Does recoil cause the muzzle to rise while the bullet is still in the barrel, or is the bullet long gone by then? Could a loose grip cause bullets to impact higher on the target? We used a high speed camera to help figure out what’s really going on in the eyeblink after you pull the trigger.

Details are in the video below, or scroll down to read the full transcript.

Hey everybody, I am Chris Baker from LuckyGunner.com and today we’re going to look at how recoil affects accuracy in handguns. Now, that’s a pretty broad topic. Practically speaking, there are lots of ways recoil affects accuracy. Most of them are related to the shooter’s technique. Recoil moves the sights off target and it can move the gun in our hand. It can cause recoil anticipation or pre-ignition push. We have to apply good shooting techniques to counteract those effects.

But today, I want to focus on an aspect of recoil that’s mostly out of our control. Does recoil have an objective, mechanical effect on the bullet’s point of impact? Or, to phrase it another way, does the muzzle begin to rise before the bullet leaves the barrel. And if so, does it rise enough to cause a noticeable change in where the bullet ends up?

I’ll go ahead and tell you up front that, regardless of the answer, there is not a whole lot of practical application here for the average shooter. This is something gun nerds debate on occasion. We’re going to have fun finding out the answer. But for shooting handguns at typical handgun distances, it doesn’t matter much. There are a couple of very narrow use-cases where it might come into play, and I’ll get to those at the end.

To aid us in our mostly useless quest, we’ve called upon some assistance from a Chronos 2.1-HD high speed camera. We did one batch of shots at 4370 frames per second, which is 182 times slower than real time. Then we did a second batch of shots with a lower resolution at just over 10,000 frames per second, or 437 times slower than real time. If we crank up the frame rate any higher than that, the resolution gets too fuzzy to really tell what’s going on.

Okay, back to our big question: does the bullet leave the barrel before the muzzle rises? It depends on the gun.

Semi-Autos

Let’s start with a semi-auto. This is a 9mm Sig P365 XL. I’ll just let it play through in real time first. And here it is in slow motion. There goes the bullet, and there’s plenty of recoil. The gun wants to move straight back. The shooter’s hand stops that rearward motion, so the gun takes the path of least resistance, which is up. The result is a rotational movement, or what we sometimes call muzzle rise.

But let’s go back and look at it frame by frame. Did that rotation start before the bullet exited the barrel? First, we see a little smoke, and then a couple of frames later… there we go. That gray blur there is the bullet. Let’s back it up one frame when we know for sure the bullet is still in the barrel. If we compare that to our last pre-ignition frame, we can see the slide and barrel have started to move to the rear while the bullet is still in the barrel, but we’re not seeing any of that rotational movement yet. There is no upward movement of the barrel. That doesn’t start until right about… here, and by then the bullet is already out of the frame.

So, for the Sig, at least, it looks like muzzle rise should not be a factor in the bullet’s point of impact.

Let’s look at another semi-auto. This is the new .380 Beretta Cheetah 80X that I’m in the process of reviewing. This gun has a straight blowback operated action. The Sig was recoil-operated. Let’s see if that makes any difference in when the muzzle rise begins.

There goes the hammer and there’s the bullet. Before I even go frame by frame, you could probably see what happened there. With a blowback pistol, the barrel doesn’t move with the slide, it stays locked to the frame. There’s the bullet right there. We back up a frame, compare it to the frame when the hammer stopped moving. There’s slide movement, but the barrel hasn’t moved at all. The rotational movement doesn’t begin until the slide is almost completely open.

Revolvers

Okay, you know what’s coming next. What about revolvers? We’ve got a Ruger GP100 and let’s start with a really mild load. This is a .38 Special 148-grain wadcutter from Black Hills. It’s puttering along at 660 feet per second with almost no muzzle flash, so it’s pretty easy to see. Let’s go frame by frame. There’s the bullet. Back up a frame. Compare it to the pre-ignition frame. There is definitely some rotational movement there while the bullet is still in the barrel.

But how much movement, and is it enough to really matter? I tried a half dozen different methods for measuring the change in the barrel’s angle and I wasn’t really satisfied with any of them. We would need a high speed camera capable of much higher resolution and framerate in order to measure that accurately. And that’s not in the budget right now.

