Ammo testing

James had a post a few days back on one of his 'working guns', a Star Super B. Specific note is made that this pistol "...won't feed any hollowpoint ammo at all, or at least any that I have bothered to try."

This is something I(and just about every other gunblogger) has stressed before: NEVER trust ammo for self-defense that you have not fired through your sidearm! Revolvers are much simpler here, as they'll generally digest damn near anything without problem, but a lot of semi-auto pistols can be downright finicky about what they'll digest.

I wrote a while back about trying out a Star BM (if that link doesn't work, try here and here)9mm. That little pistol was fired with CCI Blazer ball, some other brand of ball, two different bullet weights in Gold Dot hollowpoints, Remington hollowpoints and some Winchester hollowpoints as I recall and it ate all of them without a bobble; excellent performance from that beast. I've also fired some high-grade semi-autos that flat would NOT reliably cycle some particular brand of ammo. No reason we could figure, it just wouldn't.

My carry piece is a Kimber Compact, their version of the Officer's Model 1911. The only thing I've fired that it wouldn't feed well was some semi-wadcutter target ammo(a common problem for almost all 1911 pistols that don't have a barrel throated for this bullet). But I've read of other people whose Kimber was very damn picky about what it would work with.

What makes really testing ammo properly a problem is the price that premium self-defense ammo sells for (especially now); for instance, last time I looked Federal Hydra-Shok in .45acp was selling for $15-16. For a box of twenty. That kind of cost really hurts a lot of people. But the plain fact is you cannot short on this: you HAVE to shoot enough of the stuff you choose to make sure it will function reliably in your gun. No ifs, ands or buts.