Month: October 2009

Good show, I say:

His daughter was hiding under a bed when she heard him crying as the gunmen thrashed him with sticks. According to police, she ran towards her father’s attacker and struck him with an axe. As he collapsed, she snatched his AK47 and shot him dead.

She also shot and wounded another militant as he made his escape.

Police have hailed the woman’s bravery.

They said she would be nominated for the president’s gallantry award.

And good show on the part of the police for praising her behavior. Here they would have had to publicly say what a bad idea it is to fight back, and how such things can easily turn against the defender.

Dusting came up with a handy map.  New Hampshire and Alaska are is 16?  I didn’t know that.  Gang ridden crime havens those two states are.  I also didn’t know MD and DE were 18, even though you can’t get a license to carry in Maryland. But Delaware does issue CCDW permits, but since it’s may-issue I don’t know if they’d actually issue to an 18 year old.

Justin throws a post into the ring on the hand load carry round question, and talks about rotating ammo:

Here’s where I air my dirty laundry: I’m a dunderhead when it comes to picking carry ammo. It’s just not something that I dwell on. I don’t even rotate it out every 6-12 months. I’ve carried with factory ammo that’s over 4 years old. I buy some, run a few magazines through the gun and if it works, which it always has, I’ll keep it around far longer than any gunny would think proper.

I have tended to rotate my ammo every six months to a year, but mostly just because it seemed like good practice. Ammo does last a long time, on the shelf. But carry ammo is not ammo that’s sitting in a safe or a foot locker, in its factory container, often sealed. You’re carrying it around with you. You sweat, you extrude oils, salts and various proteins, which get on the ammo when you handle it, and are on the dust particles your skin and clothes give off and end up in your gun. Every time you chamber and unload, you’re putting stress on the ammunition components.

Now, I will say, I’ve never had a round misfire or jam in my gun, even when I’ve shot carry ammo I’ve carried for a year, and then had in my foot locker for two more. So I don’t think the folks who said they don’t rotate are risking that much. But there’s another reason I’ve always thought rotating was a good idea.  When you run your 20 or 50 rounds of carry ammo through it gives you a good idea that your gun and magazine will still feed it reliably. A good rule of thumb is that you should run a hundred or so rounds of carry ammo through your gun before relying on it. I will admit that I have not always been good about doing that, but I also carry a common gun and carry common loads, so I’m pretty confident any feeding problems a Glock 19 has with any common carry load are well known. But I still think it’s a good idea to dump a few full magazines every now and then of your carry ammo just to check everything out.

Choice choices. Having considered whether to hand load your own carry ammo or not, I decided against it. The hypothetical downsides to hand loading carry ammo are just that, and I think the odds of it becoming a factor are very remote. But we carry firearms to ward off the possibility of an incident which is itself remote, and even though I think it’s terribly unlikely to end up having to explain your load in court, I also think the upsides to using hand loads are too trivial to risk even this remote possibility. As best I can tell, you save money, and if you’re a good reloader, get something that’s about as reliable as factory carry ammo. To me that’s not enough upside.  Plus, I’d have to take time to develop a load I feel confident in.

So now it’s back to factory ammo. Traditionally I have carried Cor-Bon DPX, in 115gr.  But it’s expensive. I decided to give Speer Gold Dot a try, because it’s cheaper. That round is probably carried by more police agencies than anything else, so I can’t imagine it has an awful reputation. But what load is ideal? I carry a 9mm Glock 19, which means I have a choice between 115 gr. GDHP, 124gr GDHP and 147gr GDHP.  Velocities on those are 1210fps, 1220fps, and 985fps, with energies of 374ft/lbs, 410ft/lbs, and 317ft/lbs.  The 124gr load is +P.

Now, if you look at Cor-Bon loadings, their 115gr is their most energetic load, at 466ft/lbs, but it achieves this with a velocity of 1350fps.  Since energy is ¹/₂mv² you get a lot more out of speed than mass, energy wise. But it’s regarded that momentum, which is just mass times velocity, has more relation to stopping power than energy, which means a slow, heavy bullet will stop an attacker more readily than a light, fast one. Light, fast bullets also have the disadvantage of penetrating farther. But it takes speed to get a jacketed hollow point bullet to expand reliably, so there are tradeoffs.

I think the 124gr Gold Dot is probably the best offering from Speer. Even though I’ve carried both the 115gr Cor-Bon JHP and 115gr Cor-Bon DPX in the past, I think Speer’s heavier offering is better than their lighter one. I don’t want to seem like I’m religious about loads, because I’m not. Load differences isn’t going to amount to much if your shots are poorly placed. But if I do, heavens forbid, have to use my firearm in self-defense, I’ll need all the help I can get.

What do you think? Please leave a comment.