by uncapable shooters
Same reason why many cops still use .40. Boomers sticking to what they know plus local politics. One local town near me is all nuSigged out and another town still has M&P 15s and 40 Cal handguns.
40 cal isn't terrible, it's just the round count. You can't complain about it being underpowered; recoil is a different story
Its not bad, its just a weird mix of .45 and 9mm in terms of power and capacity. My USP 40 holds 13 in a mag which isnt terrible either.
Pretty well sums it up. More the master of none than the jack of all trades. It will certainly do the job, but it comes at a cost of less rounds and slightly more recoil than 9mm
You have a tv and movies understanding of police work. A humble six shooter in .38 is plenty of gun for most situations, if you actually practice how to shoot. Policing isn't the battlefield. Sure, there are better weapons in the world. You don't need them on a day by day basis.
Interesting write up on the evolution and motivation of CHP issuing revolvers
https://revolverguy.com/missing-link-smith-wesson-model-68/
I should also add family that went CHP inn70s/80s was forced to carry their duty revolvers loaded at the academy to help train and acclimate. Instructors there told my family they preferred revolvers as AD/NDs were a lot rarer and any incident would get you a boot from the academy