If you’re considering a handgun purchase, it’s important to know the type of ammunition that’s best for it. While your gun may be a powerful one, it won’t give you the results you really want unless you have the right ammunition. This is one of the biggest mistakes people make when they start using a handgun, so with this information you’ll be shooting at your gun’s full potential right from the beginning.
Best Handgun Ammunition and Why It Matters
A gun can shoot a bullet out of it. What the bullet does once it leaves the gun is up to the way it was constructed. If a bullet doesn’t have the power or design to accomplish your goal, you will be displeased, and that blames sometimes gets misplaced on the gun when it should be the bullets. What you realize it’s not the handgun causing the trouble, you can move on to understanding which bullets are best for what you want to accomplish with them and the gun you’re purchasing.
A bullet’s effectiveness has a lot to do with how it’s made. While lead bullets can be the least expensive type, they often don’t explode in the way you would like them to, especially if you’re using your handgun for self-defense. Lead is a soft metal, and softness isn’t what you want when shooting.
Full metal jacket bullets are a much better choice. You may see them labeled FMJ. These bullets do contain lead, but it’s at the core. The outside of the core is made out of copper. Since copper is much harder than lead, it will penetrate whatever you’re shooting extremely well.
The only thing about full metal handgun ammunition is that penetration is as good as it gets with it. Once it hits the target, it doesn’t do much else. It’s fine if you want to stun a person, but not good if you want to cause harm or stop him/her completely.
For times when you want to make sure the person or animal is stopped for good the jacketed hollow point (JHP) is the best. It has both the penetration power you see from full metal jackets and an expansion component. These two goals of the bullet are balanced, so you don’t suffer penetration for expansion (like with lead bullets), or don’t suffer expansion for penetration (like the full metal jacket ammunition).
Combine the Power of Your Handgun and Ammunition
Now you know how your handgun and ammunition work together to make you happy with their effectiveness. Try them all out to see what is meant by the each type of bullet, and then you’ll know which one to choose for concealed carry.
