Gun Digest's Handgun Ammo & Calibers Concealed Carry eShort by Grant Cunningham

Author:Grant Cunningham [Cunningham, Grant]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4402-3392-0
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 2012-04-12T04:00:00+00:00

Make sure you know what you’re buying! Standard pressure rounds on top, higher pressure rounds on bottom – note the (+P) on the box.

Some notes about self defense ammunition

I’ve mentioned several times that certain calibers suffer from a lack of suitable defensive ammunition. What constitutes defensive ammo?

Defensive ammunition needs to do several things simultaneously. It needs to get to something that is immediately important, and it has to do rapid and significant damage to that thing when it arrives. It also mustn’t have a tendency to travel through or significantly past the target and damage unintended targets.

A self defense round which meets all these criteria tends to be a hollowpoint of modern, non-clogging design. Hollowpoints are designed for rapid incapacitation and they’re available in most cartridges – but certainly not all. Those that are available may not be ideal for self defense.

The common calibers, such as .38 Special and .357 Magnum, have a wide choice of suitable hollowpoint ammunition. All of the major manufacturers have multiple satisfactory choices, and the smaller specialty makers will almost always load for those.

Once you get to the less popular calibers, or those which are not typically thought of as defensive rounds, the selection gets slimmer and the need to choose carefully becomes greater.

Remembering the dictum (that the bullet has to get to something important and still be able to do damage when it arrives) helps when wading through the available choices. For instance, the smaller calibers tend to lack the ability to penetrate sufficiently to get to something important, because they either lack mass (bullet weight) or expand too rapidly (bullet velocity). Heavier bullets increase penetration and decrease expansion, allowing the bullet to get to where it needs to go.

This is also true of larger calibers where the velocities are more modest. Picking a hollowpoint that is on the heavier end of the choices, and one which expands at lower velocities, is the key to maximizing the effectiveness of the round.

The large high velocity calibers, such as the .44 S&W Magnum, often show too much penetration. Designed for heavy hunting, such rounds often penetrate through the target without necessarily doing the work necessary for good incapacitation. In this case a bullet on the lighter side, which typically has higher velocity, expansion, and resulting in lower penetration, is the key to a good defensive tool.

A good defensive round needs to balance these characteristics for any particular caliber, but sometimes what’s needed isn’t available in a given cartridge. For instance, the heavy Magnum calibers often suffer from a lack of lighter bullets designed to limit penetration, and some of the older and less popular cartridges often lack a selection of rounds that expand for better terminal effectiveness. Of course this can change at an instant if an ammunition maker decides to offer a loading optimized for defensive use, so one should always research ammunition availability for any caliber in question.

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