But my best estimate is that the barrel moves roughly .2 to .3 degrees before the bullet exits. That doesn’t sound like much, but at 25 yards, that translates to a point of impact that’s between 3.1 and 4.7 inches higher than if the muzzle had remained in place.

So let’s say you locked the gun in some kind of mechanical rest so that it could not move, and you zeroed the sights to be dead-on at 25 yards. If you took the gun out and shot it with your hands, you would be hitting three to five inches high.

Now, that wadcutter was moving pretty slow. What if we tried a magnum round? Would it exit the barrel before the muzzle rises? This is a Remington 125-grain jacketed soft point moving at 1400 feet per second. It definitely spends less time in the barrel compared to the wadcutter. Only five frames versus nine. But there does still seem to be some rotational movement taking place before the bullet exits.

So muzzle rise does influence the point of impact for revolvers. The degree of that influence probably changes depending on the load you’re shooting, although it’s hard to see that in our high speed footage. But we know a slower bullet will spend longer in the barrel, which means it should rise more before the bullet exits. That’s at least one of the reasons slower bullets typically have a higher point of impact than faster ones.

Theoretically, a bullet that recoils more (like a magnum) might have more muzzle rise before the bullet exits. That could be a factor. But looking at the footage of our wadcutter and magnum, there is not much difference in the amount of rotational movement of the gun in that short period while the bullet is still in the barrel. I’m inclined to believe the amount of time the bullet spends in the barrel is more important than the magnitude of the recoil because most of that recoil happens after the bullet is gone.

Can Grip Influence Point of Impact Shift?

So what about grip? Does a firm grip cause less muzzle rise than a loose grip? I tried firing a magnum load with a firm two-handed grip and again with a loose one-handed grip. Obviously, the loose grip allowed a lot more rotation overall. I could not really tell a difference in the amount of movement before the bullet exited.

What I did notice is that no matter how hard I gripped the gun or how little or how much recoil the gun had, the grip appeared to move in my hand before my hand reacted. Our hands are covered in squishy things like skin, fat, and muscle, so they’re always going to have some give. Regardless of how tight you squeeze, the gun will be able to move at least a tiny bit before it encounters the full resistance of your grip.

Having said that, I did not want to dismiss grip as a possible factor in shifting the point of impact.

The Sandbag Test

So I tried Plan B. Instead of gripping the gun differently, I tried firing with sandbags for support. First, with only the frame of the gun supported, and then again with an additional sandbag under the grip. I compressed it down as much as possible so the grip was firmly planted on that sandbag. This is not the same as immobilizing the gun. The sandbag does not prevent that rotational movement, but I figured it would cause the gun to recoil in a different way. If that was enough to alter the point of impact, then I think it stands to reason that it’s at least possible that the way you grip the gun could also change the point of impact.

Here it is first without the bottom sandbag. The rotation looks pretty much the same as shooting unsupported. Now, with the bottom sandbag, it’s a little different. The gun moves back and then up. Again, this is not something I could easily measure and compare based on our high speed footage. Instead, I just shot some groups at 25 yards.

Here’s a five shot group with the Black Hills wadcutter at 25 yards. First with the bottom sandbag supporting the grip. And another group without the bottom support. That’s about three and a half inches higher than the first group. It looks like that bottom sandbag delayed the muzzle rise, which caused the lower point of impact.

And now the Remington 125-grain Magnum load. With grip support on the left, without it on the right. About two and a half inches higher. Same effect as the slower bullet, but with less muzzle rise, maybe because of less time in the barrel.

So what can we take away from all of this? For most of us, not much, except that shooting is fun and so are high speed cameras. But if you like to shoot revolvers at 25 yards and beyond, there might be something here. It’s probably a good idea to make sure your grip is unsupported if you zero your revolver from a bench rest. Always confirm your bench rest zero by shooting a couple of groups without the bench. Any time you’re shooting at those longer ranges, try to make sure you grip the gun exactly the same way every time. And of course, the next time you need some ammo, be sure to get it from us with lightning fast shipping at LuckyGunner.com.

The post How Recoil Affects Handgun Accuracy appeared first on Lucky Gunner Lounge.

