they are so sad

so i'm 50/50 on whether this is genuine or bait. if it's not bait, i'm so sorry. you did nothing wrong. it's just that i get a lot of messages that are so very clearly not in good faith. if it is bait, well, joke's on you because i'm about to say a bunch of words and a bunch of people are gonna read them. so.

i think the most obvious answer to your question is the jack situation but i'm not sure it's the correct one. i think by the time we even get to jack (especially to the soulless!jack part of it all) a lot of people have already sort of lost the plot on why dean is ever behaving the way he is. there's this tendency to view his behavior as if he wants to control the people closest to him, not always because he's inherently malicious but often because he wants to keep them safe and keep them close to him to the detriment of himself and everyone around him (see look! it's not deancrit! we know he's not a bad guy. we're just being objective and he's just an abusive asshole who should burn in hell). and i get it. i see how they got there.

but it's frustrating because how they got there is by 1. taking every single thing the characters say at face value despite all evidence to the contrary 2. viewing every single thing dean does or says in a vacuum, removed from any and all context and 3. forgetting that supernatural is a fantasy show, not a family drama or sitcom.

take the demon blood story line for example. what we actually see is:

sam going on a mission for revenge regardless of the costs or consequences (which he's aware exist even if he doesn't know the exact details)

dean trusting his brother until he finds out his brother's been lying to him

sam being told that what he's doing is wrong on multiple occasions by multiple people

dean offering ruby his gratitude for saving sam's life and an apology for the way he's been treating her since he got back from hell

sam continuing to lie and act shady

dean telling sam that he doesn't care about the demon blood/sam's powers, he just cares about sam's behavior

sam draining an entire nurse and killing her

sam almost killing dean on purpose and telling him he's not strong enough, not like sam is

dean still being the one to offer an apology when all is said and done, twice

but all of that gets rewritten into a narrative that dean's just never trusted sam ever and sam was only doing something he thought was right because all he ever wanted to do was save people. how could he have possibly known something bad would happen? and now, even after the fact, even after sam's said he's sorry, dean still won't let it go and holds it against sam forever and ever.

this narrative persists throughout the fandom. why? because sam threw a few tantrums in which he rewrote what was happening and dean didn't protest and the fandom took it at face value. (1)

on top of that, deancrits treat each of dean's actions like they happened in a vacuum. one of the things deancrits fixate on the most regarding the demon blood plot is dean saying, "You walk out that door, don't you ever come back." in 4x21. they treat it as if dean was being controlling and manipulative; abusive, even. they treat it as if, out of nowhere, dean just decided to throw john's words in sam's face because sam simply wouldn't do what dean wanted him to do.

what actually happened, however, was that sam had been lying to dean for twenty-one episodes about what he was doing, despite the continued warnings not to do what he was doing, and now sam had beaten the shit out of dean, left him bruised and bloodied on the floor, to go do something that dean had been told repeatedly, from a source they all thought was the authority on the subject, that sam absolutely should not do. what actually happened was dean made a last-ditch desperate effort to stop his brother from doing something dangerous that would get himself and possibly a lot of other people killed. (2)

the deancrits also tend to magically forget they're watching a genre show, not a family drama, when it comes to analyzing dean. the source of conflict wasn't that dean just didn't like sam's new girlfriend because sam trusted her more than him. it was that sam's new girlfriend was a demon and dean had just gotten back from forty years in hell being tortured... by demons. it was that dean had angels of the lord, before he really knew that the angels couldn't be trusted, telling him he needed to stop sam. it was that the angel that rescued him from an eternity of torture and becoming a demon himself told him that he needed to stop sam. (3)

so the deancrits frame this conflict between sam and dean as if dean just didn't trust sam, for no reason other than sam was hanging out with somebody else, and dean was being irrational about it. after all, sam was only trying to stop lilith, right? dean was being irrational and controlling. and it sounds reasonable when you look at it from their perspective. but their perspective is not anywhere near the reality of what was actually happening.

and that happens over and over and over again. we see it with the idea that dean is the one who is codependent to a toxic degree, despite all evidence to the contrary*. we see it with the idea that dean thinks all monsters should die and sam wants to save/help them. we see it with the conflict in s6 being framed as dean just being angry that cas dared to do something without his permission. we see it with the fractured relationship between the brothers in s8, both regarding dean's return from purgatory and the trials. we see it with the gadreel arc and then the one with cas leading the angels. we see it with the mark of cain and the darkness. we see it with mary's return. and then we see it with jack, and most especially we see it with soulless!jack.

it's all so exhausting. by the time we get to jack, the deancrit has piled up the same way the narrative circumstances weighing on dean have, and so it feels like deancrits are fundamentally misunderstanding the situation more severely than they have anything else but i think in reality it's just the last straw.

so i guess what i'm trying to say is that the misunderstanding isn't necessarily about the individual arcs but about the way a genre story is told in general. they're not just unfairly critiquing an arc. they're mischaracterizing a whole ass dude and fifteen seasons of a show.

