.380 ACP: Flat-Point FMJ vs JHP

Sgt. Buzzard, your G42 gives feeding issues with HP, kind of surprised at that. Hornady HP ammo has been very good in mine. That said, I still only use RN as I prefer the penetration. Also, I can practice more as the ammo is less expensive. I'm retired and on fixed income so try to watch my spending.

Do you feel the Sig recoil is enough less that it has a positive effect on your accuracy or do you think ammo choice could be the factor, just curious.
 
2) 90 gr Gold Dots and V Crowns are better choices for short barrel .380 ACPs.


That 11" is still "under penetration" but realistically in a face to face armed citizen self defense shoot, 10" or more penetration will be plenty. If you are shooting fleeing assailants or shooting assailants from odd angles, you're going to need a really good lawyer and he'll be focused on getting you a good plea bargain or reduced sentence

Lots of great info in that post, I'd only comment on two points.

It seems the GD and V Crowns don't perform as well as some XTP out of short barrels. At least from what I've found. Though GD performs well out of longer barrels. For me I've gong to XTP in the BG2.0 and use the GD in the 380EZ.

I agree short barrel 380's are not your precision and/or long range option. Self-Defenders generally aren't snipers. :)

Again great info, thanks for sharing.
 
In over 3K of TFMJ or the Penns, in my earlier post, non have tumbled.
I shoot mostly at 20-25 yards indoors, offhand and SA.
2" groups are common, SA, with the Walthers.
Have not tried the Sig P238HD, with some experimental stocks, yet
Marked with blue dot.
Palm swell, thumb rest, 7 round mag, with pinky rest removed.
Feels good enough for F Class. 🙄
L-R, P238, P238HD, LCP and Walther.

Have not shot the Penn115gr, mini H&G 68s at distance yet.

IMG_3518.jpeg
 
For the reasons you mentioned, I have only been using flat point ammo in .380 for a couple of years now.
The Flat Point FMJ seems to be the single best compromise.
I always have them in my Bodyguard 2.0, but sometimes when I load the magazines I make every other round a Jacketed Hollow Point.
 
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Sgt. Buzzard, your G42 gives feeding issues with HP, kind of surprised at that. Hornady HP ammo has been very good in mine. That said, I still only use RN as I prefer the penetration. Also, I can practice more as the ammo is less expensive. I'm retired and on fixed income so try to watch my spending.

Do you feel the Sig recoil is enough less that it has a positive effect on your accuracy or do you think ammo choice could be the factor, just curious.
Different guns of the same brand and model may or may not work with any given ammunition. My G 42 had trouble feeding the first round of a couple of different HP loads. If you loaded one by hand in the tube it would fire the rest of the magazine but not using the slide release or slingshot method. This is unacceptable to me. Hornady FTX would feed but with FMJ's there's never any question. I've tied all five of my magazines, same result.

I'm perfectly happy with any round any time. You like penetration, I like placement, both are valid objectives, but foremost they must feed.
HP's are not allowed as carry in NJ. FTX are deemed OK. I don't worry I just carry the FMJ and am done with it. I'm confident in my ability to place the rounds center mass under difficult conditions.

I'm better with the Sig. It's 15.7 Oz. to the Glocks 12.17Oz. It also has a better trigger and sights. But I don't like the extra 3.5Oz. So, better shooting and twice the capacity vs. lighter carry. The length and height are very similar but the Sig is slightly wider.they both hide well.

I've had a G42 since they first came out. The 365 is new. So there's familiarity with the Glock. As a geezer that's hard to overlook. Plus I love J frames which I've carried for 53 years. And the 340PD is lighter than both. But sometimes you want flat.
 
Well, I ended up buying a box of Winchester 95gr FN-FMJ for now just to have something loaded.

The LCP mostly serves as a BUG to either my M&P40 Shield or M&P40 Compact — both of which are loaded with Winchester 165gr Ranger-T — so the most likely scenario in which I would even use the LCP is if I had either expended all of the rounds in either gun plus 2 spare mags.

