Rotating Carry Ammo

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.

The Ideal Carry Load for 9mm?

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.

Making Your Own Carry Ammo?

It’s come time to replace my carry ammo. I’ve become lax about it. Normally I try to do this every six months, but it’s been more like a year. Faced with about a sixty dollar bill to do the replacement, it’s gotten me wondering about making my own loads. But conventional wisdom says this is a bad idea, because a prosecutor could try to argue in court that you custom made an extra lethal load, and your hand loads won’t be as reliable as factory ammo.

That’s always sounded far fetched to me, but decent ammo was cheap enough I didn’t care to really question this too much. Now that I have some experience with hand loading, I don’t really notice any reliability problems with my loads. What do you folks think? Is hand loading your carry load really a bad idea? What are some tips for doing so if you don’t think it’s a bad idea?

All It Takes is One Moment of Stupidity

And gun owners everywhere look like reckless jackasses.  The media is quick to pick up on it, and then you have the Brady Campaign.  From the OpenCarry forum:

An AD happened near the end of the picnic while a non-CPL holder was unloading his firearm so he could enter his vehicle lawfully.  He was at the Picnic with some friends and family earlier in the day.  This person is not a member of MOC, Inc.

This is why Michigan needs to allow any person that can lawfully own a handgun to carry it loaded in their vehicle.  The less a person has to handle their firearm the less chance for an AD.

This is also a cautionary tale to always be careful when handling any firearm.  It should be noted that the firearm was pointed in a safe direction (the ground) when it was fired.

That and the info in the article is all I know of at this time.

I wouldn’t call it an accidental discharge. Guns don’t go off if you don’t pull the trigger. ND, or negligent discharge, is the appropriate description.  I agree that laws that encourage gun handling are bad, but that doesn’t excuse unsafe gun handling. We’re fortunate in this case that he only broke one of the four rules, and no one was hurt.

Open Carry people represent us all when they do what they do. If you’re going to take on that responsibility, it would be nice if it were treated like a responsibility.

Same sh*t …

different century.  A New York Times article from July 24, 1881 discussing a proclamation, issued by Mayor King of Philadelphia, on the carrying of concealed weapons:

Mayor King issued a proclamation this morning calling attention to the violation of law relative to the carrying of concealed deadly weapons.  Among other things he says that whoever carries concealed weapons carries also the concealed thought of murder.

Someone has to stop all those filthy wops from carrying guns around our fair city, don’t they?  It was all fine as long as white anglo-saxons protestants were carrying weapons.

UPDATE: Looks like Mayor King made the mistake of pissing off the pyrotechnics lobby.  Looks like they were successful in defeating him too.

Do These People Sleep Through The Training Class?

This guy is a bozo:

Police say Webb was waiting in his car outside a Price Cutter store, 3260 E. Battlefield Road , when he saw the purse- snatching occur.

The thief hopped into a waiting sport utility vehicle, and Webb pursued the man.

He allegedly cornered the SUV in a nearby motel parking lot, and fired three shots with a 9mm handgun at the vehicle, an apparent attempt to disable its tires.

The purse thief’s vehicle escaped, and Webb allegedly engaged in a chase that reached speeds of 80 mph.

Shooting out the tires eh?  Where have I heard this before? Truth is he probably endangered life more with the 80mph high speed chase than trying to shoot out the tires, but shooting out the tires is probably what he’s going to get in the most trouble for.  It is never a good idea to bring deadly force into a property crime.  The police are better equipped to deal with this kind of situation.

One Cop’s View of Gun Ownership

Some very good advice, I think:

What do you do? Do you have a gun? Where is it? Is it loaded? Is it locked away or gun-locked? What are your chances of surviving an attack without a weapon compared to having one?

I’m not saying go buy the gun. I’m saying that if you already have one and you haven’t shot it or cleaned it in, let’s say, the last year, or if it is in the closet, unloaded and/or locked down, the fact is, you will not be able to get to it in time.

Crooks are deathly afraid of being shot. They don’t like being bitten by dogs or locked up by the cops, or going down with the swine flu either, but they really don’t like being shot.

Criminals pick on the weak, and yes, the naïve, and those that will offer the least threat to them as they commit the crime. If you have a weapon, clean it up, oil it up, shoot it and then decide if you need to have it in the home. That’s a tough question if you have kids.

I am an advocate of this philosophy.  I have told a few people I don’t think a gun is for them because I didn’t think they’d be serious about practicing with it, learning how to use it properly, or thinking seriously about storage options.

Too many people buy them as talismans — objects stashed away and largely not thought about in the closets or drawers, offering peace of mind and the illusion of safety.  And so it sits, waiting for a theft, or waiting for an accident.

Look Who’s Caused a Stir

The Roanoke Times columnist from last week apparently caused quite a stir with his column, which highlighted that you could get a license to carry a gun without ever having touched one, just like 600,000 people do in Pennsylvania, and many other states that have no training requirement.  You can say it’s reckless all you want, but we don’t exactly have significantly more problems than other states that do require training, probably because LTC holders are a self-selected bunch, and not many choose to get an LTC if they don’t know anything about guns.