*dean dragged sam back into hunting. how do we know that? because sam said it. what did we actually see? dean bringing sam back to stanford for his interview. sam going back to hunting because of the fire that killed jess. dean wanting to take a break from hunting several times while sam kept pushing them to keep going. dean wanting to split up and stay away from each other for awhile after the demon blood thing. sam leaving amelia before he even knew dean was alive/back from purgatory. dean telling sam to go back to amelia. sam choosing, all on his own, not to go back to amelia. sam basically threatening suicide because dean had other friends. sam unleashing the darkness because he didn't want to be alone. etc. etc. etc.

Supernatural S3E04 Sin City

this scene haunts me... the fact that sam is talking to a priest possessed by a demon. and the red light on his face right after he said "like what?"

Or: why Sam has more guns, but Dean is the better shot

So I can’t find much proper meta about the weapons (and even the SPN wiki was making mistakes.) But I think there’s a goldmine of good character stuff here. Ryan Steacy has been the SPN armorer since the beginning of the show, and he’s put some really nice thought into the boys. Respect, love, appreciation for him. 

So… I’ll just jump right in, shall I? 

Dean’s M1911A1

Dean carries the baddass American pistol. It’s very macho, very MURICA. The 1911 was the service gun during WWI & WWII, right up through the Korean war. So it gets (and deserves) a lot of love. They have a reputation for needing more maintenance than some modern pistols, but considering how often Dean’s just sitting there, casually cleaning while chatting with Sam, he probably sees this as more a feature than a bug. He’s a natural mechanic. Firearm maintenance is probably relaxing and zen for him. 

(I do think that for Sam it’s more a stressed-based compulsion. He tends to do it when he’s feeling helpless or scared. In “Hello, Cruel World” Dean interprets Sam’s gun-cleaning as sign that he’s in a bad headspace. 

BOBBY: Well, at least he’s not curled up under the sink.  DEAN: Yeah, no, he’s just sitting there silently field stripping his weapon. 

And Hallucination!Lucifer sees it as evidence that Sam’s suicidal. Sam goes for a more traditionally low-maintenance pistol, and I kinda think Dean may clean it for him a lot of the time.)

But anyway. Dean’s 1911 holds large .45 caliber Colt ACP rounds - which means it can only fire seven shots before he has to reload. (Sam’s pistol, by the way, can fire seventeen shots in a row.) 

And people who like the 1911 say this is fine. The bullets are so big and the gun is so powerful that seven shots is all you need. (You hear the phrase “stopping power” or “knock-down power” a lot.) But there are also the people who think that the 1911 is just over-powerful, and it isn’t worth it to sacrifice carrying capacity and accuracy for pure force. 

Because yeah, it is harder to be a really good shot when you’re using .45 ACP rounds. Target shooting teachers will probably start you off with baby .22mm bullets, then slowly move you up to something bigger (bigger bullets = slower bullets = less accurate bullets. Also more recoil, which makes everything harder.) This guy is kind of intense, but puts it well when he says “every step up the caliber ladder means another round of very serious training.” 

But hey, Dean is a better shot than Sam

Like, I don’t think it’s ever explicitly stated, but of course he is? 

Their entire childhood, it would have been Sam going back to the motel room early to study or do his homework, while Dean dutifully puts in another three hours shooting coke cans off fenceposts. 

This also helps explain his choice of handgun. Dean uses a less accurate pistol with a smaller carrying capacity because he can. He knows he’s going to hit the thing the first time. And if he’s going to be fighting literal wendigos, I guess he wants the holes he pokes in them to be as big as possible. 

(plus all this classic Americana does kind of go with the Impala) 

Sams’ Taurus PT92AFS

Sam spends the first season borrowing Dean’s Smith & Wesson 5906. It’s very clearly Dean’s - it fires .45 ACP rounds (Dean’s preference) and Dean sometimes actually loads it before handing it over to Sam. Since Sam doesn’t actually want to be a hunter though most of S1, this makes perfect sense. 

Then in S2, Sam gets his Taurus PT92AFS – basically, a budget version of the  Beretta M92. In a lot of ways, the Taurus is the souped-up Honda civic you get when you can’t afford a Ferrari. (and in both cases, you’ll totally get people saying they’re being smart by not paying extra for the brand name.) 

A Taurus  PT92AFS is a practical and cautious choice. It’s not the least bit flashy. It’s light and accurate, it carries a lot of rounds, and they’re little .99mm rounds, which are more budget conscious and accurate than .45 ACP rounds.