Ultimately, I might just have to consider swapping out the LCP for a BUG which can be more cheaply fed, like an LCP chambered in .22LR or some sort of Micro-9 because I honestly cannot get over how stupidly expensive .380 ACP JHP ammo is.
Honestly, in a world in which I can get substantially more capable defensive cartridges for a fraction of the price, it just makes more sense in the long run to swallow the loss for a new pistol than to keep paying through the nose for ammo which can't even be completely relied upon to function as intended.
 
I run Buffalo Bore's 95Gr +P JHP in my Colt Pocketlite. It ramps up the .380's pathetic +/- 800 FPS to +/- 1100 FPS. It has NO PROBLEM meeting the FBI's 12" to 18" spec for Gel penetration with great expansion. I would NOT recommend it for Tupper Ware pistols though. Colt says it's OK in the Pocketlite as long as it's not a steady diet.
I fiddled with the .380 from the time I was a late teen until I was about 30.

I've had PPK/s, Llama (locked breech), Colt Mustang, and some others which are more or less for testing ammo or are interesting.

The old Lyman #43 manual, which I started on, had a load of a 121 gr RN at right at 1000 fps - I bought that mold and loaded the bullet for my PPK/s - the PPK with factory .380 kicks more than a Combat Commander in .45 and that thing sure let me know but it was manageable when I was young and dumb. Kind of too bad the DA trigger was unuseable :(

I got an offer to trade for a Satin Nickel Combat Commander in .45 so I took it. From then I moved to the Llama since it was locked breech - it was also a pice of junk. I did some tricks I had picked up in building 1911s and it did shoot OK. I branched out into 100 gr Speer JHPs, Sierra 115 gr JHPs and a new Lyman mold I bought that throws 133 gr. SWCs, somewere along the way I picked up a Lee mold that throws 105 gr SWC but I like the meplat on the 133 better.

In that Llama I got the 115 gr Sierra up to 1050, and the 133 SWC up to ~1000 - even then it didn't kick as much as the old PPK/s with the 121 at 1000. But I do think it was beating up the gun.

Traded that on a Colt Mustang - all of the loads shot great in the Mustang but they were too much and broke the ring on the hammer.

At that point I replaced the hammer and gave the gun to a friend to carry as a hide-out. I gave up on the .380 as it will never be a 9mm and a 9mm isn't enough gun for me to stake my life on.

That said I still have a couple of .380s I just won't carry one.

Here is one that interests me but I won't be shooting hot ammo through it! It was made in 1919.

Remington M-51 380 made 1919 comp.webp

It is a Remington M-51. Talk about thin - too bad it isn't a .32!

Riposte
 
I carry my S&W .380 PPK/S on occasion and use JHP Hornady Critical Defense, it has a red rubber filled hollow point designed to penetrate clothing then expand in soft tissue. Personally, I'd never carry FMJ hard ball in my defense guns for so many obvious reasons, but that's just me.
(Threads suck w/o pictures)
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I refer to the Lucky Gunner tests as my go-to guide. After much deliberation I settled on the V-Crown (in .380) as the best compromise of penetration and potential expansion. Placement is on me. You may not agree with their tests or view these type tests as definitive, but [in my view] they're the best, most thoroughly exhaustive tests of their kind around short of actual FBI results.
 
I refer to the Lucky Gunner tests as my go-to guide. After much deliberation I settled on the V-Crown (in .380) as the best compromise of penetration and potential expansion. Placement is on me. You may not agree with their tests or view these type tests as definitive, but [in my view] they're the best, most thoroughly exhaustive tests of their kind around short of actual FBI results.

Lucky Gunner at least does five round samples and sometimes does short and long barrels as well.

