Carry Ammo

[*SA-XD4ME*]

Originally Posted by Lucky Strike

hmmmm things aren't looking good for the box of Hornaday TAP FPD I bought the other day. I was hoping they were good since they look so cool (as well as being cheaper then the rest), but only one person has commented on them and that was a negative one.

If I was to use them it would be in a M5, or hunting. Since I do not have experience with the M5 that makes that part of the comment uneducated, but for hunting with XTP. I have. And it works. good penetration, and reliable 1.5x expansion every time.

[Bree]

Originally Posted by Lucky Strike

hmmmm things aren't looking good for the box of Hornaday TAP FPD I bought the other day. I was hoping they were good since they look so cool (as well as being cheaper then the rest), but only one person has commented on them and that was a negative one.

Wrong conclusion.

TAP may look a little worse than other squished bullets and it may be squished a tiny bit less but that doesn't mean that it isn't fully capable of getting the job done as well as the other ones.

Every one of those bullets is capable of immediately incapacitating a BG if you hit the BG with a well placed shot.

OTOH, every one of those bullets creates a very small hole relative to a human body and can be completely ignored by a BG who isn't yet convinced that he or she is stopped yet.

You need to place the bullet in a good spot or you may find that none of them will work. You may need to pump in several of them to convince the BG that it is time to roll over. It isn't as simple as gel tests and pictures of spent bullets.

This whole ballistics thing is largely a mental exercise done because it can be done and is very interesting... even fun. In the field, we aren't really dealing with minute probabilities based on measurements of thousands of instances. We are dealing with real life, one instance at a time, one shot at a time. I have to win 100% of the time or BAD things will happen.

Far more important than is the hole .68" or .70" or is the penetration 11.7" or 12.1" is whether or not the round tends to jam in the gun. One jam can negate all the ballistics since they only become meaningful if the gun fires.

Same is true for hitting the target. Every ballistics test has the built in presupposition of hitting the target since if you fail to hit the gel block or the wetpack you don't get a test result! How many Brass Fetcher test results have you seen where the report says "Failed to hit the gel block"?

TAPs are just fine. Use them with confidence just as I use EFMJ's and HST's with confidence. They all will work, if they get where they are supposed to be.

[Alaskapopo]

Originally Posted by Bree

Wrong conclusion.

TAP may look a little worse than other squished bullets and it may be squished a tiny bit less but that doesn't mean that it isn't fully capable of getting the job done as well as the other ones.

Every one of those bullets is capable of immediately incapacitating a BG if you hit the BG with a well placed shot.

OTOH, every one of those bullets creates a very small hole relative to a human body and can be completely ignored by a BG who isn't yet convinced that he or she is stopped yet.

You need to place the bullet in a good spot or you may find that none of them will work. You may need to pump in several of them to convince the BG that it is time to roll over. It isn't as simple as gel tests and pictures of spent bullets.

This whole ballistics thing is largely a mental exercise done because it can be done and is very interesting... even fun. In the field, we aren't really dealing with minute probabilities based on measurements of thousands of instances. We are dealing with real life, one instance at a time, one shot at a time. I have to win 100% of the time or BAD things will happen.

Far more important than is the hole .68" or .70" or is the penetration 11.7" or 12.1" is whether or not the round tends to jam in the gun. One jam can negate all the ballistics since they only become meaningful if the gun fires.

Same is true for hitting the target. Every ballistics test has the built in presupposition of hitting the target since if you fail to hit the gel block or the wetpack you don't get a test result! How many Brass Fetcher test results have you seen where the report says "Failed to hit the gel block"?

TAPs are just fine. Use them with confidence just as I use EFMJ's and HST's with confidence. They all will work, if they get where they are supposed to be.

Bree XTP's suck at expanding through heavy cloth. They only do a so so job on non clothed targets. If you want lots of penetration and little expansion then they are ok. But if you want reliable expansion and a larger wound channel buy something else. We all know that weapon reliability and shot placement matters most. However we are not discussing that. To throw them in a conversation only pertaining to terminal ballistics is a red herring. As for using EFMJ's with confidence. I wouldn't. A Detroit Officer had one bounce off a bad guys skull with no penetration.

These photos were taken by a poster on Glocktalk after testing in Wet Newsprint.

[The Knight Of Light]

Originally Posted by Lucky Strike

but only one person has commented on them and that was a negative one.

And that person is a police firearms instructor and I trust his opinion with my life.

[Bree]

Originally Posted by Alaskapopo

Bree XTP's suck at expanding through heavy cloth. They only do a so so job on non clothed targets. If you want lots of penetration and little expansion then they are ok. But if you want reliable expansion and a larger wound channel buy something else. We all know that weapon reliability and shot placement matters most. However we are not discussing that. To throw them in a conversation only pertaining to terminal ballistics is a red herring. As for using EFMJ's with confidence. I wouldn't. A Detroit Officer had one bounce off a bad guys skull with no penetration.