Partway into S2, Sam’s Taurus gets nickel plating and pearl grip. Possibly Sam did this so his gun would match Dean’s. Or possibly Dean customized Sam’s pistol as a gift. (it’s the firearm equivalent of painting racing stripes on your car.) Either way, it’s a pretty darn cute touch. 

Sam’s Taurus Judge (his “witch killer”) 

“For an unknown reason, Sam appears to prefer using this gun for firing witch-killing bullets rather than loading his regular pistol with them. In contrast, Dean uses his Colt M1911A1 for witch-killing bullets rather than employing a similar practice.” 

@supernaturalwiki, it’s because the witch-killing bullets Sam makes are .45 ACP, not .99mm. They wouldn’t fit in Sam’s normal Taurus PT92AFS. He makes them for Dean, so of course he makes them in a caliber that Dean prefers. 

Sam’s Taurus Judge is a close-quarters backup piece that fires five shots. This is just in case Dean (the better shot) isn’t able to take out the main threat. Hilariously, the Judge is a revolver that chambers both .45 ACP rounds and shotgun shells. This means Sam can load it up with rock-salt shells or witch-killing bullets or silver bullets. So you know. Whatever’s on the menu that day. 

Soulless!Sam’s Heckler & Koch Mk23

Sam switches over to this when he loses his soul, then switches back to his Taurus products when he gets his soul back. When Soulless!Sam and Sam!Sam fight in their vision quest, they fight Heckler & Koch vs Taurus. 

The Heckler & Koch Mk23 is designed to have the power of Dean’s 1911 and the carrying capacity of Sam’s .99mm handgun. So it’s huge, and very intimidating. It’s waterproof, crazy durable. It’s made by a fancy schmancy German defense contractor known for their precision engineering and their popularity with the special forces. H&K weapons are also known for being crazy expensive. This pistol would have set Sam back at least $2,000 (and for reference, you can get a Taurus PT92AFS for $500, easy.) So, either Soulless!Sam killed someone with a Mk23 and looted it, or somehow raised 2K very quickly. And I’m not even sure which option is more terrifying. 

But the Mk23 still has that vibe of practicality and caution that Sam seems drawn too. (’Over-prepared’ is a good word to describe it.) It’s still an in-character choice. Just, Soulless!Sam is more brusque and intimidating when he’s dealing with persons of interest, as opposed to Sam!Sam’s softer, more approachable manner. And I think those two attitudes are pretty well represented by the H&K Mk23 and the Taurus PT92AFS respectively. 

Interestingly, the H&K Mk23 does not fire Sam’s normal .99mm bullets. It fires the larger .45 ACP caliber rounds. And Soulless!Sam can get away with this because - I’m pretty sure Soulless!Sam is a much better shot than Sam!Sam. 

SAM: Ever since I came back, I am a better hunter than I’ve ever been! Nothing scares me anymore. ‘Cause I can’t feel it. 

Like again, why wouldn’t he be? Soulless!Sam is ice cold, steady heartbeat in a crisis. Marksmanship is a mental thing as much as it’s practice, and Soulless!Sam’s hands aren’t shaking. And that’s why he eventually switches back to his Taurus PT92AFS. It doesn’t matter if your shots are more powerful, if they don’t hit anything. 

(he still does have that H&K Mk23, though. He cleans it when he’s in a bad mental place. It’s not like he borrowed it from the Campbells or anything.) 

tl;dr

Dean uses big slow American bullets, because he’s a good enough shot to compensate. Sam uses little, accurate European bullets, and he uses a lot of them (because he’s cautious, and not quite as good as shot as his brother.) The witch-killing bullets Sam makes are a larger caliber, because he makes them for Dean. He’s got a little revolver that can take them, but he’d prefer it if he didn’t have to use it so much. 

Soulless!Sam is both a better shot, and not adverse to giant expensive German handguns acquired though less-than-legal means. So he switches over to a pistol that shoots giant bullets, and lots of them. 

I’m seeing this post go by my dash with tags about using it as a writing resource, but there are some errors in it, so for more accurate writing about the handguns in spn, please take the following into account as well.

Like OP, I am not a firearms expert. The extent of my qualifications for writing about handguns is that I bought one for its intended purpose, regularly shot it for several years, and because I live in a state with tight gun control, was required to take a three month handgun usage class, taught by cops, to get my pistol permit. I welcome correction of any errors.

Ammunition

For people looking to write with technical accuracy about Sam and Dean’s handguns, probably the most important correction is that afaik, there is no such thing as “.99mm” ammunition. Sam’s Taurus takes what’s usually just called “9mm” rounds, or slightly more technically “9x19 parabellum”, or “9mm luger”.