A lot of the videos on YouTube use a single round, and near the margins of the expansion envelope that doesn't tell you much. When you get near the minimum velocity needed for expansion, a hollow point doesn't just hit a magic number where it stops expanding. Instead it stops expanding consistently. Add in a fairly high standard deviation and you can get some misleading results.

For example, if you might have a hollow point that expands 60 percent of the time at a given velocity. So the odds are 60 percent that the single shot tested will perform and the tester will declare victory when 40 percent of the time that hollow point will fail to expand.
 
Another vote for the Winchester FMJ truncated cone bullet load. A Lyman 356632 mould, part of a pile of reloading stuff I bought, was a lucky find. It makes a 100 grain truncated cone bullet that has worked well for me. Over 4.2 grains of Unique works nicely in my .380's. Runs around 1080 fps and good accuracy without leading. Recoil is a bit snappy in the1910 Browning or P3AT but very tolerable in the locked breech Llama Especial. It is very comfortable in the CZ-83 or Beretta 84.

You might want to back off half a grain to start.

Yes, I know Unique is dirty and smokes, but it works very well in .45 ACP and I load LOTS of that.
 
Well guys, it happened...

Last night while browsing my LGS website, I found a Beretta 21a Bobcat Inox for $275 LNiB, so I went out this afternoon and bought it!

I know, I know... Here's the part where someone will tell me how it makes no sense to replace a Ruger LCP with a Beretta 21a because .22LR is weaker and less reliable than .380 ACP overall, but it's a BUG and frankly I cannot bear the cost of .380 ACP JHP because the cost/performance ratio is just too vast. I'll sooner carry a weaker, less reliable cartridge which can be fed for like 12¢ a round over a marginally effective cartridge which costs upwards of 60¢ a round and expands 40% of the time.
 

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My old 21A never jammed and with it I could shoot about 3 rounds in 1 second.
That makes it very much better than nothing. Also, some persons flinch at .380 but not with .22 LR.
 
I run Buffalo Bore's 95Gr +P JHP in my Colt Pocketlite. It ramps up the .380's pathetic +/- 800 FPS to +/- 1100 FPS. It has NO PROBLEM meeting the FBI's 12" to 18" spec for Gel penetration with great expansion. I would NOT recommend it for Tupper Ware pistols though. Colt says it's OK in the Pocketlite as long as it's not a steady diet.
I once nearly destroyed a Browning 10/70 and Browning 1955 .380 pistols by firing just one box, you read that right, just 1 box of high powered loads through both pistols. I ended up warping the frames big time. I had to stone the rails to even get the slides to slide back.

I might add I tested a 1973 Walther PPK/s with the same hot ammo and it suffered no damage at all but after seeing the two Brongings almost destroyed I never again fired hot loads out of any blowback .380 pistol (there are some .380's that are lockbreach).

I personally do not worry about bullet expansion unless there is a danger of "too much" penetration which would end up not only hitting your target but going through your target and hitting an innocent bystander.

Lets face facts people have been shot "stone dead" when they were hit in the heart with a .177 pellet gun and if you hit someone in the heart with an fmj bullet or an expanding bullet you cannot kill a person "deader" you can only kill them dead.

I have never been a big fan of the .380 when you can get the same pistol in a .32 acp as the German Army found out in the early 1900's the .32 acp would penetrate a Military Helmet while the .380 bounced off. The .32 acp recoils far less enabling the average Joe to shoot it far more accurately than the vicious recoil of a blowback .380 pistol (there are some locked breech .380 pistols) .

So much for the ignorant rantings of gun writers who have bad mouthed the .32 acp for the last 100 plus years. As a matter of fact Agnes Herbert one of the great woman hunters and shooters said back in the year 1900 that the gun writers of her era were morons who knew little about real world hunting and shooting. My how little things have changed in the last 125 years as gun writers are as big a bull crapers today as they as the were in 1900. They simply repeat the same old myths over and over.

