it's just the usual "hurr durr anything smaller than .45 is for girls" bullshit. Usually espoused by the sort of ancient old farts who remember carrying one in WWII, Korea, or Vietnam; and who dislike the general shift to smaller bullets going faster because they don't understand terminal ballistics.

Oh man, caliber debates. This shit is way more complicated than just X is more powerful than Y

Yeah, this rule really irked me.

This is... its an older meme, motivational poster format, wouldn't surprise me at all if it was made by a gung ho Gulf War vet either before or not long after Iraq 2 Electric Boogaloo commenced, drenched in Americana gun culture pride.

There are plently of pistol rounds other than .45 ACP that are quite good in combat scenarios, most at this point would probably agree that having more 9mm over less .45 is preferable, otherwise 2011s wouldn't even be a thing.

Also: its less common, but uh... 5.7?

5.7 is actually more likely to pen body armor, than a 9mm or a .45, if your scenario is you're fighting against other people with body armor.

And you can make a double stack magazine with it.

And there are a fair number of Police, Intelligence, Military organizations that use the FiveSeven regularly.

And... there are now even a growing number of hunters who will tell you that some kind of pistol in 5.7 is their backup, in case of something big ambushing them.

357 is of course very powerful, but they're also huge rounds in comparison to .45 or 9m... kinda hard to fit into a semi-auto pistol.

Unless you wanna talk about the .357 SIG.

... but we don't talk about the .357 SIG ...

And a .308 would smoke them all. It was specifying if you see smaller caliber, assume rifle.

TBF it does say 'rules for a gunfight' and not 'rules for a duck hunt'. If the duck is part of an armed offensive, and possibly wearing body armor, I think a double tap is appropriate.

Brings it home and put its in his home made duck flinging rig and skeet shoots it.

But they aren’t hand guns?

Well it doesn't start with ".4" so i guess their rule still stands for that.

Two bombs. They have to be larger than .4 inches though.

Give the GEP Gun.

Never know when you need to make a silent take down.

Chucking=dropping

I think the used picture is even older than the meme itself, my guess would be that it is from roughly the Gulf War era.

EDIT:

I am wrong, see below comments.

Yeah this picture is confusing. I went to boot in '09. We wore deuce gear, but it was green. I can't tell if there are picatinny rails on the rifles or not. There's no ACOGs. I'm definitely leaning toward your timeframe, but something definitely feels off about it. Dunno.

Bugging me cause it's boomer advice

9 is fine!

If you're worried about armor then .40 and .45 aren't doing shit either

relevant greentext

And I know a buo engineered half human half angel thing who prefers .45 Long Colt...

... but also prefers to never use it to kill.

This meme is old enough that the .45/1911 worship wasn't even a fudd thing, it was a huge section of the gun community if not the majority. The era of the Para Ordnance double stack being taken seriously and the Springfield TRP Operator being the ultimate combat pistol, at least if you couldn't afford a Wilson. All sorts of actual high speed guys were turning their noses up at 9mm to get their hands on a .45.

Is it, though? Even with a jungle mag or such? Dropping an entire gun, pulling out and aiming an entire new gun sounds pretty slow when you think about it.

Are those handgun calibers?

0.4 meters.

That number is generally considered to be larger than .4

Can't count, has guns. Yep, you're american.