If one more person…
I went by a local gun shop yesterday to pick up more ammo for the new gun. The owner spent most of the time that I was there trying to convince me that buying a .357 sig was stupid and that I should let him “rebarrel it” to .40 S&W for me. Two things:
One
When I ignored him he told me to be sure to save my brass and learn to reload because, “the .357sig isn’t going to be around much longer”.
Uh huh. People have been saying that since BEFORE the round was introduced. Don’t get me wrong, I think reloaders are cool. One of my aunts reloads. I’m just not that into it. It’s easier for me to spend $30 for a box of 50 than it is for me to pull that handle 50 times. As has been noted several times in this blog, I am inherently and unrepentantly lazy.
“It’ll never last. In a few years they won’t even be making the ammo for it anymore” he said.
“No other necked down round has ever made it on the commercial market,” he explained.
Twenty (ish) years after it’s introduction it’s still one of the most popular law enforcement rounds on the market. However, I learned that this is only because “enforcement personnel use tax-payer money to buy stuff so they don’t care what it costs”. Right. ok. End game: Supply and Demand. If they can’t keep it on the shelves then the ammo makers are going to keep making it.
When I wanted to talk ballistics he admitted that it has good ballistics but that, “WE don’t really need those ballistics… those are good for law enforcement but not something that we’ll ever use. “
Really?
“A cop might need to shoot through safety glass, or heck, even a car door, you won’t ever need to do that.” he explained.
One hopes not. But, if “WE” do I’ll be just a touch more prepared than he is won’t I?
“It’ll shoot through walls” was another good reason not to buy a .357 sig.
“That just means that I don’t have to go into the same room with the bad guy doesn’t it?”, I asked.
Yes, apparently, it does but, “what about your neighbors?”
My neighbors have an acre of wooded hillside to hide behind. That particular acre belongs to me. IF they happen to be trespassing at the same time that I’m having to encourage a “Bad Guy”(tm) to leave my home and accidentally get shot, then yeah, sorry about that. If I lived in an apartment building that might be a good argument. Here on the tree farm, not so much. Seriously though, I’m not one to randomly shoot through walls. Everything from Daddy smacking me in the head for being stupid to military training has taught me to identify targets first. Can’t do that if you can’t see them.
Two
“Rebarreling” a Sig P229 to a .40 S&W means taking the old barrel out and putting a new one in. It takes about 38 seconds for me to field strip this gun to the point that the barrel falls out. I do that every time I clean it which is, essentially, every time I fire it. I’m not paying a gunsmith to do that for me. It’s like paying a plumber to change your toilet paper roll. That said, some aftermarket barrels do require a gunsmith to “fit” them but Sig Saur barrels are “drop in” and I wouldn’t buy anything else. Still, it was a very high end “boutique” gun shop in a neighboring town. I can see where the people that shop there would want to have a drop-in barrel replaced by a gunsmith if only for the ability to make small talk at the range.
Really, I appreciate folks that want to “correct” someone that doesn’t have a clue. I’m not a gun collector but I do know a few things. I did the research and decided what weapon I wanted to buy then went and found one that I could afford. I’m even cool with verbal jousting about which round is better and encourage it. But don’t trot out your opinion if you’re going to ignore the ballistic proof. I’ll bury you in sarcasm.
In the end, we played with his display guns and bought his last two boxes of .357 sig ammo while making it clear that I would have bought more if he carried it. I would have too… I’m out of practice ammo… again…. and Walmart has had .357 sig for months. They had stacks of Winchester .40 S&W though… shoulda bought that I guess.