The World is Turning to 9mm, so is the Short Lane Shotgun Adapter

1. The world is turning to 9mm because, the evidence is in…that is the correct answer when it comes to a defensive/combat handgun…despite all the belligerent Archie Bunkers out there who wish otherwise and worship at the altar of the 1911 (because they watched too many WWII movies). Because…any gun in .45 caliber would be a better gun in 9mm. Ask the FBI, ask anybody with any sense in their head.

   • I shoot the Buffalo Bore in larger calibers. The pictured box is their old style so reliability to fire should be good. However the newer stuff in the plastic boxes has had some issues. One LGS has stopped carrying BB ammo for that very reason. When paying premium prices, one can expect premium product. Seems BB missed that memo.

     But the insert is a winner.

     • I carry Buffalo Bore 255 grain and did nof know about the change. My stuff came in paper boxes.

   • Not really, but, 9mm is the new .22.

   • lol okay buddy. Just like the evidence was in when everyone was going to 9mm the FIRST time, and then to .40, etc.

     There is no magic bullet. 9mm is becoming popular again because it’s easier to shoot. That’s fine, but don’t pretend it’s anything more than that.

     • Yep. Why would I trust the FBI ammo assessment when they are basically admitting they got it wrong the first time?

       Nothing wrong with .45 ACP. I like my 1911, but the design is over 100 years old. Plenty of lighter, higher capacity, or CC options if that’s your thing.

       That being said I do like 9mm +p as a defensive. It’s a good solid choice.

     • There is no magic bullet, but there are far better bullets available in 9mm now than there were back when the FBI ditched it the first time. Projectile design matters.

2. Ummm…OK. I got more than one 9mm and a 12gauge shotgun. Why would I EVER need this?

   • If you only had a shotgun, a pistol conversion insert could be handy for recreational use and survival use. I just wish the insert provided 16 inches of rifled barrel to really boost handgun cartridge velocity.

     • Another upside is all that empty 12 ga. bore empty space acts as an improvised suppressor.

       Good for quietly dispatching a not-quite-roadkill armadillo discreetly….

       • I was thinking the same thing. Does it actually make it quieter?

   • In my opinion the main reason in 2017 for shotgun adapters is if there is an ammunition shortage again you will have options.

     Donald Trump will only be president for 8 years at the most. The “2012 ammo shortage” will happen again. I can see it happening at a state level in California or New Jersey first.

     They do have caliber adapters for both the S&W governor 410 revolver and the Taurus Judge 410 revolver.

3. “The current thought process is you don’t need the power of a .40 or .45” ? Where on earth did that come from ?
   I have many times been part of the decades old argument on this matter. But WOW

4. Are these made by the guy that shot his finger off on TV?

5. I just finished looking at the vendor website.

   As I touched upon in an earlier comment, I really wish they offered pistol inserts that provided closer to 16 inches of rifled tube to really boost velocity.

   I also wish they offered inserts in .357 Magnum and .44 Magnum.

   • In 9 mm you won’t get any more velocity out of a 16″ bar rel than an 8″. The magnum calibers benefit a great deal from the extra length though.

     • This is true.

6. ‘The current thought process is you don’t need the power of the .45acp or the .40 S&W…’

   Makes me wonder if the author knows that .45acp isn’t actually more powerful than 9 mm.

   • This is false.

     9mm throws 147 grains of lead at 1000 fps. A .45 throws 200 grains at that same speed or faster. How is that not “more powerful”? It’s the very definition of more powerful.

     • Cherry picking a +p load doesn’t count. In the original loads, .45 launched a 230gr. bull et out of a 5″ barr el at 850fps (actually the army upped it from 830) for 368.95ft/lbs of energy vs. a 9 mm launching a 124gr. projectile out of a 4″ bar rel at 1150fps for 364.1ft/lbs of energy. Less then 5 ft/lbs from a ba rrel that’s an inch longer. But you can cherry pick loads to make either one look more powerful. .45 does have a little more potential in the hottest +p loads though.

       • Not cherry-picking anything — I’m saying that the explosive force in a .45 cartridge is more powerful than the explosive force in a 9mm cartridge. For any given bullet weight, from a comparable barrel size, the .45 will always propel that weight more powerfully than a 9mm will. Always. And so will a .40.

         Using kinetic energy as your basis can make any tiny bullet *seem* just as strong as a bigger bullet, but that doesn’t make it true.

