FMJ vs JHP for self defense

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What's most ridiculous is that JHPs aren't even all that much more expensive and they certainly aren't 'fancy'.

Dpaula, you display the worst case of inverted snobbery I've ever seen.

Why don't you just carry a flint knife, since they worked so well for tens of thousands of years? Why bother with your fancy, overpriced handguns anyway?

Or you could go even more reliable, and just carry a heavy rock. Not even an edge to wear down on that.
 
Make no mistake. I have killed large things with 230 gr FMJ .45s. It's about the MOST effective FMJ round you can carry. If I were caught in a defensive situation loaded with .45 hard ball, it's not like I would panic because I brought the wrong ammo. I wouldn't do anything differently, because my plan is the same no matter what gun or ammo I am carrying.

But I still carry 230 gr HSTs, because my life is worth making sure I give myself every possible advantage.
 
....ok, If you want to complain about Kimber, there are plenty of threads to do that. You are diverting the subject. You said you can't trust JHP ammo to feed in your gun. That is 40 year-old rhetoric. G.I. guns were not INTENDED to ever fire anything other than G.I. hard ball ammo. If you wanted one to feed JHP, you needed to have it throated. How long do you think a gunmaker will stay in business if they make the only 1911 on the market that won't feed JHP NOW?

Is your life not worth every advantage you can get?
 
My rebuttal is simple. I have seen plenty of humans taken down by 230 grn FMJ bullets in Vietnam.
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Gee, given the M16's reputation in Vietnam do you still believe it's an unreliable POS too?
 
FACT: FMJ bullets have killed more bad guys than any hollow pointed round and for over a 100 years now as well. This is just plain irrefutable fact!
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But it's also irrelevant. If the same amount of people were shot with JHP and FMJ killed more still than I would agree with you but that's not the case. Just because something has been done for over a century does not mean it can't be improved.
Not that I don't believe ya but I am curious now. If ya can, I'd like to see your proof.
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When I get back home tonight I'll post it.
 
The fact that so many people have been killed with FMJ is meaningless, irrelevant, and misleading. Like a lot of "statistics" tend to be. What is the number shot to number killed ratio? That would be a better stat if you could find it. I have no doubt that far more people are shot with FMJ too, because it is commonplace worldwide.
 
I load my magazines with both. With my Glock 22, I usually have either 3 JHP at the top, followed by alternating JHP and FMJ OR (and more common), 5 JHP at the top, followed by 10 FMJ. I figure there are major benefits and drawbacks to both and there is a chance I'd be in a situation where either or both would come in handy. However, the main reason I always keep the JHP first in line is to reduce the risk of lawsuit.

If JHPs reliably expanded all the time, then I feel like they would be the obvious choice for carry/self-defense. But, even the most reliable aren't a sure thing from the research I've seen. That's another reason I carry both.
 
I carry JHP's in everything I own

My EDC gun is a 4" 1911 with 230 grain JHP's. If a man is so fat that a couple of CENTER OF MASS hits doesn't do the trick, you can always take a head shot.
 
Well, what are the issues?

Penetration. Many folks adhere to the 12" minimum FBI penetration standard--and some want a lot more. HPs (and other expanding designs) will penetrate less than non-expanding bullets; some will not meet the FBI standards. But there are loads these days in "standard" defenseive calibers that expand AND penetrate 12".

Reliability. Used to be that guns (esp. the 1911) were designed to use FMJ. No longer the case.

Over-penetration (of intended target, with possible injury to innocents behind him). Some dismiss this as a concern. Those who don't dismiss it want the ideal load to stop under the far skin of the target. HPs are more likely to do that.

Wound diameter. It is generally admitted that an expanded bullet makes a wider wound than a non-expanding bullet of the same designated caliber.

Legal. I think NJ is the only state where HPs are either fine, illegal, or murky depending on whom you talk to. But some expanding designs are (we are currently told) apparently not consiered "hollow-nose or dum-dum" bullets under NJ law, though I know of no test case. So, no longer an issue (?).

Expense. HPs are generally more expensive, with the "latest and greatest" expanders really quite shocking. Speaking of shock :D...

Energy dump. HPs tend to produce more, some folks feel that such energy dump from handgun rounds will occasionally produce incapacitation by itself (hydrostatic shock), or otherwise increase the likelihood of stopping the attacker; others don't.

Have I missed something?
 
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There's a very good reason hollow-points are being used by every police agency across the land....because they are more effective than FMJ ammo.
 
Hydrostatic shock. HPs deliver more of that than FMJs, even more than full wadcutters. Some believe that matters, some don't.

Have I missed something?
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Few, if any, SD rounds, either JHP or FMJ, achieve the velocities necessary to develop the kinetic energy required to reliably produce hydrostatic shock.
 
