How hard is +P ammo on guns, really?

[Candiru]

I've been wondering about this for a while: Just how hard on guns is +P
ammunition? I'm not worried about edge cases, like shooting .38 Special
+P out of a .357 Magnum revolver or shooting +P ammo out of a cheap
Saturday Night Special, but the standard situation: a relatively modern
gun that the manufacturer says will handle +P, but doesn't advertise as
such.

It makes sense that extra-pressure rounds with resultant higher recoil
and blast are going to put more strain on a gun and shorten its useful
lifespan. I've noticed that shooting a relatively new gun (< 500
rounds) with +P ammo for a session put noticeably more wear on it than
the same number of rounds of low-weight ball ammo. This worries me a
bit, since I don't want to accelerate the senescence of anything into
which I've poured the better half of a thousand dollars. On the other
hand, logic suggests that a thousand rounds of +P ammo over the
operating lifetime of a quality pistol (I'm thinking of my Kahr P9 here)
will probably have only minor effects on how it holds up.

But why theorize when there's an entire forum crammed full of people who
are in turn crammed full of experience? I'd love to hear any knowledge
you'd care to share about high-powered ammo and its impact (so to speak)
on the wear and tear accumulated by a gun. Does it make much of a
difference? Do you minimize the number of rounds of +P or +P+ you put
through your guns? Or am I just being paranoid?

Thanks for sharing.

 

[P95Carry]

There are quite a few views on this - one I share with several others is that 9mm these days is - in relative - terms considered to be downloaded compared with '' the old days''. Thus, what we refer to now as +P is in fact for all practical purposes probably no hotter then ''old'' 9mm loadings.

That said - there are some cases where it is wise to stick to recommended loads - the R9 is my best example - a highly engineered pocket piece exclusively for std pressure rounds.

In most full size guns I doubt if the ''beat up'' factor is going to be serious, in particular if useage is not total - some +P mixed in or even used for carry will IMO have little deleterious effect on a good modern quality firearm. In fact the majority of 9mm's in this category will take +P and many say as much.

The difference in fps can be quite modest - maybe not even 50 fps, but that is achieved with a slightly higher pressure of course. If in doubt with any piece then std pressure is ''kinder'' but I think I would only be really leary of +P use in older firearms. However, one might even say that older versions were maybe handling the older hotter loads anyways!! So why worry!

+P is not going to cause any KB's, of that I'd be fairly certain!

 

[Vernal45]

+P is not going to cause any KB's, of that I'd be fairly certain!

+1, ........

Unless you look like a mad scientist behind the reloading bench, grinning and drooling over a round that you carefully take out, look at it, smile and say NUCLEAR

 

[45crittergitter]

P95 - Why would one not use +P for carry, not routing shooting, in the R9, assuming of course, that the load in question reliably functions?

 

[P95Carry]

45 - I guess that could be done but the gun is in a sense ''on the limits'' from a safety design POV even with std pressure. It purposely has a large freebore of 0.250 in order to allow the initial pressure spike to just tail off before bullet engages rifling.... that is how fine tuned it is.

I would OTOH expect the gun could and would take many rounds of +P and survive very well, after all good engineering practice is to build in some factor of safety with any ''machine'' or structure.

However, seeing as for the most part this small piece is gonna be pretty much a ''bad breath distance'' piece, then I'd expect 6+1 even as std pressure rounds, to do quite adequately.... considering that the ''bonus'' outa the 2.9" barrel will be hardly huge from using +P.

Call it ''repect'' for the quoted design/useage parameters.

 

[R.H. Lee]

I think it depends on the particular pistol. I tend to favor all steel rather than alloys, but that could be an antiquated notion based on the alloys of 20-30 years ago. After shooting +P ammo, take down the pistol and look for signs of wear or damage-peening on contact surfaces, cracks especially on the barrel lug, etc.

 

[Cosmoline]

"+p" is a vague term. It means VERY different things with different cartridges. In the .45 ACP +p isn't that much more power than standard. But in the .45 Colt or .45-70 +p could mean a load orders of magnitude more potent than the cowboy load. IIRC, SAAMI won't approve official +p loadings of this nature, but that doesn't stop people from loading them anyway.

 

[Crosshair]

Vernal45

Unless you look like a mad scientist behind the reloading bench, grinning and drooling over a round that you carefully take out, look at it, smile and say NUCLEAR

Hey, quit making fun of me. My 22-250 loads may be nuke grade, but my Savage takes them no problem.

 

[RyanM]

I've noticed that shooting a relatively new gun (< 500
rounds) with +P ammo for a session put noticeably more wear on it than
the same number of rounds of low-weight ball ammo.

If you don't see that much of a difference in wear once a gun has been shot a fair bit, I'd call that "accelerated break-in" rather than "accelerated senescence."