         As a simple example: go to the gym and find some guy who can bench-press 400 pounds in two seconds. Then find some guy who can only bench press 100 pounds, but he’s faster — he can do it in one second. Which guy is stronger (more powerful)? It’s obvious– even though the kinetic energy formula says the kinetic energy is exactly the same between them.

       • If you’re only criteria is which one shoots the heaviest bu llet then yes the .45 wins, but if you’re looking for which one does more damage to flesh it’s a wash. If bull et weight were the only criteria the .45 would be more powerful than .30-06.

       • I didn’t say bullet weight was the criteria. I said bullet weight at a given speed. Pick any speed you want — 850 fps? 900 fps? 1000 fps? 1100 fps? 1200 fps? For whatever speed you choose, the .45 will propel a heavier bullet at that speed, than a 9mm would.

         On the other hand, pick any bullet weight you want — 115 grains? 124 grains? 147 grains? The .45 would propel that bullet at higher velocities than the 9mm would. The only challenge is in finding bullets of such light weight in such large diameter, but if you do, then you’ll find that the .45 is much higher speed than the 9mm.

         Examples I could find: the Glaser Safety Slug is a 145-grain pellet. The .45 auto +P propels that 145 grains at 1,350 fps. The closest equivalent in 9mm would be a 147-grain bullet, and the fastest rating for 9mm +P that I could find propels a 147-grain bullet at 1,135 fps.

         I found a 115-grain .45 load, from RBCD, that goes at 1,650 fps. 9mm +P propels a 115-grain load at 1,235 fps.

         There’s more explosive power in a .45 cartridge than there is in a .40, and there’s more explosive power in a .40 cartridge than there is in a 9mm. That’s really all there is to it.

       • You’re still comparing apples to oranges since the diameters are so different. The sectional densities of equal weight bull ets are drastically different. A .45 slug that only weighs 115gr will dump most of it’s energy into the air if you’re more than 5′ away. If you keep the SDs in line you’ll need to compare 124gr to 200gr.

         The .45 has a large advantage in case capacity but the 9 runs 66.6% higher pressure. In the end they’re just different ways of producing identical results.

       • “A .45 slug that only weighs 115gr will dump most of it’s energy into the air if you’re more than 5′ away”
         ???

         Are you saying 51% of that .45’s kinetic energy will be dissipated in the first 5 feet? I would certainly beg to differ. A 1650fps 115-grain .451-diameter bullet will still be traveling 1,455 fps at 25 yards. That’s still over 200 fps faster than a 9mm+P at the muzzle.

         I’m well aware of the sectional density differences, but I think you’re vastly overstating the effect.

         Any way you slice it, the .45 is a more powerful design than the 9mm. The 9mm closes the gap through capacity, but any individual shot of .45 is more powerful than any individual shot of 9mm. .45 hits harder than 9mm, it can carry both more energy and more momentum. .45 bullets are bigger than 9mm and make bigger holes. Expanded .45 bullets are bigger than expanded 9mm bullets. Those are all just facts. Shot for shot, .45 is more powerful than 9mm.

         Gun for gun, that may be a different story. A Springfield XD Mod.2 in .45 holds 9 rounds, in 9mm it holds 13 rounds. It could be that 13 shots of a smaller/weaker bullet are more effective in stopping an attack than 9 rounds of a more powerful bullet. That’s a different debate.

         What I’m disputing is the notion that 9mm is as powerful as .45. That’s simply not true. There’s a very visible reason for why 9mm has less recoil than a .45 does — it’s because 9mm, shot for shot, is notably less powerful than .45.

       • You’re disregarding two pertinent factors. First, the .45 can be loaded to 21,000psi (SAAMI) vs. 35,000 in the 9. You’re putting roughly the same amount of powder into both. Second, all those ballistics charts you’re looking at are giving the .45 a one inch advantage in bar rel length, so you need to add about 50fps to the 9 mm loads. In the end there’s a very slight edge to the .45 when loaded hot, but my initial point is that the traditional standard loads actually favor 9 mm. The 9 has less rec oil because the bul lets are lighter. The easier it is to expel the bu llet the less reco il energy is sent the other way.

         My point about low SD bul lets dumping their energy on the atmosphere fast was an exaggeration. But low SD bull ets also dump their energy into flesh fast, meaning they won’t penetrate well. Even in higher SD bu llets, if you look at the ballistics gel tests you’ll find that the .45 loads that expand well don’t penetrate well. When comparing similar SDs and similar expanded diameters you’ll find similar penetration. The .45 will have a larger permanent cavity and the 9 a larger temporary cavity due to having the faster, lighter bul let.

