Venom007 asked:
1 What is the best defensive ammo for these?
The rounds you load yourself.
Not trying to be flippant, but as a handloader you can better match the powder to the miniscule bullet in order to get the optimal performance.
When I got my 25 ACP, I bought a box of Remington cartridges for it. They were only used for practice and I started reloading 25 ACP with Hornady 35 grain XTPs. Hornady has since stopped making that bullet, but I have a stock on hand and they can sometimes be found at gun shows. Unless you are a handloader, it is likely you will not be able to find anything other than 50 grain FMJ bullets, so that decision may have been made for you by the marketplace.
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I've read .25 ACP hollow points do not expand and are a waste of time, penetration is preferred so FMJ is recommended.
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Where did you read that?
My 25 ACP loads with Hornady 35 grain XTPs run nearly 1,000 fps and shooting them into a Boston Butt roast showed they reliably expanded. The Boston Butt also made good pulled pork bar-b-que. Of course how much good it does for the bullet to expand from a quarter of an inch to a third of an inch is a matter for debate. But, what you have to keep in mind is that there is so much more to wound ballistics than "expansion" and "penetration" and neither is a trump card. Hit a bone and the XTP bullet tends to shatter. Hit a bone and the FMJ bullet tends to deflect. Which one is more likely to be effective in removing someone from a gunfight is entirely dependent on the path of the bullet through the target and while you can control shot placement, you have no control over the path of the bullet once it clears the muzzle.
I accept the research done by Glaser (later owned by Cor-Bon, later owned by Dakota Ammo) that showed a large, shallow wound was optimal for removing someone from a fight while minimizing the risk of mortality (and the ensuing wrongful death civil suit). My experience with the 35 grain hollow point was that it will indeed produce a shallow wound.
Who makes the highest quality/most reliable/hottest .25 ACP out there?
Since I load all of my own 25 ACP, I have no basis for comparison.
2 Can I carry the gun with safety off and a round in the chamber, so that I can draw and simply cock the hammer and fire? Or is this unsafe and the gun has to have the safety on?
I can only speak to what I would do. Any gun not intentionally designed to be drop-safe is not a gun I would carry with a round in the chamber and the safety off. As we have seen with guns from Taurus and SIG that were supposedly designed to be drop-safe, it was still possible to make them fire by dropping them a particular way. In my life, I have had to resort to a pistol for self defense twice. I have dropped a gun more than twice. And while each self-defense use was outside the home, every drop was inside. I don't want to take the risk of shooting myself or a member of my family simply because I refused to use a safety the manufacturer thought was necessary.