Yep but they will still penetrate that BG and they are still fully capable of incapacitating him. Others rounds may do it better by some miniscule margin of probability but they are all fully capable of getting the job done.

The point is that we make judgements based upon pictures and measurements done in a highly controlled environment which may or may not have a direct relationship to the actual individual situation we are in. There are factors that are of equal or greater importance. There is also the fact that the premium value placed on expansion size may improperly value the deeper penetration with smaller blossomed bullets.

As far as EFMJ is concerned, Detroit PD is still using them today and they are still dropping BG's. I don't know all the details of that head shot case. I have heard it before. What was the angle of fire? Maybe it was a bad round. Maybe the officer inadvertantly got the round wet and some of the powder failed to burn. Stuff happens.

Nobody seems to have any real details about the case. And quite frankly, haven't similar things happened to other rounds? I just saw a case about a soldier who took a head shot and it failed to penetrate. Would that mean that we should stop relying on ball ammo in the military?

I do know that a lot of Federal testing and testing by other stakeholders shows the round to be reliable and quite effective. I can tell you that from first hand experience it feeds like a dream. Never a jam.

I believe in it. I have seen no actual hard evidence that the round has any problems at all... just one anecdotal story with few real details associated with it. I take it with a grain of salt same as Detroit PD seems to do.

OTOH... I never put all my eggs in one basket. I use both EFMJ's and HST's. If one fails for any reason there is one of the other kind coming right behind it. LOL!

Don't get me wrong. I have just as much faith in the gel tests as you do. I study them and use the results in my choices. They are measuring real characteristics of the bullets and the cartidges. But they aren't the whole story. They are actually a fairly small part of the big picture. Getting the gun to fire and getting the bullet to hit the target are much more important than the ballistic comparisons.

[stealthmode]

I tried looking up the Federal H.S.T.'s and could not find what HST actually stands for but Hydra-shock Tactical seems like a logical choice.
What do you guys think??

[SgtWKPII]

Hawaiian Standard Time
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Health Sciences and Technology
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Hubble Space Telescope
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Henkilön Sähköinen Tunnistaminen
Higher Surgical Training
Hazardous Substance Tax
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I can go on...

[Alaskapopo]

Originally Posted by Bree

Yep but they will still penetrate that BG and they are still fully capable of incapacitating him. Others rounds may do it better by some miniscule margin of probability but they are all fully capable of getting the job done.

The point is that we make judgements based upon pictures and measurements done in a highly controlled environment which may or may not have a direct relationship to the actual individual situation we are in. There are factors that are of equal or greater importance. There is also the fact that the premium value placed on expansion size may improperly value the deeper penetration with smaller blossomed bullets.

As far as EFMJ is concerned, Detroit PD is still using them today and they are still dropping BG's. I don't know all the details of that head shot case. I have heard it before. What was the angle of fire? Maybe it was a bad round. Maybe the officer inadvertantly got the round wet and some of the powder failed to burn. Stuff happens.

Nobody seems to have any real details about the case. And quite frankly, haven't similar things happened to other rounds? I just saw a case about a soldier who took a head shot and it failed to penetrate. Would that mean that we should stop relying on ball ammo in the military?

I do know that a lot of Federal testing and testing by other stakeholders shows the round to be reliable and quite effective. I can tell you that from first hand experience it feeds like a dream. Never a jam.

I believe in it. I have seen no actual hard evidence that the round has any problems at all... just one anecdotal story with few real details associated with it. I take it with a grain of salt same as Detroit PD seems to do.

OTOH... I never put all my eggs in one basket. I use both EFMJ's and HST's. If one fails for any reason there is one of the other kind coming right behind it. LOL!

Don't get me wrong. I have just as much faith in the gel tests as you do. I study them and use the results in my choices. They are measuring real characteristics of the bullets and the cartidges. But they aren't the whole story. They are actually a fairly small part of the big picture. Getting the gun to fire and getting the bullet to hit the target are much more important than the ballistic comparisons.

Gel tests are good because they tell us what one load will do compared to another. They are not perfect but they are repeatable and tell us what we can expect bullets to do. Experts in the terminal ballistics field like Dr. Martin Fackler and Dr. Gary Roberts put a lot of weight behind them as does the FBI and most all LEO agencies. So I will put my faith in them as well as the best means we have to predict load performance.