         Gu n for gu n, it depends. If you’re a 19 11 guy I’d stick with .45 since you only get one more ro und with 9 mm, but I’d stick with 230gr for penetration. Comparing 8 ro unds of .45 to 15 of 9 mm is totally different. The 9 makes very efficient use of space.

       • Which still ignores the central point which is — the .45 is the more powerful round.

         I would invite you to look at the results of HSTs on Vista’s site. You’ll see there the most comparable testing you’re likely to find anywhere. And you’ll see that the .45 HSTs penetrate at least as deep and usually deeper, and always expand to a bigger diameter (sometimes much bigger) than the 9mm’s do.

         http://www.le.vistaoutdoor.com/ammunition/federal/handgun/default.aspx

         I mean, it’s plain as day. The .45 uses the additional power in its cartridge to push a bigger, heavier bullet that expands to a bigger diameter (creating a larger wound channel) and penetrates as deep or deeper than the 9mm. And it does so with more bone-crushing momentum since it’s a heavier projectile.

         Is it going to be a night-and-day difference? Of course not — all handgun rounds suck, and a 9mm might very well succeed in one case and a .45 fail in the other. That’s well known. There’s not enough difference between them that a trauma surgeon could tell which is which just by looking at the wound channel. I don’t think any of us disagree on that.

         All I’m addressing is the notion that the 9mm is “just as powerful” as the .45. It isn’t. Not by a long shot. There is an absolute hierarchy of cartridge power (determined as the ability to fling more lead at a given speed); 10mm > .45 > .40 > 9mm > .380. A guy at the gym who can bench press 400 pounds is stronger than a guy who can only bench-press 300 pounds. And a cartridge that can throw 115 grains at 1,650 fps is more powerful than one that can only throw 115 grains at 1,250 fps.

         Is the 9mm sufficient? Maybe. Will the additional power of the .45 make a practical difference in a gunfight? Who knows? But there is a difference.

       • First off I’ve already conceded that if you’re using the hottest loads the .45 has the edge. Otherwise you can toss a wet Kleenex over the two rou nds, they do almost identical damage they just go about it in different ways. I like the HST, I’ve got 230gr+p rou nds in my 19 11 right now. But comparing it to the 9 (124gr+p), they both get 13″ of penetration in the denim test, although the the .45 expands to a greater diameter. The .45 is also shot from a bar rel that’s one inch longer than the 9 so you’re giving it a 50fps advantage there. Also, Speer’s Gold Dot +p 124gr load goes 20fps faster than the HST. So in the end you’re looking at about 444ft/lbs vs. 461ft/lbs. There’s your .45’s edge. You can get a little more of an edge with lower SD bul lets loaded +p but then you get into penetration issues. I’d be surprised to see 5″ of penetration in gel with those 115 gr. Same with rou nds like Liberty Civil Defense with a 50gr 9 mm load they advertise at 2000fps.

         Now compare that to the 6″ GP 100 sitting next to me loaded with 158gr. Double Taps (non +p) that put out ~800ft/lbs of energy, or even the ~600ft/lbs I get out of the 3″ GP I carry, and you’ve got a significant difference.

     • =1/2m x v^2
       but only if the object/body of the target absorbs the energy and is not a through and through.

       • Somewhere I read that it takes about 250fps for an expanded bull et to penetrate skin. So if that’s true, at most you’re losing about 32ft/lbs of energy (with a 230gr). I’d find that an acceptable compromise on penetration.

   • If 9mm is so powerful then why does it have to be +p’d and +p+’d so much? Why does it have to have very particular types of hollow points? And why can’t you 9mm fan bois (who have gotten far worse than the .45 fan bois of yore) realize these advances be put into other rounds? I swear in a few weeks I wouldn’t be surprised to see one of you post “9mm is superior to .50 BMG!!!”

     • “If 9mm is so powerful then why does it have to be +p’d and +p+’d so much?”

       ‘Have’ to +p it has nothing to do with it.

       In America, (Fuck, Yeah!) we hot-rod loads just because we *can*.

       It’s just like shoe-horning a Corvette V-8 engine with a blower on it into a clapped-out Chevette…

     • Not a 9 mm fanboy, I’m a .357 magnum fanboy, but I have both a .45 and a 9.