 

[callgood]

9mm- from looking at my manuals, 9mm +p doesn't seem to be that much "hotter" than the standard loads. BUT, I read an article from Cylinder & Slide in which they said they got many Hi Powers bunged up from shooting +p. Now, they didn't note the age of these pistols, and we don't know how many rounds went through them, but there you have it. Of course, you can get buffers, swap out for a Sprinco guide rod and spring, and that should help. And, as suggested, you can practice with standard loads and carry +p, which is what I would do if I carried my Hi Power. For me, if the standard 9mm load is insufficient, I would just leave the Hi Power home and take my Glock20!
.38 special. My S&W 442 isn't rated for +p. I've shot a few thru it, but the tiny width of the cylinder spooks me- rational or not. It gets standard loads. Anyway, +p isn't fun to shoot in the 442. The equivalent in .357 (model 637?) must be a REAL trip.

 

[Sunray]

A +P is really just a hot factory load. Most handguns will be battered by a steady diet of hot loads. And like, callgood says, shooting a steady diet of them isn't fun.

 

[RON in PA]

Most manuals that I've seen from gun manufactuers state that +P ammo will accelerate wear in heandguns.

 

[SHOOT1SAM]

I realize that the original post was about +P & +P+ ammo in 9mm pistols in general, but the specific pistol in question is the Kahr P-9.

The original Kahr K-9 was specifically built for +P ammunition. Unless I'm sorely mistaken, the P-9 is as well.

One of the advantages of a polymer framed pistol (I know-heresy!!) is its ability to imperceptibility flex during recoil, allowing the use of intense loads, and/or making recoil seem "softer".

Kahr pistols were designed from the ground up to be CCW pistols, carried with the most potent ammunition available, and when they came into existence (speaking specifically to the 9mm here) +P ammo was it. Keep in mind that 9mm standard pressure is 35,000 cup, which is the same for .357 magnum.

Candiru: If you have any doubts about +P or +P+ ammo in the P-9, I'd suggest a quick call to Kahr and ask them-who better to tell you if the pistol is so rated than the manufacturer?

Sam

 

[Old Fuff]

Plus-P ammunition came about because some law enforcement agencies and police departments wanted a more powerful .38 Special load because they're left-wing masters forbid anything that said "Magnum" on it. (Can't hurt the poor disadvantaged criminals you know). The ammunition companies said, "yes we can do that." The gun manufacturers said, "yes, but over time it will cause accelerated wear, in particular causing cylinder end-shake and maybe gas cutting on the topstrap and barrel throat." The cops said, "fine, in that case we'll trade in the guns and buy new ones."

The Plus-P concept has spread to the point where it is now the generally accepted standard load in both revolvers and pistols. The gun manufacturers continue to warn about accelerated wear (that may or may not happen) because they don't want to cover it under their warranties - unless of course they certify Plus-P ammunition in that particular handgun.

The Old Fuff is a cheapskate, who is usually found shooting older guns of better quality. He has little or no reason to shoot Plus-P ammunition under most circumstances. In his book a Plus-P .38 Special is called a .357 Magnum, and a Plus-P .357 is a .44 Special or .45 (when fired out of short barrels). Most of his pistol shooting, other then .22 LR is done with a .45 - that doesn't need a Plus-P anything if the shooter does his part.

To each his own.

 

[SHOOT1SAM]

Old Fluff said:

The Old Fuff is a cheapskate, who is usually found shooting older guns of better quality. He has little or no reason to shoot Plus-P ammunition under most circumstances.

Gotta love an Old Fluff who refers to himself in the third person...

Sam

 

[Old Fuff]

Da' Old Fuff's ego is only surpassed by his good looks ...

 

[bakert]

In fact in years past some communities allowed their police officers to carry .357 Mag revolvers but only allowed the use of .38 sp ammo because the .357 was considered unnecesarily effective. Go figure!! :banghead:

 

[Old Fuff]

Easy answer:

The communities where these police departments were located were governed by left-wing types who worried much more about criminals being hurt then officers being killed. I know because I live in one in the mid-west. This particular city had one university and at least two colleges. Individuals from them largely controled the city government, and as a consequence it was not a happy place to be a police officer. In recent years it has changed for the worst in this (and other) respects.

 

[TimboKhan]

You know, this is a completly unscientific opinion, but I won't shoot +P any more, because I do think its hard on my guns. I bought some Cor-Bon loads in .45 to shoot from my P90 (Been long enough, I do not recall bullet weight), and everytime I pulled the trigger, my slide would fly back as far as it would go. Basically, I could hear/feel it hitting the "stops", and to me, its just unnecessary. Plus, what in the world would be so bad that I would need +P over regular old ball ammo anyway?

