How can a 38 be a 22?

There is always a great deal of confusion concerning the choice of handguns in plays, often compounded by the description in the script. Part of the problem comes from the playwright not knowing much about guns, but much of it comes from the short-hand terms which police and armed forces use. Some of these terms have become part or our common usage through the sheer blanket force of movies and television, which ironically have so much power that they in turn affect newspaper and gun-enthusiasts’ terminology. The result is that most people think they are talking about something specific when actually they are only describing the generic or incidental.

Suppose for a moment that you’re helping a friend find his car in a large parking lot. He tells you that he owns a V-8. Then, to be more helpful, he mentions that it is a Ford V-8. He thinks he has told you a great deal, but he has only described the engine. You still don’t know if you’re looking for a sedan, a pick-up, a sports car, a van, what color it is, how many doors, etc. Ford Motor Co. used the V-8 in a lot of car models, and right now you need to identify the car by look, not by what’s under the hood.

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The same problem happens when we talk about guns. If you tell me you need a Colt 45, I have a good idea that you are probably taking about one of two guns that at different times have been described as such, but since there are actually two dozen different gun models that could just as accurately be called a Colt 45, I’d much rather know in what year the play is set, who the character is, and where did he get the gun.

The biggest confusion begins when we try to identify a style of handgun by its caliber. We read "shot by a 38" or "was carrying a 357 magnum", and we attach a mental picture of what the gun must look like. Unfortunately, caliber numbers refer only to the internal diameter of the barrel, measured in hundredths of an inch, and so describes the width of the bullet it requires. The bigger the number, the fatter the bullet. Most gun manufacturers make several different styles of guns, and then will make each style in several different calibers, both English and metric, to appeal to the widest possible market. Since the same basic gun frame might be outfitted with any one of a half dozen different sized barrels, it is impossible to look at a photograph of a gun and identify its caliber. So where do we get this "shot by a 38" business?

Well the papers might be correct in saying that someone was shot by a 38 caliber bullet, and that it logically came out of a 38 caliber gun. The most common of 38 caliber handguns is the revolver that had, until recently, been the standard issue revolver of most police forces in the United States. So ubiquitous had this gun become for police officers that when they speak among themselves of a 38, they are referring to the gun frame style with which they are familiar rather than the bullet. But there are many completely different styles of guns that can just as correctly be described as 38 caliber handguns.

The US army issues a side arm too, and after the Spanish American War had decided not on a revolver (the bullet chamber revolves after each bullet is fired) but on a semi-automatic pistol (the bullets are fed from a clip inside the grip). The job was granted to Colt Firearm company. Colt had already made successful pistols for the government since 1836. So which is the "Colt 45" mentioned in the script? The cowboy gun, or the square frame modern looking semi-auto? Model 1870, 1873, 1878, 1894, 1898, 1902, 1911, 1972? They all look different, and are all "Colt 45’s".

Movies and television have also forced the idea on us that a larger gun is a more powerful gun, but again the size of the gun frame has nothing to do with the size of the bullet or how much gunpowder is behind it. A long barrel will make a bullet fly more accurately and further, so would be chosen for target practice or hunting, and a short barrel is going to be inaccurate at even short distances. So it is not uncommon to see massive revolvers that are only 22 caliber, or tiny pocket guns that are .45’s.

European manufactures use metric measurements, and in order for US armed forces to be able to share NATO stock in the event of a war, the Army switched to metric pistols. A lot of semiautomatic handguns are made for 9mm ammunition, so we hear of a "9" as being a semi-auto pistol. But English or metric, a bigger number means a fatter bullet. Below are some (very rough) diameter equivalents:

22 cal = 6 mm

32 cal = 8 mm

38 cal = 9 mm

45 cal = 12 mm

but keep in mind that the ammunition from one style cannot be used in the gun of another. 38 caliber is close to 9mm, but not the same. The firing mechanism for a gun will effect the shape of the bullet case too. 22 caliber ammunition for a 22 caliber semi-auto pistol cannot be used in a 22 caliber revolver.

[If you liked that, you’ll love how they designate the ammunition size for shotguns. Instead of simply measuring the diameter of the barrel and telling you that number, they have a gauge designation. Oh, they still measure the diameter, but then they calculate how much a sphere of lead that same diameter would weigh (I'm not kidding). Then they determine how many lead balls of that size it would take to weigh one pound. (This is all theoretical, because shotguns fire small pellets, not large balls.) Think about it for a minute and you’ll see that a 12 gauge shotgun has a larger barrel opening than a 16 gauge shotgun, and 20 gauge is smaller still. This goes back to the old cannonball and musket ball designations, given up long ago for rifles and pistols but maintained by shotguns for some inane reason.

One other part of the problem in identification is the name of the manufacturer. Popular styles beget popular clones (Just ask IBM or Xerox), so when one company comes out with a popular gun, every other manufacturer follows suit. The common name would often be associated with the maker that made it first or sold the most, but for example an Iver-Johnson .25 might refer to one of several pistol or rifle styles which Iver-Johnson Co. made over the years, but it could also mean any of the knock-offs that were produced at the same time by other manufacturers. So you really need to know what the common terminology was in the year of the play if you want to know what kind of gun is required. Wait, it gets worse. The name Derringer, for example, can mean either the manufacturer (which made several different styles of handguns), or one of three different blackpowder single-shot pistols of the 1800’s, or a completely different style of two-shot pistol of the 1900’s (add to that the problem of three different manufacturers trying to use the Derringer name, and different spellings of the name, and newspaper reporters calling any pocket pistol a Derringer, and it gets really fun).