Mixing Ammunition in One Magazine

If you were fighting giant's & throwing rocks at them with a sling?

Would you carry a pouch full of different size rocks to throw??

Shoot the best JHP you can find that functions 100%, all the time, in your gun.

Mixing up ammo with different recoil & flash characteristics in a mag is foolish business.

Unless you do it at the range to get rid of old mixed ammo left-overs.

rc

What is the point of having defensive ammunition if you aren't planning on using it to defend yourself?

Load each magazine that you carry with the defensive ammo of your choice (Federal HST in this case) and go with it. Don't mix it up, that certainly won't make your load out any better.

If you want to use FMJ for defense then go for it, but I sure wouldn't unless nothing else would function in my gun... And if that was the case then I'd sell the gun.

It's silly to mix it as you suggest.

Premium ammo is expensive? Have you priced funerals lately?

You won't find many people willing to defend mixed magazines here. I'm not sure if that's a reflection on the practice or the local groupthink.

I do mix magazines for one gun.
I pocket carry the Ruger LCP .380 a lot.
For a long time there's been an ongoing argument about which bullet is better in the .380 for defense. FMJ for more penetration or a good JHP for more damage?

Since I honestly do not know which is best I load every other round a FMJ and a good JHP, with a JHP in the chamber.
Both will start out with a .355 size hole in the BG and we'll see what happens from there.

In the bigger calibers, 9mm, 45, etc, I just load a good JHP.

For a long time there's been an ongoing argument about which bullet is better in the .380 for defense. FMJ for more penetration or a good JHP for more damage?

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Sorry to side-track, but I have always been lead to believe the best compromise in .380 was the Remington 102 GS round? Yeah, inter-web lore... but, it's what I load my wife's LCP with.

But... is that best? What if I loaded four or five rounds of ball and then three or two rounds of HST?

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So you start out with four or five rounds of sub-optimal ammo and then if you get to the bottom of the mag, you'll finish out with a couple rounds of the good stuff?

8 rds of HST is "not inexpensive?" C'mon man, even at a dollar a piece, if you paid that much, you're talking about the price of lunch at McD's, not a new Caddy. And you don't have to shoot off your carry ammo more than once or twice a year, if then.

I don't think you're thinking this through very clearly.

If you load and unload frequently, just load up your carry mags with the HST, and use different mags for practice. That way you don't have the grand excuse of having to go to all the trouble of reloading your carry ammo.

I mix magazines only when I am target shooting. I do it just to check the guns reliability with different loads. I would not mix ammo when carrying or for any HD situation. The only exception is my shotgun. I mix buck shot, bird shot, and slugs but only in a pump.

VetPsychWars
Mixing Ammunition in One Magazine
I've been thinking lately about my carry ammunition. I carry full-size 1911.
Right now, I load up a full magazine of Federal HST. Not inexpensive.
But... is that best? What if I loaded four or five rounds of ball and then three or two rounds of HST?
I don't carry every day and I do a lot of dry-fire practice, so I unload and reload the carry gun a lot. This means I should shoot those off every so often.
I'm not sure what I'm saying or asking. There are a lot of factors floating around in my brain.
But I'm curious whether any of you mix your load.

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OK for the range. For SD/HD it's plain stupid in a pistol. Different ammo have different characteristics. Mixing ammo can cause your pistol to cycle at inconsistent rates. Different ammo can also have different recoil, making follow-up shots a little harder.

Let me relate to you what happen to me and my little mouse gun (Kel Tec P32). I loaded a hollowpoint in the pipe and all FMJ in the mag. This was suggested by some P32 owners. It made sense on the surface. While practicing with this loading method - EVERY mag jammed up after the first round fired from the chamber.

I'm sure other folks have been able to get it to work but it didn't work for me with Federal 32gr Hydra-Shok 32ACP in the pipe and Fiocchi 73gr FMJ 32ACP in the mag. Since that time at the range, I've never mixed ammo in a pistol.

Mix and matching carry ammunition is generally ill advised. Especially in a 1911. They carry 7 or 8 in the mag and one in the chamber. So one box of most self defense or carry ammo will set you up for 2 mags and some change. Since they are relatively low capacity, there isn't much reason to mix ammo for the cost. It would be different if you were using say a XD .45 that uses a 13 round magazine. More or less have to buy a box of ammo per magazine you want to carry.

What happens real life after the bullet leaves the gun?

The defensive ammo works better for defense. That is why it costs a little more, and that is why I am willing to pay a little more for it.

I don't know about .45 ACP, but in 9mm I paid less than $1/round for 124 gr +P HST, and I actually paid close to $0.50/round... That would be just as cheap as practice ammo if I had to pay for it.