All handguns recoil. It’s a perfect demonstration of Newton’s Third Law. But the way we experience that recoil — the perceived or felt recoil — often varies dramatically from one gun to the next. Even if we compare two guns of equal weight firing the same cartridge and theoretically transferring the same amount of energy to the shooter’s hand via recoil, it’s possible for the felt recoil to be vastly different. We analyzed some more high speed footage to help explain why.

Details are in the video below, or scroll down to read the full transcript (although this time, it won’t make a whole lot of sense without watching the video).

Hey everybody, Chris Baker here from LuckyGunner.com. Today, we’re going to look at more high speed footage to better understand what happens during handgun recoil that we normally cannot see with the naked eye. This time, we’re looking for clues that might help explain why recoil feels different from one gun to the next.

I don’t just mean that some guns recoil more or less than others, although that’s part of it. Why do we describe recoil as snappy or soft, bouncy or smooth, harsh or flat? We’re not just talking about the magnitude of the felt recoil. And it’s more than the subjective differences based on factors like technique, hand size, and grip strength.

Every handgun recoils a little differently than others. We’re going to look at some comparisons where that difference is really obvious.

Revolver vs. Semi-Auto Felt Recoil

The most overt example is revolvers versus semi-autos. Here, we’ve got a Wilson 9mm 1911 and a Ruger GP100. They weigh about the same. They’re different calibers, but both are firing the same bullet weight at comparable velocities.

When you fire a revolver, all of the recoil energy is immediately transferred to your hand. With the 1911, there’s a short delay and the recoil is spread out over a longer period of time. The bore line of the revolver is also much higher relative to the hand and wrist. All of these factors combine to make the revolver feel like it has significantly more recoil even when the total amount of energy delivered to the shooter is roughly the same.

But there are other differences. For example, the revolver’s muzzle arcs up when it’s fired and immediately back down because of the pressure I’m exerting on the grip. The 1911 arcs up, and then there’s a moment when it seems to kind of stall. It’s moving back down, but very slowly at first. Then the slide closes and that has kind of a reverse recoil effect. It helps to push the muzzle back down on target.

If I speed it up some and let it play out, you can see another side effect of the slide movement. The force of the slide closing causes the muzzle end of the pistol to bounce up and down a few times. The revolver muzzle just snaps back on target and stays there.

I can still see the front sight on that 1911 while it’s bouncing around. If I’m just trying to throw rounds into the center of a big cardboard silhouette, I don’t have to wait for that sight to completely settle before I fire another shot. But it’s not ideal, and I much prefer the way the sights track on the revolver, even though it takes more effort to control the recoil.

Again, there is some subjectivity here. If you shot these two guns, you’d probably notice some differences but they might not be the same ones I just mentioned. Except that the revolver has more felt recoil – that’s pretty universal.

Small-Frame Revolver vs. Pocket Pistol

Let’s look at another revolver-semi-auto pair. This time, a Ruger LCR and a Glock 43, both in 9mm firing Speer Gold Dot 124 gr +P.

These are much lighter guns, so the felt recoil is more severe. Again, more so with the revolver. The LCR has a decent-sized grip compared to the Glock, but even so, you can tell it really wants to free itself from my hands. It’s quite a handful with +P ammo.

This time, the revolver is the one that seems to stall at the top of the recoil arc. The short slide on this Glock takes less time to cycle than the big heavy 1911 slide. So that little assist from the slide closing happens sooner.

Both of these guns have a little bit of that muzzle bounce at the end. They also don’t return quite to the same spot they started – you can see that the muzzles are not level – probably because the grips have shifted slightly in my hands. I would have to deliberately re-align the sights before my next shot rather than letting my grip do all the work subconsciously.

I haven’t fired either of these guns in a long time. And as you can see, they’re very unforgiving. If you don’t grip a lightweight 9mm just right, the recoil is difficult to manage. Even tiny shifts in how the gun sits in your hand will often lead to erratic shot placement on target.

.380 ACP Blowback vs. Locked-Breech Felt Recoil

Let’s look at a different kind of comparison: blowback versus recoil operated pistols. Last time, I mentioned that I’m working on a review of this gun – the new Beretta 80X Cheetah. It’s an all-metal double stack chambered for .380 ACP. The recoil is not at all difficult to manage, but it’s also not insignificant. A lot of people use the word “snappy” to describe how this gun shoots.

