American Airguns Blog
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
MiniSniping Part II
Yesterday, a coworker was asking me about buying a handgun. He was looking for something for fun shooting and home protection. We discussed several different options when I mentioned my Kel-Tec P3AT. It is a .380 caliber pistol that is very small and easy to carry concealed. I mentioned that the bullet is the same size as the 9mm but the case is shorter. Then it hit me.
The .380 is also known as the 9mm short. The shorter case is essentially the same width as the 9mm but it is shorter. That got me thinking about my last blog on MiniSniping. On the surface the .380 case looked like it may be closer a standard silhouette than any of the other cartridges I exploded in my previous blog. I brought up my spreadsheet and plugged in the number. Sure enough, the .380 is closer to actual silhouette dimensions than any of the other calibers. For a .380 case and a torso width of 17.75", the corresponding torso height would be 32" whereas the 9mm was 35" and the .45 was 33". That is a relatively minor difference but the .380 case scales very nicely. The 1000 yard equivalent would be exactly 21 yards and the one mile equivalent would be exactly 37 yards. So, buy moving the normal MiniSniping back 2 yards and using .380 instead of 9mm, you could shoot an equivalent 1 mile competition.
I don't know of anyone right now that is shooting formal MiniSniping competitions. The competition however lends itself nicely to a postal/Internet match type of setup. With a variety of cartridge sizes and distances available, there could be a nice variety of variations on a MiniSniping theme. I will explore some of my ideas on this in another blog.
The .380 is also known as the 9mm short. The shorter case is essentially the same width as the 9mm but it is shorter. That got me thinking about my last blog on MiniSniping. On the surface the .380 case looked like it may be closer a standard silhouette than any of the other cartridges I exploded in my previous blog. I brought up my spreadsheet and plugged in the number. Sure enough, the .380 is closer to actual silhouette dimensions than any of the other calibers. For a .380 case and a torso width of 17.75", the corresponding torso height would be 32" whereas the 9mm was 35" and the .45 was 33". That is a relatively minor difference but the .380 case scales very nicely. The 1000 yard equivalent would be exactly 21 yards and the one mile equivalent would be exactly 37 yards. So, buy moving the normal MiniSniping back 2 yards and using .380 instead of 9mm, you could shoot an equivalent 1 mile competition.
I don't know of anyone right now that is shooting formal MiniSniping competitions. The competition however lends itself nicely to a postal/Internet match type of setup. With a variety of cartridge sizes and distances available, there could be a nice variety of variations on a MiniSniping theme. I will explore some of my ideas on this in another blog.