       If you’re shooting FMJs or your hollow points don’t expand sufficiently the .45 has a huge advantage. But with modern HPs the .45 can tend to underpenetrate. Personally I like to see penetration in gel to be on the deep end of the ra nge. You can poke your finger right into the gel. It only (accurately) replicates flesh at high speeds, so I think the last several inches of gel penetration wouldn’t happen in flesh.

7. So how do you eject the spent case? Wooden rod, FP-45 Liberator style?

   • Take the insert out, swing it around your head until the shell pops out, centrifugal force style.

   • The “dished” out end that you stick the 9mm in lets you remove it with your fingers.

   • If you watch the video, they give you a stick.

8. Lol, here we go with the caliber debate. Truth is, no pistol round can actually knock a person down. They just make holes in people. In a semi auto, larger calibers make bigger holes, smaller calibers make more holes. Hence Greg Ellifritz’s research showing less than 5% difference in one shot stops and total shots to incapacitation between .380 and .45.

   Out of a single shot like a break open shotty with an adapter you lose the capacity side of the equation. But then, if you’re getting this to plink around at a range you want to consider ammo costs. And if you’re looking at a survival tool, you want to consider bullet availability. 9MM would probably win overall for me.

   If you want something different, go for it. Looks like they offer inserts for multiple calibers.

   • Hence Greg Ellifritz’s research showing less than 5% difference in one shot stops and total shots to incapacitation between .380 and .45.

     I am not familiar with Mr. Ellfritz’s research or how reliable it is. Having said that, I see no reason to doubt it because I firmly believe that the overwhelming majority of handgun wounds produce “psychological stops”. In other words the mere fact that a bullet struck an attacker convinces the attacker to stop their attack regardless of the severity of the wound. (Why the attacker decides to stop is immaterial.) Thus, in many instances, terminal ballistics (which are a function of caliber, bullet construction, muzzle velocity) will not matter.

     If your threat profile consists solely of opportunistic muggers and rapists — which are probably the overwhelming majority of attackers — handgun caliber really will not matter.

     • Absolutely. The CDC in 2015 determined that the bulk of DGUs were stopped without a single shot fired. Of the bad guys willing to continue after being shown a gun, most will quit after being shot even after one time with a .22.

       The caliber wars are about those very few cases where the bad guy chooses to fight through the pain of being shot and come after you anyway. In that instance, bigger bullets will make bigger holes… and a smaller bullet will giver you more rounds to make more holes with. The difference in “stopping power” at that point is so trivial as to make arguing over “most effective pistol caliber” a waste of oxygen.

       Carry what you’re comfortable carrying, proficient in shooting, and what YOU personally believe will save your life. For me, that’s 9MM. Fingers crossed that avoiding stupid people in stupid places doing stupid things is enough that I never have to test my belief in my CCW.

       • Having been involved in or witness to the first three of the four major types of defensive handgun use: Threat ends on brandish, threat ends with shot fired no injury, threat ends only on GSW, threat ends only with incapacitation…

         I believe the criminal calculus runs something like this: Does he have a gun? Is the gun real/loaded/operable? Is he willing to shoot? Is he able to hit me? Am I able to continue?

         Few enough criminals seem to get to that last one, and for that, I am thankful.

         Among the others, caliber doesn’t matter. Having a gun, that works, and is loaded, and being willing to use it covers the vast majority of threats. For the tiny remainder…well, some go easy, and some go hard, but the caliber of pistol doesn’t ever seem to be the deciding factor. Not to say caliber doesn’t matter, it surely does, but with that latter type, it’s often the number of hits rather than the power of the hits that ends up mattering, until carbines or shotguns enter the equation at least.

         Sure enough, a .45 is more powerful than a .40, which is more powerful than a 9. It’s just that this extra power is immaterial in the vast majority of DGUs, and completely lost on the target in most of the rest.
         I’m not an expert, and I happen to love .45s, but as nearly as I can tell, it’s the preponderance of hits that stops that last kind of fight, not their individual power, suggesting that at least among the big three, the one with the highest capacity generally wins.

9. Come’on now. 45ACP>9mm because US>Nazi Germany. If 9mm was so awesome we’d be speaking german.

   Those things look like they are 1/2 way to a zip gun without the AOW ramifications of a smooth bore zip gun.

