While there are many, many reasons to use self defense ammo in your Every Day Carry, perhaps the most pressing reason is that range ammo simply does not have the quality control that SD ammo has. I stopped by atterbury today to check out the range and put some rounds down range while my wife visited the outlet stores. I was running Winchester white box factory ammo through my Glock 26 and working up quite a sweat as were most shooters on the firing line.
About 10 rounds in, my pistol fails to return completely into battery, I tap, rack and well, that's where it gets interesting. The rack portion required a bit of muscle, but the round finally ejected. When I checked the ejected round, the case was apparently out of round/spec and part of it caught the feed ramp and folded over like a little brass burrito on the side of the case. It's range ammo, cheap and not too concerning when using it to punch holes into paper targets. I get the pistol back into action and the rest of the afternoon is flawless.
That being said, while we know that most folks who carry use SD ammo, THERE ARE exceptions and some folks are carrying range ammo in their carry pistol. I've also heard gun shop comments about how the cheap stuff kills just as good as the expensive stuff, so forth and so on.
SO, I would encourage anyone still using range ammo to at least consider that the life they may be saving, is their own. If you can't buy the good stuff for the sake of others, (completely different conversation), do it for yourself. If I would have used that round as my carry ammo in a Self Defense situation, I would have had a malfunction at the worst possible time.
For the sake of conversation, what are you Ingo'ers using for self defense ammo these days?
9mm Speer Gold Dot +P 124 GR here.
About 10 rounds in, my pistol fails to return completely into battery, I tap, rack and well, that's where it gets interesting. The rack portion required a bit of muscle, but the round finally ejected. When I checked the ejected round, the case was apparently out of round/spec and part of it caught the feed ramp and folded over like a little brass burrito on the side of the case. It's range ammo, cheap and not too concerning when using it to punch holes into paper targets. I get the pistol back into action and the rest of the afternoon is flawless.
That being said, while we know that most folks who carry use SD ammo, THERE ARE exceptions and some folks are carrying range ammo in their carry pistol. I've also heard gun shop comments about how the cheap stuff kills just as good as the expensive stuff, so forth and so on.
SO, I would encourage anyone still using range ammo to at least consider that the life they may be saving, is their own. If you can't buy the good stuff for the sake of others, (completely different conversation), do it for yourself. If I would have used that round as my carry ammo in a Self Defense situation, I would have had a malfunction at the worst possible time.
For the sake of conversation, what are you Ingo'ers using for self defense ammo these days?
9mm Speer Gold Dot +P 124 GR here.
