Ammo is, naturally enough, a topic that comes up in the preparedness forums fairly often. Skipping past the usual “what caliber should I have for my SHTF pistol” nonsense, one of the more common questions is what type of ammo to keep around. Should you go long on the FMJ/Ball ammo or stock up on the JHP and ‘Personal Defense’ stuff?
I go long on the FMJ/Ball stuff, and keep a very small fraction of our stockpiled centerfire ammo as JHP’s.
Most military ammo is FMJ, right? So for the calibers where surplus military ammo is available we wind up with a lot of FMJ. Nothing wrong with that. Pretty much any rifle bullet, FMJ or not, traveling at a couple times the speed of sound will radically change someone’s immediate plans. In handguns the majority of our autopistol ammo is FMJ with probably less than 20% as JHP or ‘defense’ ammo. Why? Couple reasons.
Although we have a decent amount of thundertoys on hand, there is no guarantee that the guns we’ll have will be our own guns. Might pick up a 1911 someone trades to for some freezedrieds, might come across an SKS in someones garage, might find a repairable Mosin Nagant in the back of a wrecked pickup truck. In short, you never know what guns you may stumble across. FMJ or Ball ammo is the ‘Type O- Universal Donor’ of bullet styles. If a gun won’t work with quality FMJ ammo it probably won’t work better with anything else. (Of course, I’m sure there’ll be comments from folks saying they used to own a gun that bobbled every FMJ but shot hollowpoints perfectly. May be, but broadly speaking if a gun can’t handle FMJ it’s probably not going to do great with the more unusual bullet shapes like the hollowpoints or softpoints.)
“But..but..if you use FMJ ammo you’ll be giving up stopping power!” Well, maybe. But while FMJ may (or may not, depending on whose studies you review) have less stopping power than an FMJ, I can guarantee you that FMJ has more stopping power than JHP that nosedived into the feed ramp.
Interestingly, there is a happy medium in this ballistic mess. Years ago Federal came out with the very odd concept of an expanding FMJ. A contradiction of terms? The bullet has the profile of an FMJ but the front of the bullet, under the jacket, is filled with marshmallow or some similar gunk. The round feeds like an FMJ but when it hits something it compresses and expands like a softpoint of JHP. Very cool. Sadly, not something I can afford to stockpile in bulk. However, it seems like a wonderful choice for folks who are shooting something that can be finicky about bullet shapes. Cough*1911*cough.
The personal defense grade handgun ammo isn’t cheap. Where I can stock 9mm FMJ all day long at around $0.12@, stuff like HydraShocks, SCT, XTP or even Silvertips are going to be prohibitively expensive for anything other than a few hundred rounds. For carrying around day-to-day, I have some snazzy hollowpoints in the Glock, but once they’re gone it’ll be a diet of 115 gr. FMJ. On the other hand, to have shot off all the defensive hollowpoint ammo would mean that there must have been one amazing post -apocalyptic episode.
If I had the money, I’d do an even mix of FMJ and JHP. Hmm…lemme grab a catalog and do some comaprisons….
- Federal American Eagle 9mm is $0.22@ vs. Federal Hydra Shock 9mm at about $1@…
- Win. USA Brand 9mm is $0.34@ vs. SX JHP at $0.76@….
- Rem. UMC 9mm is $0.32@ vs. Golden Sabre at $0.96@…
- Speer Blazer 9mm is $.021@ vs. Gold Dot @ $1.05@….
So at its most generous, youre looking at around 2x the price for defense-grade pistol ammo and in a worst case almost 5x the price. Or, put another way, five cases (5000) of American Eagle FMJ will cost you one case (1000) of HydraShocks. So, for my money, I could have 1000 rounds or 5000 rounds. Easy to say I’ll take the FMJ when you put it that way. But, honestly, I would go for a mix of something like 20:80 of premium JHP:FMJ.
Now, where it gets really interesting is when you start reloading. I’ve a lovely Dillon 1050 and delaer pricing with the bullet companies. My cost difference on 5000 JHP for reloading versus 5000 FMJ for reloading is about, mmmm, maybe seven cents a bullet…meaning that to assemble a 9mm FMJ is $0.12 versus about $0.20 for a quality JHP. Or, put another way, I can reload JHP ammo with ‘brand name’ defensive hollowpoints (Gold Dots, XTP, etc) for about the same cost as buying loaded FMJ ammo.
Even with those numbers, I tend to stock FMJ in far greater quantities than JHP. My two reasons are primarily concerns about functionality in a very wide variety of platforms, and getting the most ‘bang for my buck’ – I want to maximize the amount of ammo my dollar gets me. At the same time, I recognize that ammo performance isnt to be disregarded and try to keep enough high-end ammo on hand to keep our favorite daily carry guns stoked for quite a while.
There ya go. Your mileage may vary.
It is a tough call.
On the one hand, you can only carry so much ammo around with you. Maybe a couple hundred rounds.
On the other hand, almost every real battle report (versus civilian shoot em ups) has an enormous amount of lead being thrown.
I was just reading an account of a Rhodesian Farmer who is scarying of some “freedom fighters” from his farm. He fires off 400 rounds in one encounter, likely hits nothing, and thinks of it as ammo well spent.
Water cooled machine guns in offensive fire support would go into battle with 12,000 rounds of ammo.
Since most households (so I have been told) have less than 100 rounds on hand, I would say being the last guy/gal with cartridges outweighs the type/brand being used.
Great topic. I’ve got a ton of fmj 9mm stored along with some h/ps but if the proverbial s-it hits the fan I don’t think too many people are gonna see fmjs as the inferior round. I wouldn’t want to be shot with either one.
