Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns What ammo do you carry in your 9mm?

quite a few years ago i bought a case of silver bear i think 115 or 124 grain jhp, stashed it and haven't looked at it since.
i think the jacket had steel in it, and they stopped importation.
sooner of later i am going to shoot a box of that into something and see what it does.

I've been carrying this stuff for several years now and have shot and tested a bunch of it. (I mostly buy the bullets and load my own.) Good penetration is one of the things I really like about them. They don't expand, but they do give some of the effect of an expanding bullet; the wound channels aren't the same but they are effective.

65BR,

I shoot nothing for self-defense in my Sig-Sauer P225/P6 except 115 Grain HORNADY CRITICAL DEFENSE JHP, as I've found nothing that shoots as well in my P225/P6.
(I've probably tried at least 2 dozen other sorts of 9x19mm factory ammo & none of them are superior to what I'm using, in this particular handgun.)

Otoh, I once had a 9mm Colt's Government Model that shot nothing as well as high-velocity 147 grain JHP. = My GUESS is that virtually every handgun has a "favorite" load, IF the owner had time & money to test the many available loads. - MOST shooters find "an acceptable load" that shoots "decently" & thereafter sticks with that load.
(The only reason that I found "an optimal load" for my EDC handgun is that I once was "a range rat" at a regional police academy & many students left behind many small numbers of many different sorts of factory 9mm ammo, which we staff-members were allowed to expend on the range for practice.)

yours, tex

Just regular old 115 gr ball ammo.

where are you able to buy the bullets by themselves. I must have overlooked that somehow.
oops, see midway cary's them. have you found loading spec's?
oops again, found it should let my fingers do the walking first.
i didn't know they were making that many bullets with loading instructions:
https://www.lehighdefense.com/lehigh-defense-load-data-library

To all-


Bullets are designed to work within an operational velocity range. Pushing a Speer Gold Dot/HST/Ranger faster DOES NOT increase its tissue wounding ability. Quite the opposite generally.


Pistols kill by destroying tissue. Being that impact velocity is below 2,000’iah FPS there is no, to extremely minor damage caused by the temporary cavity. All of the damage is from the permanent crush cavity- i.e.- what the bullet physically touches. There is a reason that organizations who’s job it is to actually use pistols to kill humans all use hollow point/plugged ammunition that meets FBI spec. The Xtreme penetrators, etc. look neat on paper, in actual tissue they cause about as much damage as FMJ’s. That is to say poor compared to modern, robust, expanding HP’s.

Really...then I guess the last two guys I saw shot with a .22 that were non-CNS hits and dropped within a couple of seconds of their being hit died of...fright?

Right.

And all the targets splattered by light weight 357 magnum slugs over the years were hallucinations.

The plural of anecdotes is not data.

What are you two talking about?

Not everyone believes the hole punch theory of handgun ballistics.

RJM thinks the .22LR is a better man stopper than a 9mm with modern hollow points.

Of course his calling you out for you "inexperience" doesn't exactly add to his credibility.

well
that underwood with the lehigh bullet seemed like it outperformed in penetration through various mediums and good peformance after penttrating. I am gonna buy some of the bullets, lehigh, and load them myself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0piGeTVMZWs

Wrong again about the Lehigh stuff and a lot of other bullets, as can be seen by shooting actual meat, but we've been over this before.

Yeah, I get them from either Lehigh or Midway.
For a +P+ load I worked up with Silhouette to a bit higher than the Lehigh data, and stopped about 25 fps shy of Underwood's +P+ load. That's been a good accurate load that is safe and reliable in my Glocks. Use at your own risk in your guns of course.

What 9mm ammo do you recommend?

It’s not a theory. It’s literally the only damage observed in tissue with service handguns.







I’ve seen what a Lehigh does in tissue. Have you?

What actual meat? You mean the largest database of results from actual shooting in humans, the largest, most researched and peer reviewed terminal ballistics findings from the largest, most well funded, and resourced terminal ballistics facilities?

Or are we talking deer? Of which I have killed hundreds of, and dozens with 380, 9mm, 40 S&W, 357 Sig and Mag, 45 auto, 44 mag, and 454 Casull using FMJ, hardcast, and modern HP’s?

No, there is no magic to Lehighs. The wounds created are nearly indistinguishable from flat nosed FMJ’s.

To caveat- I really don’t care as long as the consistent penetrate 12+ inches straight line. All service caliber pistols suck unless you hit CNS. Therefore I, and those I work with default to CNS for everything.


Having said that- any rounds that meet FBI spec across the board. Speer 147gr Golddot, Speer Gold Dot G2 147gr, 147gr HST, Hornady Critical Duty 135gr+p, Barnes 115gr XPD +p, etc. They’re all good.

Thanks

That's not at all what he was saying.

Speaking of anecdotes..