I think too that way too many people do not realize that getting a bullet to expand or shooting a larger caliber does not turn the round into a death ray machine either. The difference between the diameter of say a .380 or 9mm compared to say a .44 or 45 caliber is a scant 1/10th of an inch or less. Rather its accurate shooting, bullet penetration and bullet placement that are paramount.

Not so long ago when the .25 acp and .32 acp dominated the "carry" market it was noted that more people were killed by these calibers than the bigger pistol or more powerful pistol calibers. You might say the victims who died from these two smaller calibers died because they "did not" read all the gun magazines that would have told them they would not be harmed if shot by a .25 acp or .32 acp.

And also remember no matter what the caliber of exotic expanding ammo you use that still even today this ammo has a way more of a chance of causing a jam than using a bullet with a more rounded nose. When I attended my concealed carry class you would not believe how many guns "jammed" up when their owners tried qualifying with them while using expanding ammo. And I might add some even needed help to clear the jams. Not good in a real gun fight.

When using a .32 or .380 auto pistol I would have no qualms at all using a round nosed bullet that was a fmj or even hard cast lead. I have shot enough hard cast lead to know they can be very reliable and give far less jams than an exotic flying ashtray expanding bullet.

Use what works for you in your handgun as long as its reliable and has sufficient penetration and you can shoot the ammo well without flinching.

Avoid all the advertising hype. Not so long ago Winchesters advertisements for their "Black Talon" ammo was "too successful" creating a firestorm in the news media even though it was no more destructive than other well known and well made ammo. When Winchester quit making it because of the firestorm of bad publicity (none of it deserved) people panicked and went nuts and were paying over $150 a box and that was decades ago. I simply yawned and loaded up my usual hard cast bullet loads and never looked back.

Decades ago I shot a 185lb Whitetail deer with a hard cast 121 grain bullet out of a browning High Power. The deer took two wobbly steps and fell down deader than a doornail. I sent Jeff Cooper a picture of the deer and my Browning High Power (because I knew he hated the 9x19). He never responded to my letter but did respond to me when I asked him later in time a question about building a 1911 pistol.
 
Lucky Gunner at least does five round samples and sometimes does short and long barrels as well.

A lot of the videos on YouTube use a single round, and near the margins of the expansion envelope that doesn't tell you much. When you get near the minimum velocity needed for expansion, a hollow point doesn't just hit a magic number where it stops expanding. Instead it stops expanding consistently. Add in a fairly high standard deviation and you can get some misleading results.

For example, if you might have a hollow point that expands 60 percent of the time at a given velocity. So the odds are 60 percent that the single shot tested will perform and the tester will declare victory when 40 percent of the time that hollow point will fail to expand.
I find it amusing that so many of the you-tube testers fail to line up the gelatin blocks correctly and waste shots and skew results by not elevating the front of the blocks a few inches before firing. What happens is that when they fire, the barrel of the gun is higher than the table that holds the blocks, so they end up firing down at a slight angle which allows the bullet to exit out of the bottom of the block, which renders the result of that shot as meaningless.
Why is that simple concept of firing at a proper angle from the git-go so elusive for some people?
 
I find it amusing that so many of the you-tube testers fail to line up the gelatin blocks correctly and waste shots and skew results by not elevating the front of the blocks a few inches before firing. What happens is that when they fire, the barrel of the gun is higher than the table that holds the blocks, so they end up firing down at a slight angle which allows the bullet to exit out of the bottom of the block, which renders the result of that shot as meaningless.
Why is that simple concept of firing at a proper angle from the git-go so elusive for some people?
Agreed. It's not rocket science.
 
The closest I've come to carrying is a stainless 380 Walther PPKS. I could put it in my pocket but not much to worry about at the pickleball courts where I know almost everyone by name. With 3 mags and a range that does not allow exposed lead my choice is obvious and the gun is deadly at any reasonable distance, even offhand SA or DA. So far no failures to fire and eject of any sort. Hard to argue with a near century old design.
 
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