Hello, and please forgive me if this is a stupid question, but I was wondering what the difference is between Hollow Point and Jacketed Hollow Point for self-defense. It looks like HP cartridges come about 20 to 25 to a box where JHP seems to come 50 to a box. Is there, and I'm guessing there is, a difference in performance between the two rounds? I'm guessing HP is the better cartridge to use for self defense? Any insights, knowledge, experience and help is greatly appreciated. I'm still new to shooting and the difference isn't readily apparent to me.
JHP is a subset of HP. All JHP's are Hollow Points. There are some HP's that are not Jackted, though. There are some old-school cast lead hollow points with no jacket, and I've even seen a few polycoated ones. At the other end of the spectrum, there are monometal hollowpoints, such as all-copper Barnes bullets.
There are also hollow points that are not
technically jacketed, even though they have a lead core with an exposed cavity at the nose and copper on the bearing surfaces and base. Speer Gold Dots are not
technically jacketed, IIUC, because they use a heavy plating process to form the copper coating around the lead core, rather than inserting a lead core into a pre-formed jacket/cup.
To further confuse things, just because something truly is a jacketed hollow point does
not mean that the manufacturer or retailer is required to abbreviate them as JHP's. A pickup truck is a kind of vehicle. There are other kinds of vehicles. But if someone calls/markets a pickup truck using the term "vehicle," that doesn't mean it's
not a truck.
In short, you will have to look at the product description to see whether something being sold as "HP" is jacketed or has some other construction.