Thread: Help me choose my ammo

For range shooting, choose a full-metal jacket (FMJ) design. No sense on shooting hollow-points (HP's) when all you are doing is punching paper. You can get FMJ loads from Winchester, CCI/Blazer, Sellier&Bellot, Fiocchi, Remington, UMC, PMC. I would stay away from the Eastern European steel-cased ammo (in handguns anyway).

For defense use, use a good hollow-point load. There's a lot of good ones out there, along with a great amount of hype. Don't worry about the particular brand -- just use a good one from a major manufacturer that runs 100% in whatever gun you choose for defense. Good HP's can be had from Winchester, Remington, Hornady, Buffalo Bore, Gold Dot, Federal, Cor-Bon, Magtech.

People often are paralyzed by the decision-making process when it comes to choosing defense loads. Believe me, the bad guy won't care a bit what the brand name is on the bullet that you just put into his/her chest.....

For .22...

.22's can be extremely picky about what they will or won't feed. Best thing would be to get a few boxes of everything you can find, and just try it out. I can tell you that we typically run the Federal 550 bulk-pack stuff sold only at Wal-Mart, and that runs about $14 per box. If your pistol runs on these, then you won't have to shell out the money for the much more expensive stuff from CCI. Remington and Winchester also makes bulk loads, but they are not as clean or as consistent as the Federal.

If your pistol won't run on the boxed bulk-pack stuff, then try the stuff from CCI such as Mini-mags. These come in plastic boxes of 50 or 100, and cost a lot more than the Federal bulk. However, the CCI stuff is the most consistent .22lr loads out there, short of the target loads from Europe.

Thanks for the info Phil, that's just what I was looking for. I shopped the net and locally and couldn't find anything fmj under $29/50. Hope that changes soon.

If you have a Wal-Mart nearby, keep checking there. They sell Blazer Brass in 9mm for $8.97/box, and I would imagine that .40 would be around $14-$15. The hard part is being there when they actually get some in stock.....

Boy you ain't kiddin'! The range guy said he walked in and bought one box of 40 for $12 yesterday morning at WM, even though they had a large amount available. I went there after shooting, gone. All over the net yesterday, gone. I'll be glad when rush hour is over. Sure picked a bad time to get my first gun. Oh well. Better late than never eh?