I load my magazines with both. With my Glock 22, I usually have either 3 JHP at the top, followed by alternating JHP and FMJ OR (and more common), 5 JHP at the top, followed by 10 FMJ. I figure there are major benefits and drawbacks to both and there is a chance I'd be in a situation where either or both would come in handy. However, the main reason I always keep the JHP first in line is to reduce the risk of lawsuit.

If JHPs reliably expanded all the time, then I feel like they would be the obvious choice for carry/self-defense. But, even the most reliable aren't a sure thing from the research I've seen. That's another reason I carry both.
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If they fail to expand then they act as a FMJ, if they expand then it's better. I don't know why people alternate ammo like this.
 
That's why he included the bit about some do, some don't, because there are people who are quite adamant that magical ballistic waves fly through the human body from an ordinary service pistol hit.
 
.45 caliber FMJ bullets just don't shrink when they hit a body. They stay right at 11.5 mm in diameter and size.
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But it doesn't poke a .45 caliber hole in flesh. The hole is smaller in diameter than the bullet because the bullet has a streamlined shape that allows soft tissues to stretch and "flow" around it's rounded contours. (This can change however if the bullet strikes bone and yaws or becomes deformed.)
 
We sure did kill a lot of bad guys with FMJ in the last 100 years and we are not doing to bad with it at the present time either in the sand box! All the hypothetical arguments for hollow pointed bullets just can't refute those facts.
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There's nothing hypothetical about the greater wound trauma produced by JHP bullets. JHP bullets create more damage. More damage translates in to faster incapacitation of a determined adversary. Depending on the wound track the temporary cavity produced can cause splits & fissues in non-elastic tissues such as liver & kidney to increase the rate and volume of blood loss.

I favor FMJ for reliability factor mostly. I have seen the sharp edge of a 25. cent Federal Hydoshock round stop a 2,500 1911 dead in it's tracks more than once by getting stuck on the feed ramp. Usually at where the frame meets the barrel throat.
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So what. Tap, Roll & Rack and drive-on. If it's a one or two time thing over hundreds of rounds - no big deal. If the incidence is greater then it's time to change to a different load that feeds more reliably.
 
While that's an interesting history lesson, it's also irrelevant to the discussion of JHP vs. FMJ as a personal defense round. You seem to ignore the elephant in the room, which is that our country has chosen to abide by the Hague convention of 1899. As such, our military hasn't had the option of using JHPs. That's like me saying that because a Ferrari is the absolute best car because a Ferrari has always won the Ferrari 458 challenge (a fact), yet it's a race in which only Ferrari's can compete. One does not logically follow from the other, yet you keep repeating that "fact" as if it's meaningful.

If your gun doesn't feed HP's reliably, by all means don't carry them. But these days, there are plenty of guns that DO feed HP's reliably. For the people that own those guns, there are a lot of factors to consider in choosing their defense ammo, but irrelevant facts about body counts produced by FMJ rounds aren't one of those factors.
 
I favor FMJ for reliability factor mostly. I have seen the sharp edge of a 25. cent Federal Hydoshock round stop a 2,500 1911 dead in it's tracks more than once by getting stuck on the feed ramp. Usually at where the frame meets the barrel throat.
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FWIW, I have seen a 20 cent 230gr FMJ RN do the same thing. Usually, the fault is not the 20 or 25 cent round or the $2500 gun, but the $10.00 magazine. OTOH, I have seen 1911s set up so well that they reliably cycle empty cases.
 
I prefer not to choose my modern handgun ammunition based on political decisions made in 1899, when technology (and warfare itself) was arguably not quite what it is today.

I find it humorous that you make statements like "There is just no way you are going to change my mind or what I saw" while clinging to anecdotes as evidence. Yet you also have the audacity to say that people who can show factual and objective data are the ones who need to be more openminded.
 
The military analogy is clearly false and misguided but if you maintain that premise I will again point out that SP/HP ammo has killed far more BG species than FMJ with the exception being solids on dangerous game where penetration is highly desired.
There is a vast difference between a man and say an elk but in terms of difficulty to kill I would say the elk holds the edge there.
 
Just show me where the 230 grn FMJ round is NOT a lethal man stopper!
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Lethality is a function of what the bullet hits. What you hit is more important than what you hit with - be it FMJ or JHP.

However in self-defense we're not interested in "lethality". We're using deadly force to stop deadly criminal violence as quickly as possible. A .45 ACP JHP bullet that expands to .70 caliber produces more damage and provides greater capacity to stop deadly criminal violence more quickly. An expanded JHP bullet produces greater damage because it's physically larger in diameter and it's non-streamlined shape is more efficient for crushing tissue. Bigger holes bleed better than small holes.
 
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