Also its not good to mix ammunition. Its best to pick a load that meets your performance needs and then load that. You are gaining nothing by rotating the rounds in your magazine. You are potentially losing a lot. Both rounds have different points of impacts and different recoil characteristics. EFMJ also does not do as well as conventional JHP's in most barrier tests because it expands no matter what it hits. Conventional JHP's only expand in a fluid medium. So if you fire a EFMJ at a bad guy behind a windshield you have less of a chance that the round will go through and penetrate the bad guy.

As for the round getting wet that would not matter. Premium defensive ammo has both sealed primers and sealant around the bullet itself. I have fired defensive ammo that was submersed in water for over 24 hours and it fired fine. Practice grade ammo however is not sealed and they did not pass this test.

I am not sure if Detroit PD is still using EFMJ. You might want to check your facts on that one. Last I heard they were looking to replace it.

One other small point you mentioned that you have never had a "jam" with EFMJ. Jam is something you put on toast. Guns malfunction. (sorry to nit pick I just hate it when people use improper terms like Jam, Clip etc)

As for penetration vs expansion. You need to place penetration first up to a point. That point is 12 inches. At least that is what the FBI and the former IWBA agreed upon as a minimum penetration depth. Once a load makes it 12 inches then I place the higher value on expansion. When you consider the average adult male is only 9.5 inches thick front to back it makes sense.

As for the military. They should drop ball ammo but they use it because they have too.
Pat

[The Knight Of Light]

Originally Posted by *SA-XD4ME*

I am sorry, but you have a God complex. You have to be right about everything, and jam is a term associated with a failure of a loading cartridge. Here is the google definition:

Definitions of jam on the Web:

throng: press tightly together or cram; "The crowd packed the auditorium"
push down forcibly; "The driver jammed the brake pedal to the floor"
crush or bruise; "jam a toe"
preserve of crushed fruit
interfere with or prevent the reception of signals; "Jam the Voice of America"; "block the signals emitted by this station"
get stuck and immobilized; "the mechanism jammed"
fix: informal terms for a difficult situation; "he got into a terrible fix"; "he made a muddle of his marriage"
crush: a dense crowd of people
crowd or pack to capacity; "the theater was jampacked"
obstruct: block passage through; "obstruct the path"
jamming: deliberate radiation or reflection of electromagnetic energy for the purpose of disrupting enemy use of electronic devices or systems


You have a way with making every thread you post a ridiculous bickering match.

Geez..

Sorry to butt in here(actually I am not..)

BUTT

I have to say that Jam is associated with a catastrophic failure wherein the firearm is completely unusable. Like springs broken, the locking lugs are sheared off, or anything that requires the gun be fixed by replacing internal parts.

Malfunction is a term associated with a simple failure that is easily fixed bringing the firearm back into service quickly. Like a double feed or a fail to fire.

But lets not mince words...

No let's!

Pat does have to be right all the time!

If he is not correct his officers die.

I don't think he can live with that(I couldn't either) so he does everything he can to learn all there is to know about defensive shooting techniques and other associated things like how bullets perform.

[Alaskapopo]

Originally Posted by *SA-XD4ME*

I am sorry, but you have a God complex. You have to be right about everything, and jam is a term associated with a failure of a loading cartridge. Here is the google definition:

Definitions of jam on the Web:

throng: press tightly together or cram; "The crowd packed the auditorium"
push down forcibly; "The driver jammed the brake pedal to the floor"
crush or bruise; "jam a toe"
preserve of crushed fruit
interfere with or prevent the reception of signals; "Jam the Voice of America"; "block the signals emitted by this station"
get stuck and immobilized; "the mechanism jammed"
fix: informal terms for a difficult situation; "he got into a terrible fix"; "he made a muddle of his marriage"
crush: a dense crowd of people
crowd or pack to capacity; "the theater was jampacked"
obstruct: block passage through; "obstruct the path"
jamming: deliberate radiation or reflection of electromagnetic energy for the purpose of disrupting enemy use of electronic devices or systems


You have a way with making every thread you post a ridiculous bickering match.

Geez..

Sorry I offended you. I don't believe I have a God complex but if I had one I would be the last to know lol. I also know I am wrong from time to time and will admit it when I find out about it. In this case I should have been more articulate. A actual jam is as TKOL said a serious weapons malfuction requiring tools or an armorer to fix. A malfunction can be corrected by the user. Most lay people use the term Jam to describe a malfunction.

I do try to make sure I know what I am talking about when it comes to the subject of firearms and their use and application. I appreciate TKOL's comments and I do care about my guys lives and my own. That is why I want the very best loads in their guns and I try to give them the best training I can. I spend a fair amount of personal time at the range with officers who are willing to work on their skills. Again I am sorry for offending you. One thing in the future if you feel offended drop me a PM. I think it would be better if we discussed this one on one vs in the thread. It would be easy for me to take your post in an offensive way as well.

Pat