practice ammo vs defesne ammo

[RollingCode3]

I always hear people say that you need to practice with the personal defense loads and you must shoot it to determine whether it feeds reliably. Most ranges if not all in the SoCal area have a FMJ only policy. I shoot wwb ammo at the range and use speer gold dot for home defense round. I live 10 minutes near the Firing Line in Huntington Beach. Is there any indoor or outdoor range within 1 or 2 hours drive from my house that allow hollowpoint? I really dont mind to pay an extra ten bucks or whatever just to test my home defense rounds on top of the range fees.

[donger]

I believe LAX in Inglewood, Evan's in Orange, and Sharpshooter's all allow hollow points.

[Inoxmark]

We had a long discussion ... a few weeks ago.Use the search function.

Forgetting something?

[RollingCode3]

a few weeks ago? I did a search already.

[11Z50]

From my experience, there is not that much difference, practically speaking, between cheap ball and hi-speed ammo especially in 45 ACP. Point of impact is very close as long as the bullet weight is close. As for feeding, if your 45 will digest ball it will shoot Gold Dot. The only rounds that will give you trouble are the short, stubby, lightweight loads. BTW, why not just shoot ball? A .45 230 ball round will solve most problems. A double tap will do the trick 4-sure.

[BigAL]

Trying out your defensive ammo is very important. POI may not change much as close in handgun ranges but the open cavity can affect function, primarily by getting caught on the feedramp. Sure a modern handgun should be able to digest JHP but that's not something I'm willing to bet my life on without testing the load first.

[NYC2SoCal]

This is what I do. I shoot x number of fmj rounds (WWB) through the firearm to become accustomed to it's characteristics and behavior. I then buy several brands of jhp ammo (Fed, GS, Win, etc). Take it to the range and see which one matches closest to my practice ammo. Shoot a good number of the jhp rounds through it to make sure of compatibility. In my opinion a single failure disqualifies the round as a personal defense load for that firearm. I personally go through 200-300 rounds of jhp before it "qualifies". Please note that you don't need to go through the 200-300 in one range session, it could be over a span of months, but keep track of it, and note any malfunctions. Since the defensive round closely mirrors my practice round, I only shoot 1 mag of jhp at each range session now.

[maxicon]

I do the same thing. Failures in the first few hundred rounds in a new gun may be due to breakin, so that's worth considering if they're not repeatable.

I shoot lots of defense ammo, along with range ammo, during the first 500 rounds of breaking in a new gun, then drop down to a mag or two each session forever. I always shoot the defense ammo first thing in the range session, since this is how you'd use a defense gun - starting cold.

This also allows you to test all your mags with your defense load, which is important, as mags can be a primary cause of failures.

As NYC2SoCal suggests, keep good logs. It's a good idea to mark your mags, so you know you're testing them all, and can keep track of which ones (if any) have problems.

It does cost more to put 300-500 rounds of defense ammo through, but if you spread it out, it's not so painful.

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