I'm not sure if that's a reflection on the practice or the local groupthink.

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That was my thought 40 years ago too, before I was a member of the present group.

(Who might, or might not have influenced my thinking?)

You will have to be the judge of how much influence they have on my thinking.

rc

Ball sucks. Use SWC's or good jacketed hollow points.

VetPsychWars said:

I care about what happens real-life after the bullet comes out the gun.

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Your first post indicated you cared more about saving a few pennies.

This post is contrary to that, soooo which is it?

I've been known to stack a magazine, FMJ, hollowpoint, repeating. But that was in a Tokarev. The FMJs penetrate body armor and the hollowpoints do evil things to unarmored targets. This had a purpose, ensuring that no matter what, my first shot would go through.

I never actually carried the gun like this, but I kept it around the house. Not saying it's the best idea, but I did it with a specific reason in mind.

FMJ for more penetration or a good JHP for more damage?

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If the JHP fails to expand due to clothing clogging up the HP, or whatever?

It is for all practical purposes going to penetrate just as far as FMJ.

If one JHP does expand for what ever reason?
It for sure is doing more damage then a FMJ on it's best day.

NO rule of gun-fighting says you only get to shoot once and put the gun away!

rc

You really just want to use a lunker of a semi-wadcutter. Some are pretty long and will yaw and tumble. If they don't, it's still good.

The way I see it, my hide (and that of my wife, kids and etc.) is worth a whole lot more than the most expensive premium defensive ammunition on the planet. "If you care enough to send the very best" sort of thing.

I hand load and develop practice cast boolit fodder to be the ballistic twin of "the good stuff" but still, my hide's worth more than the cost of all of it combined regardless of the source.

rcmodel said:

That was my thought 40 years ago too, before I was a member of the present group.

(Who might, or might not have influenced my thinking?)

You will have to be the judge of how much influence they have on my thinking.

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A father rases his sons and daughters to believe that Chevy makes the finest automobile. A stranger, listening to the family debating exactly which Chevy is the best car ever built, intrudes to introduce the concept of groupthink. The father responds, "I knew Chevy was the best before most of this group was even born."

A father rases his sons and daughters to believe that Chevy makes the finest automobile. A stranger, listening to the family debating exactly which Chevy is the best car ever built, intrudes to introduce the concept of groupthink. The father responds, "I knew Chevy was the best before most of this group was even born."

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So you're saying it's a non sequitur.

"Groupthink" may be bad, or may be good, or may be irrelevant. Groupthink isn't positive if you're following someone off a cliff. However, as sociologists show us (and some popular game shows these days), large groups polled do tend to produce the right answer to even tough questions far more often than not. (Though the very rare exceptions tend to get the bigger notice.)

And then you have this debate where the question has been researched and tested heavily over many decades, with one utterly predominate result, making claims of "groupthink" just a contrarian distraction.

45 acp does not need to expand to do its job. (1986 Miami FBI shootout ammo testing). In a shotgun, mix #4 buckshot & slugs.

Sam1911 said:

So you're saying it's a non sequitur.

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Yes. Saying you believed what the group believes before you joined the group does not preclude groupthink.

Sam1911 said:

"Groupthink" may be bad, or may be good, or may be irrelevant. Groupthink isn't positive if you're following someone off a cliff. However, as sociologists show us (and some popular game shows these days), large groups polled do tend to produce the right answer to even tough questions far more often than not. (Though the very rare exceptions tend to get the bigger notice.)

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Yes. In sociology (and a great many areas of soft science and the humanities) the majority view is by definition the right view. So the group view and the right view will tend to coincide. It's a subtle form of confirmation bias.

That doesn't apply to physics.

It doesn't even apply to the stock market or home prices. Did the group here predict two years ago that bulk pack .22lr would be a rare and precious substance today? No.

Sam1911 said:

And then you have this debate where the question has been researched and tested heavily over many decades, with one utterly predominate result, making claims of "groupthink" just a contrarian distraction.

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I actually said that I wasn't sure if the result was valid or groupthink. I'm not. If someone were to discourage expression of counterviews by calling them "contrarian distraction" that would actually strengthen the groupthink hypothesis. Social conventions need to be defended via social pressure. Physics does not.

Someone raised the .380 example. I'll give the examples of revolvers loaded with different loads for different purposes. These are adaptations to real world challenges faced by real world people. Are those practices wrong? Do the tests you mentioned address the challenges faced by those who choose them? Or are we dealing with confirmation bias enhancing groupthink? It happens all the time.