Lead for 9mm - protection effectiveness

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nix4me

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Will 125gr 9mm Lead rounds still be effective in a protection situation? I'm not talking about a self defense carry situation, i would use factory gold dots or Hornady Critical Defense for that. But i'm talking about stockpile SHTF situation where you wanted mass amounts of effective ammo on hand for abnormal situation.
 
well the military uses FMJ, which would be a close scenario for your hypothetical situation, and I would imagine you would get a little better terminal ballistics from the LRN (bullet deformation) if the velocity was the same.
 
If you plan to load a stockpile of lead ammo for future bad times, you will have to pay close attention to their OAL. You dont know what guns you will have in the future and it would suck to have a stockpile of ammo that will not chamber due to the gun(s) you have in the future has a shorter throat than the gun you used as a guage to seat your bullet today. It is my expierence that a lead load is built around a paticular gun to maximize function and minimize leading. The OAL plays a role in this.
 
If you plan to load a stockpile of lead ammo for future bad times, you will have to pay close attention to their OAL. You dont know what guns you will have in the future and it would suck to have a stockpile of ammo that will not chamber due to the gun(s) you have in the future has a shorter throat than the gun you used as a guage to seat your bullet today. It is my expierence that a lead load is built around a paticular gun to maximize function and minimize leading. The OAL plays a role in this.
another good point
 
My wife has plated lead in her XD right now, it's all I can get.

Of course JHP has an advantage, and when you are fighting for your life, you want every advantage you can get. But in real life, the advantage isn't as great as many people seem to think it is. Even JHP pistol bullets aren't magical. They are still inferior.

If I was caught with lead or FMJ in my gun when I had to use it defensively, it's not like I would shoot differently or use a different plan because I had different ammo. I would still put as many bullets through COM as possible. The advantage of JHP just means you MIGHT stop them sooner.
 
FMJ or coated hardcast lead would be more reliable in an auto-loader, for a revolver, soft lead would probably be the best.
 
That's not true. Hard cast lead is no more reliable than swaged in automatic pistols. Actually, hard cast bullets are more likely to lead up the barrel and increase the risk of catastrophic failure because they are too hard to properly obturate the bore.
 
I try to look at it in a simpler way, Shot is shot. Yes, we can go on about ballistics, expansion, penetration etc,

Shot with a 9mm hard cast lead is certainly gonna do something bad, especially if shot placement (which is King) is good.

So go forth and load up a bunch of lead ammo, it;s worked for years before all the advertisement of Zombie bullets.;)

I do not worry about SHTF and Prepping cause they all have a lot more then we do. If it's really that bad, I only need two bullets.
 
Will 125gr 9mm Lead rounds still be effective in a protection situation? I'm not talking about a self defense carry situation, i would use factory gold dots or Hornady Critical Defense for that. But i'm talking about stockpile SHTF situation where you wanted mass amounts of effective ammo on hand for abnormal situation.
How long of a storage time are we talkiing about here? As far as effectiveness goes, either type will do the job but remember that how you store the rounds will be a factor. Copper jackets and cases can tarnish, but lead bullets will also oxidize heavily if not stored well.

Did you ever find a box of your dads 15-20year old .22RF ammo and see what those looked like. Yuck!
 
Will 125gr 9mm Lead rounds still be effective in a protection situation?

Self defense is 90% on the shooter & 10% on the ammo.
You can use a 22 lr as well as a 50S&W.

Shot placement is key.
Hit the Central Nervous System (brain or spinal cord) & the threat is stopped!
Hit a major blood vessel & the threat will stop shortly from loss of blood.

Whether you use lead bullets, plated or jacketed doesn't matter.

Can you get the penetration? & Can you hit what your aiming at?
 
My cast 9mm loads arent the cream of my crop, but if I was forced to rely on them, for whatever reasons, I wouldn't be too worried about their terminal performance. And reliable feeding and ignition is as good as any round, so no worries there. My 9mm target load is 125 grain bullets moving right around 1000 fps. Not exactly bunny fart rounds, they will kill easy if I ask them to.

However, these arent my "stockpile" rounds. I keep a thousand or more FMJ and JHP reloads around for that. I used Montana Gold jacketed bullets becuase of their relative affordability. But I eventually replaced their JHP's with Hornady XTP's after some of my own expansion testing.
 
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