Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns .380 ACP Bubba-style Torture Test

Here are the recovered bullets from the tests I did yesterday.





It should come as no surprise that I prefer the standard pressure hard cast and the Lehigh Xtreme Penetrator bullets in my .380 guns. Aside from the lack of expansion, they were able to hang with the 9mm Gold Dot from a penetration standpoint. (I now will have to try the 9mm Gold Dots from longer barreled guns to see how much more penetration they will deliver.) I was thinking about transitioning to the Lehigh 68 grain Xtreme Defense in my Sig. However, when I was chronographing after I ran the barrier test a couple of weeks ago, I got 1 malfunction in each of 2-5 shot strings. The empty case would not completely clear the ejection port both times. I don't recall exactly what happened the first time, but the second time the next live round was already partially inside the chamber. It appears to be cycling the slide so fast that the case is getting hung up between the rear of the barrel hood and the slide. I may give them a try in the Glock 42 because the recoil spring appears to be stiffer.

Aside from the malfunctions with the XD round, I have had no other malfunctions with the ammo tested in this thread. I did have 1 Sig V-Crown 90 grain hollow point (ironic considering that the gun is a Sig) that did not lock the slide back after the last shot when chronographing. The average muzzle velocity was an anemic 846 FPS. I did not bother to try that ammo in this series.

Stay safe.