That’s in stark contrast to something like the .380 version of the Sig P365. It’s a bit smaller and lighter than the Beretta, but the perceived recoil is very mild by any standard. That’s because the Sig is a recoil-operated or locked-breech pistol while the Beretta 80X is a straight blowback design.

A while back, I did a video on the difference between these pistol types in case you want the detailed explanation. For our purposes today, all you really need to know is that blowback pistols have a stationary barrel – only the slide moves. With a locked breech pistol, the barrel does move. It’s locked to the slide and they move together for the first couple of millimeters of travel, and then they unlock and separate.

You might have heard before that blowback pistols feel like they recoil more than locked breech pistols of the same size, weight, and caliber. But why is that, exactly?

I’m going to put the two side by side, but for now, focus on the Beretta. Let’s pause right there. At this point, the Beretta’s slide is completely open. So far, the frame and my hands are in exactly the same position they were at the beginning. Then that recoil force travels from the slide to the frame all at once and you can see my hand react.

I’ll play that again, but watch the Sig this time. We’re paused here at the same point. The Beretta slide is completely open but the Sig’s slide is not there yet. It takes a little longer, probably because the barrel was locked to it at the beginning. They’re not together for long, but it would be like if you had a ten year old riding piggyback for the first five feet of a hundred meter sprint – that’s gonna slow you down. We also can already see some muzzle rise at this point. The gun is not level anymore. If we go frame by frame, you can see movement begin in the pistol frame and my hand just after the barrel unlocks.

Since the slide is moving slower, it opens with less force than the Beretta slide. That results in less muzzle rise. Watch it one more time and pay attention to the back of my hand on the Beretta when the slide opens. That little ripple in the skin is probably what we’re feeling when we say a gun like this is “snappy.”

So we have two pistols firing the same cartridge. You’d expect to feel more of the recoil with the Sig because it’s a few ounces lighter. But because it’s a locked-breech design, that recoil is spread out over a longer period of time, which we perceive as less recoil. This principle has limits. For example, the Beretta 80X is far easier to manage than a locked-breech pocket pistol like the Ruger LCP. Not only is the LCP much lighter than the P365, the grip has very little surface area, which concentrates the recoil force and is not much fun to shoot.

.380 ACP Blowback vs. 9mm Locked-Breech

How about if we compare the Beretta to a locked-breech 9mm of similar size and weight? Something like this 9mm Sig P365 XL. That’s the gun I was reminded of after my first range session with the Beretta 80X. But then I shot them side by side, and they felt very different. The Beretta has a snap while the Sig has more of a push, which is what you might expect. But it also seemed like the Beretta’s sights returned to the target a little quicker than the Sig’s. It’s similar to what we saw with the GP100.

The 9mm Sig recoils like the .380 version, there’s just more of it. The impulse moves to the frame and the shooter earlier than with the blowback gun. But now watch the slides close. From fully open to fully closed, the Sig’s slide takes 33% longer than the Beretta’s. Like the 1911, The Sig slide appears to linger in the open position. That has an impact on my ability to recover from recoil. And then when the slide finally does close, the muzzle starts to come down, but also causes the frame to jerk forward in my hands a little, which I have noticed when I’m shooting.

In the meantime, the Beretta muzzle is already on its way back down from grip pressure alone, even before the slide is completely closed.

Does Any of This Matter?

Now, if we watch these guns in real time, this all seems pretty academic. And it is, depending what you want to do with the gun. With a halfway decent grip, they both seem to snap back onto target pretty much instantly. Any proficient handgun shooter should be able to manage the recoil in either of these guns well enough for practical purposes.

But if you go through ammo by the case instead of the box or if you’re chasing some high performance shooting goals, these little quirks in the perceived recoil do make a difference. Either consciously or subconsciously, we learn how to compensate for the unique recoil characteristics of each gun when we spend a lot of range time with it. If we then try to shoot a different gun, it might take a while to kind of recalibrate our technique. Of course, recoil is not the only factor. But if all handguns had zero recoil, switching from one to another would be relatively trivial.