Ammunition is classified by the diameter of the cartridge. A .45 has the decimal point in front because it’s .45 of an inch in diameter. A 9mm has no decimal point because it’s 9 millimeters in diameter. A 9x19 round is 9mm across and 19mm long.

.45 APC cartridges, as OP says, have more stopping power than 9mm, while 9mm cartridges are smaller and lighter, allowing both for more rounds before reloading and less recoil/greater accuracy. 9mm is by no means the cautious fallback choice of people with lesser gun handling skills though. 9mm is the most popular ammo in the world; like .45 ammunition, was designed for usage in guns originally made for war (”parabellum” is from the motto of the first manufacturer of 9mm cartridges and means “prepare for war”); and is used by more than half of police forces worldwide.

The meta of handguns (Or: handguns are made for killing/They ain’t no good for nothing else).

In the immortal words of Lynyrd Skynyrd and my gun safety instructor, handguns are made for killing. They’re easy to use and don’t actually take much skill to kill with. There’s slightly more to it than “point and pull trigger” but not a ton, especially compared to other skills like “drive a car from Point A to Point B” or “use a laptop to gain accurate information online”. Dean’s M1911A1 is a badass, classic piece of Americana that’s good at killing. Sam’s Taurus is a big, practical workhorse of a firearm that’s good at killing. They’re owned by two killers who are good at killing.

I think it’s fair, based on the rest of canon as a whole, to deduce that Sam and Dean’s choices of handgun are reflective of their different attitudes towards killing. Both Sam and Dean bear an intergenerational curse: Dean’s is that he’s good at killing and he likes it. Sam’s is that he’s good at killing and he doesn’t like it. Dean’s gun matches his identity; he’s a hunter and is proud of it. He loves classic Americana–his leather jacket, his car, his taste in music, and his gun–and he sees it as part of who he is. Sam’s gun also matches his identity; he’s a hunter because he has to be. He’s there to get the job done with as little of himself sucked into it as possible.

But nothing can be deduced from either canon or Sam and Dean’s handgun choices about who is a better killer. That’s not how handguns really work and it’s not how spn worked thematically.

Symbolism in media isn’t there to tell a story that is different than the story being told on the surface; it’s there to reinforce the story being told on the surface. Sam killed a super-powered vampire dude with razor wire and his bare hands. He destroyed himself with demon blood in order to kill better and with less collateral damage. Here he is shooting the scope off a sniper rifle with his handgun from down two floors and across a street:

Dean, obviously, is also an incredibly skilled and motivated killer. He tortured people for 40 years for a living. There’s a grenade launcher in the back of his car that’s a running gag for most of a season because he wants a chance to destroy something with it so badly. Cain calls him a worthy bearer of the Mark because he’s such a good killer, and he agrees (Sam, we find out later, is also qualified to bear the Mark).

I don’t know anything about sport shooting. Maybe in sport shooting, instructors do “start you off with baby .22mm [sic] bullets, then slowly move you up to something bigger“. But for defensive shooting, at least in my experience, they start you off with whatever gun you bought. A high caliber handgun is all I’ve ever shot and is honestly just not that hard to shoot accurately. Skill comes from practice. Sam and Dean both kill a lot. We’re supposed to understand that they’re not just good at it; they’re exceptional, and although it’s cool (like Han Solo) it’s also destroying them (like Luke Skywalker).

The idea that Sam is a less skillful killer because he doesn’t like it, that he makes witch killing bullets for Dean in Dean’s favorite caliber and then has to have a second gun to act as a back up for his more competent brother, that he picked his handgun because it’s low maintenance and then Dean cleans it for him anyway, or that he picked it to compensate for being a poorer shot–all of that is confirmation bias. None of it is anywhere in the text, and it comes from the idea that Dean is the protagonist and Sam is the deuteragonist. And the actual text of spn is not that.

And of Dean Winchester's association with angels and self-sacrifice despite being the "Simple brother who likes porn and strippers and pie and doesn't mind killing"

And I kept thinking that with all the violent escalation against both heaven and hell that it would be so poetic and inevitable for them to defeat both God and the Devil only to realize that the natural order exists for a reason, and that someone has to fill those roles,

And I thought it was so inevitable that Sam, the good and righteous one with dark impulses would resign himself to ruling Hell while Dean, the brash and violent one so anxious to know that he might be good would rule Heaven, and neither would die but instead remain diametrically opposed yet tied together in eternity in undeath just as they were in life, a master of heaven and a master of hell maintaining the balance of life and death as brothers, equals and opposites

And that seemed like such a foreshadowed and bygone conclusion that I was certain that it was what the writers had planned

Dean: But don't you hate yourself?

the madonna of lillies by william bouguereau (1899) ➤ supernatural; pilot (2005)