It seems like the tacti-coolest caliber of all is having a resurgence after a couple of decades on life support. Several new offerings in 10mm of late... Springfield Armory has the Ronin (1911) and the XD-M. Kimber has several older models and the new Rapide (also a 1911). Ruger has a Super Redhawk in the caliber, which makes me scratch my head. They also have a GP-100 in best millimeter. I remain convinced that automatic pistol cartridges in revolvers are an inherently stupid idea and only the simple-minded would buy into it. Of course, I got S&W's 10mm 610 revolver when it was recently resurrected. Today, S&W announced several models of their M&P full and compact size pistols. They're optics ready and look quite awesome... These will be all but impossible for me to get in California, but I'd be first in line to get one. I love the M&P line; my home defense gun is a .45 model. I'm wondering what's driving the resurgence. My guess is that pretty much everyone's got their essential 9mm and many are hungry for the next step. Not so much for practicality, but purely for recreational bad-assery. Maybe it's a response to the "9mm is sufficient for most uses." That's started the .40 S&W on a downhill track to irrelevancy. Maybe the 10mm is far enough above 9mm ballistically, that it seems indisputable that it maintains some significant advantage for defense. Anyhoo, it's interesting to see Colonel Cooper's annointed caliber enjoying a second act.
Does the gun community not know what a centimeter is? The use of 10mm would seem to be a marketing thing trying to capitalize on the idea that 10 is better than one while completely ignoring how the metric system works. Marketing wise I guess 10mm sounds much more impressive than 1cm, but aren't they both the same? It also sounds to me like a way to sell more bullets and parts. It just seems to me like a 1cm bullet would force purchase of a number of guns, parts, and bullets for no reason at all. They could have stuck with 9mm but then people would be able to just use all the same bullets in the large number of 9mms already on the market. So they7 put an extra mm on there, and now people are going to rush out and buy them because 10 is bigger than 9. Does the extra mm actually result in any discernable advantage because it seems to me this is really just for people who think 10 is more awesome than 9.
Well, yes, 10mm is 1cm. But historically, bullet sizes are given in millimeters (9mm, 10mm, 7.62mm, 5.56mm, etc.). The 10mm makes a bigger hole than the 9mm. It's also significantly more powerful. So, yes, there's an advantage there. But some disadvantages, too: 10mm guns and ammo are more expensive, there are fewer 10mm options to choose from, the guns are bigger and heavier, they hold fewer cartridges, they have more recoil.
Honestly I am looking at this from a hobbiest viewpoint. In one of my hobbies, paintball, they switched from CO2 to HPA which actually eliminated a huge number of modifications made to the guns to cover for the change of state from liquid to gas that came from CO2. One of the huge hurdles to overcome from the gunmakers was the swap was much more expensive, but also eliminated a bunch of mods that had little effect. Also, there were other caliber paintballs on the market which were used way back in the beginning of paintball. Full auto paintball guns were actually old school. They were made by a prominent gun manufacturer, Tippmann, but could only shoot 60 caliber paintballs instead of 68. The industry turned away from the smaller paintballs which would have been more accurate and efficient even though a FA gun that was clip fed was around. It just seems that by adding a new caliber you are really just trying to make a whole new line of purchases for the collectors and fanatics. I know the physics behind a little bit more mass traveling at a high speed would increase the impact, but why not just go up to a 45 if you want more power behind the shot? I am just saying this seems to be to sell a whole bunch more guns that won't be compatible with the more common ammo. From the POV of a person who would want it for survival and convenience, I would rather have an instrument that could shoot the more commonly available ammo types and perhaps sacrifice a bit more power for an extra 2 in the clip. My calculations would be two if you fit over ten into a standard clip. When you start stacking bullets the extra mm adds up to cms of clip pretty quickly. I get they zig zag but that is why I said 2 and not one.
