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Best 9mm ammo for home self defense?

J

JChattin17

Operator
Hello again and I’m sorry if this could have been easily found (not by me, lol) elsewhere on the site. I bought my XD-S mod2 9mm in April and I’ve only ran 9mm “target ammo” through it and that’s the only ammo I’m stocked up on.
My question is what type of ammo should I have for home/carry self defense? I’m confused if I should want penetration or not.
 
I recommend you try any decently rated self defense ammo available to see if your pistol likes it and if over penetration is a major concern there is some ammo on the market that may help with that concern though nothing is guaranteed.

9mm Civil Defense ammo flies at almost 2000fps which is insanely fast but the bullet is only 50gr making it easy to be slowed down or stopped by barriers in the home though I'm pretty sure that wasn't the intent of the round. You can find some independent videos of this ammo online being tested.

I would not use Civil defense 9mm ammo as my main carry after researching it myself but the 10mm looks promising as a defensive option.
 
I would want both expansion and penetration in a defense pistol... you will have to determine how much of both you ‘need’. I am of the train of thought that I value expansion a tiny bit more than penetration as long as penetration is close to FBI minimum.

When I ran a 9 mm, I used HST. But the actual penetration and expansion depends on your gun (barrel length, etc).

Edit: I like Civil Defense in certain calibers and for situations where less barriers are likely. My primary home defense gun is not a pistol due to that over penetration concern.
 
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Federal HST and Speer Gold Dots are the standard and they've both worked great through my 9mms. I'd receommend the, if you can find them. You can rarely find others like the Hornady Critical Defense and Duty, Barnes Tac-X or Sig V-Crowns from time to time as well as smaller manufacturers like Underwood that sell things like the Lehigh Extreme Defender. I don't have any experience with them, though I do have a few boxes of the Extreme Defenders in regular and overpressured (+p). I'll let you know how those work after I test them. There are FBI specs for how much penetration to look for.
 
JChattin17 said:
Hello again and I’m sorry if this could have been easily found (not by me, lol) elsewhere on the site. I bought my XD-S mod2 9mm in April and I’ve only ran 9mm “target ammo” through it and that’s the only ammo I’m stocked up on.
My question is what type of ammo should I have for home/carry self defense? I’m confused if I should want penetration or not.
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The most important facet of a self-defense round is reliability...and that's why you can't just use a round that other people recommend. Better to use FMJ that always runs than the latest & greatest "Super DethShok+" that chokes every other round.

That being said, what is desirable in a defensive round is proper penetration (12-18" is the generally accepted value) in tests while giving robust expansion.

I'd recommend looking at the Lucky Gunner tests and see what roads tend to perform better, see if you can find any, and rest them in your gun for function (anything less than 100% is unacceptable).
 
I have been trying this ammo out, so far I really like it.
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10mmLife said:
I recommend you try any decently rated self defense ammo available to see if your pistol likes it and if over penetration is a major concern there is some ammo on the market that may help with that concern though nothing is guaranteed.

9mm Civil Defense ammo flies at almost 2000fps which is insanely fast but the bullet is only 50gr making it easy to be slowed down or stopped by barriers in the home though I'm pretty sure that wasn't the intent of the round. You can find some independent videos of this ammo online being tested.

I would not use Civil defense 9mm ammo as my main carry after researching it myself but the 10mm looks promising as a defensive option.
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10mm? I thought that went the way with 40s&w? This makes me wonder why you recommended it...........?
 
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