Personal Defense Ammo

There is a whole lot of ammo available for every size and shape firearm. I will limit my rants to handgun ammunition.

"Honey Guns" aside (see previous rant), I see a lot of folks at the range with REALLY powerful ammunition. I am sure the ego thingy comes into play when a purchase decision is made. After all, these are the same folks who bought the biggest honkin' gun in the case based on flashy ads, Hollywood he-men, or advice from the clerk. Sure a Magnum Research .44 Remington Magnum Automag seemed like a good idea. The Smith & Wesson 500 Magnum is looks really wicked. But then our Barney Fife pulls the trigger the first time, a full house round detonates. It not only scares the living crap out of him, but inflicts some serious hurt on a woefully undermatched human body trying to hold on to that cannon as it creates damage to his wellbeing equal to a stare from his high school sweetheart's father when trying to sneak her in a 4 a.m. Don't ever buy too big a gun. Buy a right-sized gun.

If it's comfortable to shoot, you will practice more with any gun. It might actually be fun. Buy target ammo. Look for it. It is an entire category of ammunition with which a plinker can take the biggest artillery out to the range and actually shoot it more than once without putting an orthopedic surgeon on retainer.

If you bought a wheel gun, shoot the lightest load the gun handles. If it's a .357 Magnum, shoot .38 Special target loads. Even better, buy cowboy loads. These are especially light loads, and you can shoot them all day without tiring. If it's a .44 Magnum, shoot .44 special loads, again in a target load or lighter. You go to the range to learn mechanics and technique, not masochism.

Semi-automatic pistols can be likewise adjusted in power. While you must always buy the exact caliber of the pistol, looks for boxes marked "practice" and "target" loads when you shop.

Next beginner mistake is loading a magazine ( or "clip" if you prefer. It's not correct terminology, but Shakespeare I'm not). I say a beginner mistake so I don't irk old-timers, who are just a guilty.

First, we all know a pistol is designed to be carried with one in the tube. So here's what this "beginner" doesd. He takes an 18 round magazine, and loads it up. We know the palsy sets in about round ten, and the rest of the rounds are about as much fun to load as a visit to the dentist who's run out of xylocaine. Bleeding knuckles, torn fingernails and all, he shoves the magazine into the well, and racks a round into battery. Here's the fun part. He then extracts the magazine and tops it off, fighting all over again with the 18th round. Try this Buck-o. Take one round, load it into the magazine, rack it into battery, and then extract the magazine and fill it. Now he only needs to fight the battle once.

As a serious aside to this, here's a pearl of wisdom. You all clean your guns regularly, even if you don't shoot it. After all, you are staking your like on a self-defense gun and you want it reliable. You carefully unload it by dropping the magazine, ejecting the battery round, and checking for empty. Then you clean and oil it, reinsert the magazine, rack a round into battery, top off the magazine and you're ready to go. If that's the case, you're cycling the top two rounds in the magazine, and none of the other rounds below the top two. After half a dozen cycles like this, the rounds will exhibit wear, both by being fed, reloaded, and ejected. Look for nicks and scratches. These might just impede a clean feed in a tight spot. Pull a new round out of the ammo box each time and retire the ejected round back to the ammo box. Stack the odds in your favor.

Last word about ammo. There are two types of folks out there sharing the same DNA. For some reason, folks who take lousy pictures think a more expensive camera will cure the problem and change their pictures from snapshots to photographs. Likewise with guns, this brach of the family thinks a more expensive gun and really expensive ammunition will make them better shooters. I have many students ask me what personal defense ammo they should buy. My answer is always the same. If you can't hit what you're shooting at, you can spend $5.00 a round for pistol ammo, $1800 on a Les Baer Custom 1911, $240 on a Mernickle Holster, and it won't do you any good whatever in a life and death situation. Practice. Learn. Practice a lot.