Def. Ammo?....how much?

[Athensm50]

so I bought my first Def. Ammo today for my new Kahr.......some ****Hornady "Critical Defense" 9mm 115gr FTX*** $22.95 for 25 rounds

Leads to this question......If this feeds well....How do I need to run thru it to call it GOOD....Carry ammo?

I understand this is my life/family I am getting ready to protect....just wanted to know if I need to stop my 401K until I am ready to call me ready.

Thanks...as always you guys rock,

Athens

[Tinman507]

I'm sure lots of folks with way more experience will chime in, but here's what I've been doing:

I ran a few different boxes of 25 through. I settled on Pow'rBall as my carry load.

I buy a box and rotate it through my mags (one in, one reload) after about 2 months, I shoot it through just to keep current with the carry load and buy a new box of the same. Repeat as necessary.

[jocko]

what ever u can afford. If the gun was good to go prior and u can shot a box of 25 critical def through it with no issues, IMO it is good to go. I see no sense in shooting more of that expensive stuff but YMMV. then what I do if I settle on that round I buy a few boxes tohave at home and about once every moth when I go to the ragne I empty out that carry magazine with the CD rounds in it and start with a fesh magazine. again YMMV..

also I think a very good question to..

[Anger]

as far as I'm concerned, as long as the pistol is broken in with no issues with FMJ or other JHP, I'll shoot two clips or half the box which ever is less. I have yet to find a JHP that doesn't fire in my pistols. I should note I'm talking 9mm and 40S&W. I only carry hard ball in the 380 as I believe it will penetrate better than JHP if needed for that purpose.

[Athensm50]

also I think a very good question to..

Thanks Jacko

As far as mine....I am about 300 rounds thru and have been nothing but Flawless ....with 4 different types of ammo....Russian....Blazer....WIn White Box....and Bear......so I have not had any issues.....

[LMT42]

Some good advice I've heard is to buy two boxes and make sure they're from the same lot. Shoot one box and if it feeds/fires reliably, you're good to go with the second box. Same lot ensures the rounds have same primers, powder, etc.. Not sure if this is true, but it seems plausible and can't hurt.

[jocko]

wellit sure ain't gonna hurt anythiing... one should always error on the side of caution and what may sound silly to me is not to you and vice versa..

[dirtkicker]

After the break in period (300 should do) I took mine to the range and with a clean weapon I shot my CM9 100-150 rounds of practice ammo. Then I loaded my weapon with 6+1 and my spare mag with my sd ammo and fired off 13 as fast as I could. I then repeated that with another 13 of my sd ammo and I felt I was good to go. That would make around 170 flawless rounds for the day and 26 sd ammo with a dirty weapon. I felt like that was all I needed to be confident in my carry ammo. Speer GD 124gr+P. Then just periodically test some of your sd ammo at the range.

[JFootin]

After the break in period (300 should do) I took mine to the range and with a clean weapon I shot my CM9 100-150 rounds of practice ammo. Then I loaded my weapon with 6+1 and my spare mag with my sd ammo and fired off 13 as fast as I could. I then repeated that with another 13 of my sd ammo and I felt I was good to go. That would make around 170 flawless rounds for the day and 26 sd ammo with a dirty weapon. I felt like that was all I needed to be confident in my carry ammo. Speer GD 124gr+P. Then just periodically test some of your sd ammo at the range.

+1 on all ^^^. The Speer GD 124gr+P seems to feed slicker, smoother and more positively into my CM9 than any FMJ I have tried. It's like the gun and the ammo were made for each other.

[BrewerGeorge]

For a gun that's firing everything reliably, I personally shoot half a box of 25 and use the other half to carry mags.

[TriggerMan]

so I bought my first Def. Ammo today for my new Kahr.......some ****Hornady "Critical Defense" 9mm 115gr FTX*** $22.95 for 25 rounds

Leads to this question......If this feeds well....How do I need to run thru it to call it GOOD....Carry ammo?

I understand this is my life/family I am getting ready to protect....just wanted to know if I need to stop my 401K until I am ready to call me ready.

Thanks...as always you guys rock,

Athens

Your budget and your acceptance of risk really are the deciding factors.

The smaller the gun, the more test rounds I want. Second, I want the gun broken in with at least 200 rounds of FMJ. If that is 100%, I want 100 SD rounds through the gun 100% flawlessly. I buy in boxes of 50 and usually find it online around $27-28 /50 for 9mm

Ammo costs would be under $45 for 200 rds FMJ, $55 for SD, $15 shipping.You're adding $115 to the cost of a CM9 before she's ready to carry.

[Simms65]

After the gun has been proven reliable with ball, I recommend shooting it with ALL your carry mags fully loaded. If the defensive ammo feeds for an entire magazine, then you know that particular pistol/mag combo is good to go with your chosen defensive ammo. This can get rather expensive with pistols that hold 15+ rounds in the mag, but $50 worth of ammo isn't even on the radar compared to knowing your gun works.

[Bill K]

What's kind of scary about this stuff is that you can never be certain that the next round will fire. Guess you do what you feel you must do to raise your confidence level to where you feel comfortable enough to carry a particular gun with particular ammo. And pray that you never have to use your gun so that at the end of your days it turns out you "wasted" a bunch of time and money.