Small Calibers for Concealed Carry, Everyday Carry, and Backup Guns
Smaller calibers deserve some respect. When actually compared head-to-head with the real-life performance of calibers beginning with 9mm and up, the performance statistics generally demonstrate comparable, or even superior, rates of effectiveness for the small calibers.
It makes sense. Smaller caliber handguns are more universally manageable, there’s generally less recoil, and often less noise, making follow-up shot placement more accurate. The following provides a thumbnail overview of the most common small calibers and their niche.
.22 LR
The most popular caliber in the world by a considerable margin, you’re virtually guaranteed to find .22 LR ammo for sale anywhere ammunition is sold. As the smallest of the small calibers, .22 LR offers a variety of options. As concealed carry weapons (CCWs) or a backup gun (BUG), you can find pistols that literally fit inside a belt buckle or are the size of a stack of credit cards. As concealed as they come. For everyday carry (EDC), there are pistols chambered for .22 LR that carry over 30 cartridges in a flush magazine. That’s a lot of firepower, whatever the size of the bullet.
.25 ACP
Like.32 ACP and .380 ACP ammo, .25 ACP ammunition was established by John Browning for pocket pistols, specifically the “vest pocket” pistols like his FN M1905 and Baby Browning models. They are almost without exception still small pistols designed as CCWs or a BUG. Some adherents of the .25 ACP prefer it to the .22 LR both due to its more substantial size and their preference for center fire cartridges.
.32 ACP
Browning’s .32 ACP cartridge was so popular when released that it became the mainstay of most European military and law enforcement sidearms for decades. In the U.S. it was the first cartridge chambered for some of the most effective, efficient, trustworthy, and popular pistols in our history. Those include Browning’s Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless and the Remington 51 designed by John Pedersen (who Browning once referred toas “the greatest gun designer in the world”).
These guns are designed so well that they still make great EDC, CCWs, and BUGs after more than a century. In fact, in the previously referenced exhaustive examination of handgun stopping power, among the over 1,800 cases Ellifritz examined, the .32 ACP was the more likely to incapacitate an attacker in one shot to the head or torso than .22 LR, .25 ACP, .380 ACP, .38 Special, 9mm Luger, .357 Magnum and .357 Sig, .40 S&W, .44 Magnum, and .45 ACP.
.380 ACP
The .380 ACP is another terrific Browning cartridge that has been an effective and popular staple of American firearms for over a century. The .380 ACP cartridge is something of a gap-bridger between the smaller, mostly CCW and BUG cartridges and the consistently EDC cartridges, beginning with 9mm and larger.
In fact, the .380 ACP is technically a 9mm cartridge (9x17mm) and as such was often referred to as 9mm Browning, 9mm Short, 9mm Corto, and 9mm Kurz. With its intermediate size, pistols chambered for .380 ACP have long been demonstrated to excel as a CCW, BUG, or an EDC—small enough to conceal easily, yet big enough to be quite effective.
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