Ten Ways to Get More Out of a Big-Bore Handgun — A Plain-English Map

Author : zab nabs | Published On : 08 Oct 2026

Ask ten cartridge designers across a century and a half how to build a harder-hitting handgun round and you get ten different engineering answers. This list is nearly a live demonstration: frontier lever-gun rounds, a converted-1911 cartridge, custom-shop revolver magnums and a rifle-caliber round that happens to be catalogued with the handguns.

Sorting them by the approach each one took makes the list far less random than the bore diameters suggest.

Make it long and mild

38 w.c.f took the 1874 approach: a long straight case at black-powder pressure that ran in both a Winchester rifle and a Colt revolver. A year later the Army adopted 45 schofield cartridge, a shortened .45 for the Smith & Wesson Model 3 that would also chamber in the Colt Single Action Army — logistics, not ballistics, drove both.

Make it fit a modern magazine

45 glock ammo went the other direction in 2003: shorten a .45-caliber case so it feeds from a Glock frame no bigger than a 9mm's. The velocity is ordinary; the point was the grip.

Lengthen a revolver case and build a stronger gun

.454 casull is the classic: Dick Casull stretched the .45 Colt case in the late 1950s and Freedom Arms built a five-shot revolver strong enough for it in 1983. .475 linebaugh ammo is John Linebaugh's version of the same idea at a larger bore, cut from .45-70 rifle brass for a custom Ruger conversion — the listings you find today are the factory descendants of a gunsmith's wildcat.

Give a semi-automatic pistol a magnum

45 win mag ammo arrived in 1979 for the Wildey gas-operated pistol, essentially a lengthened .45 ACP loaded to magnum pressure. 429de is the newest entry, Magnum Research's 2018 cartridge for the Desert Eagle — a .50 AE case necked down to .429 caliber so the same pistol could shoot flatter.

Shorten a giant so it fits a normal frame

500 s&w and bfr 500 magnum both answer the same complaint about the .500 S&W Magnum: the gun is enormous. The first is a lower-pressure loading of the same case family; the second, designed by Jack Huntington, shortens the case so a standard-length cylinder — the search term itself points at the Magnum Research BFR that made it famous — can carry near-Magnum power.

Leave the revolver behind entirely

45 raptor rifle stands apart: a rimless case based on the .460 S&W Magnum, designed for AR-10-pattern rifles rather than any revolver. The store files it with the handgun calibers; the guns chambered for it are mostly long guns, which is exactly what its most common search phrasing says.

What ties the list together

None of these approaches is objectively better. Each optimizes for one constraint — manufacturing simplicity, magazine fit, retrofit cost, or raw case capacity — and knowing which constraint a cartridge was solving explains why it looks the way it does.

Availability, pricing and shipping requirements for any cartridge listed above can change and vary by state. Confirm current stock, your state's age and identification requirements, and any local shipping restrictions before placing an order.