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There are few subjects as prone to create an argument as personal defense handguns and calibers. Some have a “devil may care” attitude and deploy anything, stating most are the same, while others go into great, even minute detail, in their testing and choices. Critical Defense and Critical Duty loads are not really variants of the XTP but fresh designs for a specific purpose. They have Hornady quality in common, however. These loads make the most of a handgun caliber.
I admit, I have been a prepper—to various degrees—for decades. In that regard, my plans have always been to bug out if things got rough. With that in mind, a seismic shift went through our prep plans when we came to the obvious conclusion that unless it was BAD, we needed to bug in.
While hollow point or expanding bullets have been the standard for personal defense for decades, they are far from perfect. There has been a tremendous amount of development in ammunition during the past few years. Among the most interesting of these has been the advances in nonexpanding ammunition. These loads are intended to produce good wound potential for personal defense without the problems of jacketed hollow point manufacture and performance.
The newest and brightest addition to the AR-15 family is a 5.56mm-diameter cartridge with more punch and long-range potential than the .223 Remington. The .224 Valkyrie is designed to remain supersonic to 1,300 yards, but design and performance are not always one in the same. The Shooter’s Log put the Valkyrie through its paces, even if we did put our thumb on the scale by using a $4,000 Wilson Combat Super Sniper.
Personal defense ammunition doesn’t always have a valid understudy for training. A high velocity loading may strike to a different point of impact in relation to the point of aim compared to a standard velocity, training load. SIG Sauer has developed a line of ammunition that is well suited to personal defense and training. The line is called 365 after its successful compact 9mm handgun.
You may choose a rifle, shotgun, or handgun, but the shotgun offers the greatest wound potential and the greatest versatility, but the gun alone is not enough. For maximum effectiveness, you’ll want to match the right ammunition for the situation, but here are four choices from Hornady that you cannot go wrong with.
Double Tap has earned a well-deserved reputation for quality control and maximizing the individual calibers it loads. From .38 Special to .45 ACP, a number of our author’s tests have found Double Tap’s offerings to be well thought out and ballistically impressive. One load gave almost a full inch of expansion. Read the article to learn which one.
Most victims meet the perpetrator, at least in part, through some action of their own. Some students want to qualify for NRA courses or concealed carry with .22 pistols. That’s ok for beginners as the .22 is the most excellent training cartridge we have. However, using the .22 Long Rifle cartridge for defense requires quite a stretch, but there is some merit and history to consider.
Did you ever wonder how hard a shotshell will hit—both you and the target? Some boxes are marked “low recoil” but there is another way to tell. It is printed on most boxes of shotshells, but few people know how to find it or what it means. Do you?
The conclusion of the testing I observed was simple. Birdshot will do the job at shorter ranges, but it has major drawbacks for home defense. Read the entire story to understand the the limitations of birdshot and advantages of buckshot including a comparison of 00-buck versus .380 ACP, 9mm, .45 ACP and .223/5.56.
