Buying new pistol, need advice

[PARAGON]

Originally Posted by ETD

Sorry, to be a wee bit slow, but...
Big Z, in your photo's, the magnums were NOT "bigger" but longer and all but the .22 had the metallic cap so that to a novice, those were the differences NOT the overwhelming size difference as in your photo's of the drinking containers. Or was that because of the loss of perspective in the photo's of the bullets and there IS really that much difference in size.
Paragon, that's what I was wondering. That is, the difference in projectile effectiveness has to do with the fact that there is that much more explosive material in the magnum bullets and not that they are longer and capped with some other metal (i.e. they needed to be longer to be able to hold more explosive force).
BTW, I figured that if shape was of primary importance, wouldn't bullets still be spherical? Doesn't a sphere going forward in air have the least drag coefficient or is my physics too rusty?

The "bullet" itself really has nothing to do with it being a magnum or not. Magnum labeling comes from the powder charge, generally.

The shape, design, make-up, etc. of the bullet is something completely different and refers to it's caliber size (.22 or .38 for instance) and then the various ways the bullet itself is designed. Soft Point, Full Metal Jacket, Hollow Point, Wadcutter, etc. Then you get into more intricacies such as ballistic tip sierra boattail, etc etc. All of that refers just to the bullet.

Cartridges are labeled various things by the manufacturers and magnum was just something they came up with for a specific caliber "bullet" that has a higher powder charge (requires more space behind the bullet, hence the longer casing) to be more powerful.

So, Big Z's point was that there's more punch in a magnum due to the gunpowder load.

[PARAGON]

In magnum centerfire rifles, the casing is generally longer AND "fatter" than their non-magnum counterparts.

It's a design element. In theory, one could design a "magnum" cartridge that was the same height as it's standard counterpart, but with a fatter casing and then neck down the top to fit the caliber. That's just not done in handgun applications.

I think that was what you were refering to.