Urastus wrote:6" drop for 9mm at 100 yards (91m), according to Paul 5.7 at 100 yards, 0. It's not just that, sure 9mm can do it, but why not have a caliber that is good for targets and comps? With rifles we have .308 which is good for shooting deer, but the 6.5cm is supposedly king on the range and less recoil with a smaller slug. You don't need huge recoil or a big slug. 9mm is a compromise really for self defense; it makes a big hole, it punches through layers of clothing blah blah, reasonable recoil, reasonable follow up shots. I'll probably end up with 9mm, because it's easy (cheap, wide availability). But I think there are better rounds for what us club shooters do, or want to do. I'd take a poke at the 200m gong
Drop at 100yds is dependant on what range you are zeroed at, but I guess what I meant is, for the potential accuracy you get from a 9mm semi-auto, you can hold dead-on to 100m. I don't recall what sort of groups I could shoot at 100m, but I could regularly hit the head of the old-style IPSC silhouette target at 85m (the longest range we had at the time) offhand, so I would guess around 8-10MoA offhand. I can't recall ever doing any rested target shooting past about 25m with a handgun. I did fairly regularly check zero, which was about a palm-width high at about 30m offhand (sight picture level with the shoulders for head shots), and I really only used 147gn bullets - I still have a few rounds of it.
I was able to shoot most of the cartridges that people were using in IPSC - 9mm, .38 Super, .40 S&W, .45ACP, .38 Special, .357 Magnum and .44 Magnum and probably a few odd ones that I've forgotton. I prefer 9mm for IPSC, but for simple enjoyment of shooting I prefer the .357 Magnum revolver.