I’m a little cheaper than you…I go about 10% good stuff, and even then, it’s only for my pistols. .380, 9mm and .38/.357. Actually, for the revolver stuff I have more JSP than FMJ…easier to find and cheaper in those catagories.
For rifle stuff, my hunting calibers are all soft point, my .223 is almost 100% FMJ( I think I have two boxes of explosive expansion varmint stuff) and for 7.62 X 39, I have whatever was cheapest, which gives me a mix of soft-point, FMJ, and even some Hollow Point Stuff.
Certainly agree with you though…if I have burned through 200+ rounds of Gold Dots, things are pretty worst case.
Now, the real discussion comes when you start talking .22′s, and compare HP’s to Solids. The price difference isn’t as great as with the bigger caliber stuff, so I try to keep plenty of both, picturing the HP’s for small game, and the solids for bigger things.
I just keep a couple mags worth of 9mm JHP for my carry Glock (19) and the rest (10mm, .45 ACP, .308 and .223) is FMJ. .22′s, I just buy whatever is available and/or cheapest at the time. 12 gauge is my most widely ranged type of ammo but that’s pretty much to be expected.
For modern day non WROL situations JHP is almost a requirement for responsible carry. In all situations you need to worry about over penetration and ricochets but in a WROL bystanders are less likely to be an issue.
Final point, practice is essential and if you can afford to practice with JHP then imagine how much more you can practice with FMJ.
I stock FMJ for economic reasons, as well. The reason it tends to be cheaper, of course, is that the military is required to use FMJ, per the Hague conventions following WWI. Because you see, whe you fire a high-power rifle round at someone’s head, you don’t want to do *too* much damage, now do ya, cowboy?
Yet rest assured, it will get the job done.
Yup… some of each works for me as well, for many of the same reasons.
An exception though…. I carry FMJ ball in my CCW pistol already. Yes, I have plenty of whiz-bang $1 a round ammo on hand to play with… but my carry .45 has ball in it.
Why? Because it works flawlessly, every time.
My .45 is already as wide as any 9mm is going to expand to, and the .45acp FMJ cartridge has a long and proven record behind it. I am a true believer in the value of ’100% percent bang rate’ over ’99.8% bang rate, but gee whiz bullets’.
I am a older guy, and around firearms for awhile. Many years ago there was a thing called shooting fruit salad. It is when you load a Pistol with FMJ and Hollow points. A few hollow points in the end and mix hollow point and than FMJ. Alternate back and forth . The first couple of shot are FMJ. Than mix back and forth. This was some thing that I read about.
@Art:
If you are using FMJ in your carry gun, you are about 30 years out of date. If not forced to by circumstances, you are being foolish. The 45acp in FMJ is rated to penetrate 2 1/2 bodies. That sort of penetration might be somewhat useful in a large riot where injuring lots of people might help you escape, but for everyday self-defense, you are leaving yourself open to liability. You launch it, you own it.
Killing a woman standing in a doorway a block away from a through and through of a BG, because you insist on using outdated technology can get real expensive.
Although the real reason not to use it is because it isn’t a good stopper. Sure, if comparing to FMJ 9mm, it looks ok, but that’s not saying much. There are LOTS of failures to stop using 45FMJ. (here’s one: soldier and wife in garage. Soldier puts 5 in the chest of BG #1, turns to deal with BG#2, then turns to discover BG#1 has killed his wife with a knife. Call that acceptable performance?)
Frankly, if your .45 acp gun won’t feed hollowpoints, you have no business carrying it. I’m guessing it’s an old 1911, and it is easy to fix the problem. Or retire it, and get a better gun.
Working on the line that FMJ isn’t real effective as a manstopper, I wonder if it might be useful to devise a jig to modify it, for after-TSHTF usage. I’m thinking basically a drill fixture, to put a hollow in the nose, or maybe just a flatpoint on it.
Obviously, you can’t create a bullet that will rival the current offerings, but anything that improves the stopping effectiveness of FMJ would be useful.
Of course, some experimentation to ensure they feed reliably would be necessary. And not just the handgun stuff, but .223 desperately needs to be a hollowpoint to be effective. Especially the heavy, fast twist rate setups.
Drilling holes or cutting/filing on the points of FMJ bullets is a very bad idea.
Accuracy is not going to improve, to say the least.
Your chances of feeding problems will go way up.
There is a not insigificant chance of blowing the core out of the jacket and leaving a bore obstruction that will damage your weapon and maybe you when the next round is fired.
There’s no such thing as over-penetration in a SHTF situation. You WANT a rifle that can shoot through cars, trees and most walls. FMJ bullets, in general, do a much better job of this than hollow or soft-point bullets.
Rifle-caliber FMJ is fine. If you shoot someone in the chest with a round of 5.56mm he’s not going to be a problem, no matter what the gunshop commandos say. Shoot him twice, just to be sure.
Note that the US military is currently going to great trouble to find “barrier blind” loads for their 5.56mm weapons. Not because 5.56mm FMJ over-penetrates, but because it doesn’t penetrate enough.
Handguns need better ammunition than FMJ, but how much does anyone really think they need? Your handgun is your last-ditch weapon—if you need to shoot someone with it then things have gone very wrong. Having things go that wrong but still being able to survive them due to a handgun isn’t likely to happen often.
A few hundred rounds of good defensive ammo for your handgun is a lifetime supply, allowing you to replace carry ammo every so iften. Use cheap FMJ for training and sustainment shooting.
By law (GC, ROE) the military is prohibited from using hollow point rounds. “Unecessary suffering” or something to that effect. Same reason we can’t use nails, glass etc in artillery.
Yes, I recognize the insanity of the logic. As I’ve said before “I didn’t build the asylum, I’m just an inmate”.