   • That’s true actually about the war. All other factors between the Allies and the Axis were perfectly balanced with the war hinging solely on the type of pistol caliber each side used.

     • (snicker)

     • Bacause the .45 was 100gr heavier?

10. “Mr. Ray Banister has developed a rifled insert that is chambered in 9mm on the inside and chambered in 20ga on the outside.”

    How much development work did it take? MCA Sports has been offering these contraptions for some 20+ years.

    http://www.mcace.com/shotguninserts.htm

11. If i can get one chambered for .357 magnum, im in.

12. Their website needs more detail.

    Are the smoothbore adapters for use with smoothbore weapons,
    or are they, themselves, smoothbore ?

    • Their adapters come in two styles, rifled and smoothbore. It’s describing the type of barrel that the adapter IS, not the type of chamber it’s meant to be used in.

      The adapters are both a chamber and barrel in and of themselves. Some of the adapters have a rifled barrel, and some are smoothbore. Rifled barrels will obviously be more accurate, but smoothbore is cheaper to make and in cases where the size difference between the host caliber and the adapted caliber is very small, then smoothbore is probably the only possible choice. As an example, 9mm in a .410 adapter — the size difference is pretty small, so the walls of the adapter are going to be thin, and there’s probably not enough thickness there to be able to cut rifling in it and still have it be strong enough, so in the 9mm-in-.410 it’s a smoothbore adapter.

13. If you used a subsonic loading of 9x19mm with one of these would the shotgun barrel act as a sort of pseudo silencer or noise director? I know they make shrouds for compensators that direct the noise forward so wouldn’t this do the same? Anyone who has used one want to chime in of how they sound when shooting?

    • #

14. I like that this exists. I don’t think I’ll buy one, but it’s nice to have options.

15. I dont get why the cover picture on facebook for this article is a picture of the guy who started paladin press.

16. I’ve owned handguns in 9mm, 357 Sig, .40 S&W, .44 Mag, .380 ACP, .38 special, .357 mag. I’ve shot .45 ACP on several occasions, but never owned one. The one caliber I will probably never be without in the future is 9mm. It’s the goldilocks caliber for me. 9mm +P with a good bullet design like the HST gives me ample confidence in it’s ability to get the job done when it counts, should it ever come to that. It offers advantages in either magazine capacity or power over every other handgun caliber I’ve tried.

    If Ruger introduced a new 9mm carbine that takes my SR mags, I would be all over that so fast.

17. One caveat:

    The typical pressure of a shotgun round is, eh, anywhere from 11K PSI to maybe as much as 14K PSI on the high side.

    A 9×19 round’s MAP is 35K PSI. A 9×19 +P round will be up in the neighborhood of 38.5K PSI, and .40 S&W will be similarly pressured. .38 Special is typically under 20K PSI MAP, and .45 ACP is typically a tad over 20K PSI MAP. These pressures will bleed down quickly in a shotgun barrel, due to the expansion factor, but coming out of the end of the shorter adaptors, there’s a possible pressure peak that isn’t normal in a shotgun barrel, at a point where the barrel wall is getting much thinner. Shotgun rounds are powered by powders with burning rates that are much like pistol powders, so in a native shotgun round, the pressure will peak only an inch to two inches in front of the shell mouth. These adaptors might put a pressure peak further down the barrel than it normally is found in a shotgun.

    So, here’s my caveat: I wouldn’t use these adaptors in fine European shotguns, esp. British guns, nor old American doubles that might have had their bores honed out or the outside of the barrel polished down. Modern American mass-production shotgun barrels are so over-built that they could probably withstand 50K+ PSI MAP’s in a shotgun round, and they’ll probably be able to take anything these adaptors can chamber. Some American guns have barrel wall thicknesses of 0.045″, which makes them stupidly strong, but heavy and sometimes ponderous to swing.

    Many of the fine Brit/European guns have substantially thinner barrel walls – perhaps as little as half of the American wall thickness (0.025″, maybe less if it has been bored or polished down), which makes the gun “snappy” to swing, and lighter to carry in the field. Depending on the choice of steel used for the barrels, they might not show any evidence of a sudden high-pressure burst out of the end of these adaptors, but at the cost of these fine shotguns, do you want to be the lab rat to test this?

18. I have a thing like this. It lets me shoot .32s in my Mosin-Nagant- perfect for popping small game, and it sounds like a large airgun instead of a real gun. MCACE.com and Sportsman’s Guide sell them for rifles and shotguns.

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