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Wow; been awhile since I posted here! One of my my hobbies is roleplaying online, and in preparation for one that will be set in a post-post apocalyptic setting, I've been researching Victorian era firearms, which of course include a lot of classic, old west guns and calibers such as the .44-40 and reading up on the ballistics of it, it would seem that it has statistics at least as good as most modern pistol rounds, despite being a black powder weapon, which was surprising to me, as I thought BP was distinctively inferior to smokeless powder, let alone the evolved varieties of it we have today. With this in mind, what real advantages are 140+ years of handgun and propellant research really giving me? I'm looking this only from an ammunition perspective, not a platform one. In terms of terminal effects on the target, is there really any advantage of say a 10mm Super Redhawk firing Speer Gold Dot rounds over an 1870s Smith and Wesson Model 3 chambered in .44-40?