Like I said last time, watching these clips may or may not have any practical value for you. But if nothing else, shooting is fun and so are high speed cameras. Hope you guys enjoyed it. If so, be sure to subscribe to our channel and the next time you need ammo, get it from us with lightning fast shipping at LuckyGunner.com.

The post Recoil: Let’s Talk About Feelings appeared first on Lucky Gunner Lounge.

Pistol size categories are notoriously ambiguous. What’s the difference between a micro compact and a subcompact? We don’t know, and we’re pretty sure nobody else does either. But we do have some tips for how to evaluate a pistol’s size when you can’t handle it in person.

Details are in the video below, or scroll down to read the full transcript.

Hey everybody, I am Chris Baker from LuckyGunner.com and today I’m going to talk about handgun sizes. Specifically, I want to share some thoughts on how those sizes are categorized and then I’ve got a few tips that might be helpful whenever you’re evaluating a pistol’s dimensions and you’re not physically holding that gun in your hands.

This is a topic I bring up fairly often and that’s because size is important. A handgun’s physical dimensions – its size, shape, and weight – largely determine how well it will fit our hands and whether we’re likely to find it comfortable and concealable as a carry gun. The number of handgun models on the market has exploded in recent years. Even a well-stocked gun shop is unlikely to have a sample of every model you might want to look at. So we do a lot of our comparison shopping online.

Handgun Hero is an excellent resource for basic size comparisons. You can pick two handgun models and it’ll show you correctly-scaled images side by side. That helps a lot, but you still have to take it with a grain of salt. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to get a true sense of a handgun’s overall size just from seeing it on a screen or reading the specifications.

Pistol Size Categories

This has all been made a lot more complicated by the way pistol sizes have evolved in the last decade or so. For a long time, most semi-autos were based on full size or duty size pistols, usually with a double stack magazine. A compact was basically a duty pistol with two or three quarters of an inch chopped off the slide and the grip. Shave off a little bit more and you get a subcompact. Smaller calibers got their own unique designs called pocket pistols.

There have always been exceptions and guns that blurred the lines between the categories, but things really started to change around 2011-2012. That’s when the polymer single stack 9mm pistols like the Smith & Wesson Shield began to dominate the concealed carry market. It was nice to have all of these new options, but it did complicate our conversations about carry guns. We couldn’t just say “compact” and “subcompact” anymore. We had to specify “single stack” or “double stack.”

That wasn’t really a problem until the 2017 release of the Sig P365. It was a bit smaller than most of the single stack nines, but it had a double stack – or more like a one and a half stack — magazine with higher ammo capacity. That started another industry trend with every gun company trying to figure out how to cram double digit capacity into guns the size of their old single stacks.

We needed a name for this new category, and the one that seems to have stuck is “micro compact.” What’s the difference between micro compact and subcompact? Do the single stacks also count as micro compact? Nobody knows, and we’re all just making this up as we go along.

The latest evolution is exemplified in the Sig P365 XL. A micro compact with a longer slide and grip, followed by the P365 XMacro with an even longer grip. A few other companies have jumped on board with larger versions of their micro compacts like the Springfield Hellcat Pro. I’m not sure we have a name for these yet. I’m going to go with “longslide micro compact.”

What Does “Compact” Even Mean?

But maybe we don’t need a name for these because some of them are virtually the same size as the old style compact double stack pistols. And if you weren’t confused already, this is where things really get weird.

Why does Sig have the P365 XMacro and the P320 XCompact? On paper, they look like they would fill the same role, so how would you choose one over the other? Why does Smith & Wesson have the Shield Plus 4-inch and the M&P 4-inch Compact? Or how about the Springfield Hellcat Pro and the XD-M Elite Compact?

I don’t think the gun companies planned it this way. They already had the compacts in their lineup. Then the micro compacts got popular but some people wanted them to be a little bigger. Now there’s overlap.

In any case, we’ve got a ton of options now, and many of them, even when they come from the same manufacturer, appear to be roughly the same size. But a lot of these similarities are only superficial. So let’s take a look at how we can spot some subtle but very important distinctions.