Timbo

 

[SHOOT1SAM]

TimboKhan wrote:

You know, this is a completly unscientific opinion, but I won't shoot +P any more, because I do think its hard on my guns. I bought some Cor-Bon loads in .45 to shoot from my P90 (Been long enough, I do not recall bullet weight), and everytime I pulled the trigger, my slide would fly back as far as it would go. Basically, I could hear/feel it hitting the "stops", and to me, its just unnecessary. Plus, what in the world would be so bad that I would need +P over regular old ball ammo anyway?

Timbo,

I understand your refusal to shoot +P ammunition (although I think if ANY auto pistol could do it easily, it'd be a P-90), but, if you're talking self-defense ammunition, damn near anything would be better than regular old ball. Assuming you're not yanking chains here, regular old ball overpenetrates, does not expand, and generally speaking, will require MORE shots to stop an adversary than a quality, standard pressure hollowpoint.

Sam

 

[Old Fuff]

I get a big kick out of the folks that hand out the line that the .45 ACP cartridge is inadequate unless it is loaded with the latest gee-wiz hollow point slug.

Having looked at the ammunition issue since before the Korean War I'd say that .45 "hardball" has earned a pretty good reputation as a manstopper. And it will penetrate through barrier material and reach out and touch when hollow-point stuff stops cold. It is also the round that is most likely to feed in most guns.

One wonders how we got through World Wars One &Two (not to mention the smaller actions in Korea, Viet-Nam and other places) and heard very few complaints. Then there was a side action going on stateside called Prohibition where a fair number of caps got busted without an ungainly number of bad guys surviving hits from "ineffective" FMP bullets. For many years Texas Rangers carried cocked & locked .45 Government Models loaded with you-know-what. Now suddenly some people can't cut it unless they have a super-mushroom effect.

I think we have raised up a generation of wimps ?

 

[Crosshair]

*A quote stolen from somewhere*

A 9mm HP may not expand, but a .45 will never shrink

 

[rockstar.esq]

A 9mm HP may not expand, but a .45 will never shrink

Roger that

Basically, I could hear/feel it hitting the "stops",
Although the maraca effect nicely offset the deep bass overtones...

Lots O' people get dead from boring bullets in "undersized calibers"
F.N. made over 1 million 32ACP's and named John Browning a national hero.

JMBrownings last gun design was the Hi power in 9mm. Seems to me he knew what he was doing. +P doesn't seem neccessary on a defence gun, perhaps on something intended for longer ranges than spitting distance...

That said, the .45 is right where it counts and has served our country well both as Long Colt and ACP. I'd feel comfortable carrying either with loadings from their inception.

 

[TimboKhan]

Shoot1sam,

Allrighty, I am going to have to respectfully disagree. Yes, I see your point that a good hollowpoint will, in principle, kill better than hardball, and I can't disagree with that. However, (and there is always a however in life) I would argue your point from a couple of different angles. First, I can afford to shoot hardball a whole lot more than I can afford to shoot a good hollowpoint, and I subscribe very much to the viewpoint that you should carry what you practice with. Second, as OldFuff pointed out, and I don't mean to sound ghoulish here, .45 hardball has killed plenty of people. Third, I actually don't buy all of your argument. When you say that hardball won't expand, I would simply say "so what!" Your still talking about drilling what amounts to a half-inch hole in whatever your shooting at, and thats plenty. I also don't know that I necessarily agree with the over-penetration argument. I am not saying your wrong about that; I have read opinions on that matter in the magazines before, and I am sure that they have some merit. However, I would point out that no less an expert than Clint Smith advocates the use of plain ol' hardball. Fourth, I would also point out that hollowpoints don't always feed well in 1911's. For someone who is the least bit gun savvy, thats easily and cheaply cured with a trip to the gunsmith. For someone less savvy, that FtF from a hollowpoint hanging up on a feedramp could potentially result in this whole argument being rendered moot, in that I am sure we will agree that anything that goes bang is better than something that doesn't. End result? I respect your opinion, and it's based on published fact and/or expert opinion, but I will stick with the hardball.

Timbo

 

[TimboKhan]

Now, here is another point. I have actually been shot with plain-jane 9mm FMJ, and it zipped right through me. Would I have died, eventually? Definitly, but I obviously didn't. For a long time I harbored a hatred of 9mm for just that reason (as odd as that sounds). I have come around to the 9 for a couple of reasons, the first being cost to shoot and the second being easier to shoot accurately. Additionally, with the recent availability of hi-cap magazines, and my impending purchase of a 24/7 in 9, I can carry 17+1 shots of 9 as compared to 7 in my P90 (on the rare occasion that I carry that pistol) and 5 in my little .357. Throwing more bullets at the problem won't make up for poor shooting, but if I can perform under pressure, its awfully reassuring to know that I have those extra shots.