9mm carry ammo...115 or 147

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To me 115gr is too light and 147 too heavy. 124gr is the sweet spot for expansion and penetration. I prefer a 124gr+P load, as 9mm luger should be 124gr at 1200 from a 4" barrel.

But, if I had to pick I would side with the 115 grain. I prefer light and fast for 9mm. Beware some of the cheap 115 grain loads, they can be real bunny fart, powder puff loads. Go premium if you can.
 
I prefer 147-gr. 9mm. Typically it penetrates a bit further than the 124-gr. and 115-gr. bullets. While a lighter bullet can be pushed fast enough (behind a quality bullet) to penetrate to 147-gr. depth, it usually requires +P loading. With a good 147-gr. 9mm, the expansion difference is minimal and within the usual margin of error.

But with 147-gr. you get extremely mild recoil, whereas some of the +P and +P+ loads with lighter bullets start to snap a bit.
 
These threads always generate posts where people list the round they carry but don't list the reason why.

I think to go about selecting a cartridge. you have to gain an understanding or at least form a belief about what causes incapacitation. After that it is a matter of what part of the bell curve you want to cover. On one end of the spectrum is a frontal shot on the skinny guy wearing a T-shirt. The skinny guy is 11" from front to back - not much muscle, a frontal shot with a 105gr EFMG that penetrates 8" to 9" is going to reach vital tissue, a frontal shot with a 115gr all-copper hollow point that penetrates 10" to 11" is going to reach vital tissue. On the other end of the bell curve is having to take a cross shot on a barrel-chested, muscle-bound thug wearing a jean jacket over a shirt, and a T-shirt underneath that. Can those same rounds go through a jean jacket, a shirt, a T-shirt, a bicep, another layer of T-shirt, another layer of shirt, another layer of jean jacket, another layer of jean jacket, another layer of shirt, another layer of T-shirt and still reach vital organs?

Probably not.

But maybe you think your odds of facing a barrel-chested muscle bound thug are too slim to go through all the trouble of preparing for such an encounter. Or maybe you think that once a barrel-chested muscle bound thug sees that you have a gun he's gonna high-tail it out of there.

Maybe another way to approach it is to go by reputation or anecdotes - for example the Federal 9BPLE 115gr +P+ round developed a good reputation with the Illinois State Police.

But there has to be some logic behind the selection process.
 
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Try both and see if there are some reliability issues in your gun. Ask someone to take a look at the ejection of the spent cases to see if it's regular or not in your gun. One time I shoot a box of Fiocchi 100gr FMJ-TC Black Mamba out of my Walther P99 AS and I saw a spent case rolling and dragging above the slide and falling on the ground; the movement of the slide was very fast; it was a very accurate load but I ruled it out for defense because I can't trust the ejection pattern (and my Walther is a clock ejecting 124gr ammo) and something wrong with light bullets and fast slides could happen.
I have to say that 90% of the times I read that of out the box pistols are having problems, it's related to the fact the owners were using 115gr ammo.
147gr bullets could be better but I agree with the other members that are saying to try 124gr loads when available.
 
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Ballistic gelatin tests are just a lot if marketing hype.

Any expanding round that fires with accuracy and reliability for you will absolutely get the job done.
Click to expand...

I don't think the FBI was bamboozled by a bunch of marketing hype, Duncan MacPherson is a respected engineer with ideas that are solidly grounded in good scientific methodology.

The 1986 Miami FBI shootout showed that not every expanding round that fires "gets the job done"
 
And I want to add that the issue with the 9mm round in the 1986 Miami Shootout was not a failure of the bullet or a failed bullet design. The issue there is the same issue that is being discussed in this thread - the issue is that of selecting a cartridge to meet the requirements.

The Winchester Silvertip performed the way it was designed, the primary requirement that it was supposed to meet was to not over-penetrate. And the Silvertip didn't over-penetrate.

The main failure in that situation is that the agents were equipped with a bullet designed primarily not to over penetrate when they needed a bullets which met the criteria of penetrating to 12" - 14" through various barriers (criteria the FBI later developed).

This is my point.

This question of "which 9mm round should I use" is like asking "what car should I buy?"

Are you going to commute? Do you want great gas mileage? Are you going to use your car to go camping, to tow a boat?

It's like saying "I'm going to Home Depot, what tool should I buy?" Well what are you trying to accomplish?

You have to decide what you want to bullet to do.

Maybe you own a messenger service in Minneapolis and you drive around all day and your primary concern is a car jacking. And you determine you need to be able to shoot through you drivers side window and stop a car jacker. Well then you want a bullet that can go through glass, heavy clothing and still reach vital tissue. Find the cartridge that does that.

Maybe you own a house on the beach in Florida and you sit on the beach all day but you want to be able to deal with muggers or thugs from the bad neighborhood down the way... so you're probably not going to be shooting through drywall, car doors or heavy clothing... just shooting into an assailant who is wearing a T-shirt or even bare chested, so find a bullet that reaches vital tissue under those circumstances.
 
Many threads have been started on this type of topic. The odds of you having to actually shoot someone is pretty low [for most people], so go with what works best in your gun.

Me, . . . I happened to come across a few boxes of Federal HST 147gr, so I use them in my home defense [full size] and carry [subcompact]. I hope to never test them out on anyone.
 
 
What time frame?

I think the 105gr Guard Dog is certainly a candidate for not being able to stop an adult, at least not soon enough to prevent them from hurting or killing you.

There are others.
 
Seriously guys.

Is there ANY expanding-bullet factory-produced 9mm ammo that will not incapacitate a non-armored adult if you shoot him between the shirt pockets?
Click to expand...

Probably not, but that also is not to say that they are all created equal or that some don't perform better than others. The research is readily available. Why wouldn't you want to utilize it to make an educated decision, especially when the end use is the protection of your life? Further, why would someone flatly dismiss it?
 
I just got a box of the Critical Duty 135gr +P, faster than a 147 but heavier than a 124. I think 135gr could be a great weight in the 9mm.
 
I use the WWB personal defense 147gr HP. They are reasonably priced, reliable in my nine and I like the idea of greater penetration. I would shoot any good quality 147 grainer, but will not pay 200 bucks to test functionality with the premium stuff. Then there is the super premium, I always wondered how the glaser/magsafe adherents felt comfortable with those rounds in anything other than a wheelie...well they could be rich.
 
I think CountZero is right. Why we prefer a certain bullet weight should be stated as well as the bullet weight.

For my use, I like the 124 gr. +P in 9mm (specifically the Gold Dot or HST) because tests have shown it to have good penetration and expansion and both bullets have good records of use by LE agencies. Other reasons why include availability of cheap FMJ range ammo of the same weight (generally equivalent ballistic characteristics) and lower recoil than the 147 gr. I would pick a 115 gr. round (preferably either +P or +P+ for self defense) over a 147 gr. due to lower recoil* and widely available low priced FMJ ammo in the 115 gr. weight for practice.

*Personally, I've found +P+ 115 gr. ammo has lower felt recoil and faster target recovery than even standard loads of 147 gr. That may not be true for every shooter. I've never been particularly recoil sensitive, having come from large bore magnum and hot-loaded .45 Colt revolvers, but the 147 gr. 9mm rounds I've shot have a particularly nasty kick to them. Kind of like a 158 gr. +P in a S&W Airweight.
 
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