Beyond Basic Dimensions

We’ll start with those two Sigs I just mentioned. At a glance, the most significant difference appears to be length. The XCompact is about four tenths of an inch longer. That’s probably not going to make a huge difference in terms of comfort or concealability. What’s going to be more noticeable is the overall bulk. To some extent, we can see that in the width measurement. The XCompact is two tenths of an inch wider. Another trick we’ve used to visualize this in some of our past reviews is to overlay the two profiles and give them different colors.

Look at the distance from the top of the slide to the bottom of the trigger guard. That is a significant difference. The XMacro has a much smaller footprint. A holster made for that gun will take up less room. That gives you more flexibility in where you place the gun on your waistband to find that concealment sweet spot.

Also take a look at the grip from front to back. Again, the XMacro is shorter in that dimension. That’s less gun that has to be concealed by your cover garment. However, it also means less surface area for your hands, so the Compact might end up being easier to shoot, depending on your hand size.

You can actually try the overlay trick yourself in Handgun Hero if you scroll down to where it says “tabletop comparison” and click the color palette switch. That’ll give you a better sense of overall size.

Footprint, Width, and Bulk

I’ve got another comparison to consider. After my review of the Beretta 80X, I got several requests to compare it to the Beretta PX4 Compact. That’s not a comparison I would have thought of, but when I looked at the specs on Beretta’s website, the two guns are within a tenth of an inch of each other in terms of height, length, and width.

But while I was making these graphics, I actually discovered that Beretta’s numbers are not quite right. Here’s what I got when I measured these guns myself. The main issue was the height. Beretta lists the 80X as one tenth of an inch shorter than the PX4 Compact. With a magazine in both guns, the 80X is actually three tenths shorter. So that’s another thing to keep in mind. The data you find online might not actually be correct.

If we do the overlay trick, we can see that the 80X has a smaller overall footprint. Even though it’s based on a design from the 1970s, the footprint is similar to a modern longslide micro compact.

Beretta lists both the 80X and the PX4 Compact as 1.4 inches wide, but that’s a little deceptive. That’s the width at the safety/decocking levers. The slide and the grip measure about 1.1 inches on both guns. But when you handle them in person, the 80X just doesn’t feel as wide. It has much more variation in its contour. The PX4 is wide everywhere. The 80X tapers in at the center of the frame. It’s got the open top slide. It’s not just the footprint that’s smaller, the 80X occupies less volume overall and that kind of thing is noticeable when you’re carrying it every day for several hours.

Or maybe it’s not noticeable for you. All of this is pretty subjective.

Let’s look at one more comparison: the Glock 26 and 43 – an old-style double-stack sub-compact and a single stack nine (which is also a subcompact, or possibly a micro compact, depending on who you ask). The profiles here are functionally identical. They look like basically the same gun except that the 43 is a quarter inch thinner and holds four fewer rounds. But I wouldn’t be quick to dismiss that quarter inch width reduction. When we’re looking at width, a little bit makes a big difference.

If you grip these two guns, you can tell they’re really night and day. Neither one of them are great, ergonomically speaking. I find the 43 to be a bit more difficult to control, but that’s going to be highly reliant on hand shape. In a holster, the 43 pretty much disappears for me, but the 26 is really awkward to conceal because of the width to length ratio. You wouldn’t necessarily guess any of that from looking at pictures online. Sometimes there’s just no substitute for hands-on experience.

You Have to Start Somewhere

Not too long ago, we had maybe a dozen or so decent options for reliable carry guns. You just had to pick something and figure out how to make it work, which is where we got the whole idea of “dressing around the gun” and other cliches that, I think, turned off a lot of people to the whole idea of concealed carry altogether.

Today, we are really spoiled for choice. There is a handgun out there to suit just about every need or preference you can imagine. We’ve gone from “make it work” to having the luxury to choose what’s optimal for our individual situation. But sometimes that can lead us to that whole problem of “analysis paralysis.” Hopefully, the stuff I talked about today will help you avoid that trap. Or maybe I actually made it harder to decide. I hope not.

Either way, keep in mind, there are no perfect solutions and there are plenty of options that are probably good enough for you. Just pick something. Buy a high quality holster. Get out to the range and practice, and be sure to buy some ammo from us with lightning fast shipping at LuckyGunner.com.

The post Crushing the Confusion About Pistol Sizes appeared first on Lucky Gunner Lounge.