Over the years I've had the pleasure and in some cases pain of shooting many large calibre hand guns , I've lost count of the many experimental heavy loads I've shot with 44 mag , 45 colt pistols , the 300 gn loads in .45 colt were a lot of fun but I've also shot handguns in calibres like 444 marlin , 45/70 , 454 casul , 480 ruger , 475 Linebaugh , 50 AE , 500 S&W , not to mention a series of single and double barrel Howdah pistols in calibres like .577 Snider , .577/450 Martini Henry , also a black powder load with a .65 conical bullet and 70 gn of black powder and the most ridiculous of the lot a DB Howdah in 600 nitro express , even with the light load the recoil was horrendous and it was all I could do to hold on to it , one shot of that one was more than enough for me , I managed to dislocate my trigger finger and screw up my right wrist and elbow so much that I could barely pick up a coffee cup for over a month ,
Yes large calibres do get the job done , but because of the excessive recoil they are much slower to get back on target and have a extreme tendency to go right through the target and carry on through walls there by being a danger to any one else in the area , they are also hard to train people with straight off
Yep remember the show , back in those days we got all the American westerns
I think the reason people talk about ranges of 7 to 15 yards is because most defence situations are closer than that and over that you start being on very shaky legal ground as to wether you are justified in drawing your gun and firing unless of course you are being threatened with a long arm , that is not to say that a pistol is not capable of hitting the mark at much longer distances , just that the powers that be will not believe you justified .
At one of our Christmas fun shoots I set up a IPSC round where you had to shoot out the headlights of a car at 80 metres , the car was cardboard and the headlights were standard clay targets , we had over 35 shooters that day and while only 5 of us hit the clay's only two of us did it with only 4 shots or less , on that day one of our shooters who happened to be a serving police officer bought along his Sergeant , the sergeant was a veteran of 23 years in the police service and reckoned he was shocked that any one could hit targets that size with aimed shots at that distance
If it were legal to carry a pistol concealed here in Australia for me it would be a 22 Beretta 71 , not because I think it the best round for self defence but because with our climate and light clothing it's the most practical , if it weren't then I'd love a 45 ACP or a 9mm and of course if I really thought I'd actually be going to a gunfight then it's no choice at all , I'd be carrying a rifle , but in the real world it's far better to have a .22 in the hand than a .45 back home in the safe or down the street in the glove box of the car , lets face it most people [ unless they happen to be Police officers and their needs are different ] who carry really don't think they will ever need to even draw their pistol in a threat situation , they only carry for the same reason they take out home or car insurance , [ they don't think they will ever need it but feel it's better to make sure ]
David