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>I would say, load all of one, or all of the other. I recommend a JHP over an FMJ.

I'll second that.

There are fun guns.
There is fun ammo to shoot. BUT...
I agree with you ... JHP (my current choice are Gold Dots.) is probaly the best round...I just hope I can put them all, on target
in a stressfull situation.
No Silver Bullets, No bird shot and No Vampire stakes ... for me !
Mac

There are instructors like Rob Pincus and Gunsite that suggest in videos that birdshot is the best thing to use in an apartment. They argue that at apartment distances - 10-20 ft - birdshot remains bunched so that it punches like buckshot or slug into a person. However in wall board it goes through the first board and then spreads rapidly so that while each pellet goes through the second wall board there isn't much energy left. I have seen Rob Pincus make the same argument with regard to ammo like magsafe for handguns. I would point out a recent thread where a homeowner killed an attacker with 3 rounds of birdshot.

"Using a low firing position when possible to put the projectiles on an upward angle can help reduce the possibility that a miss may hit someone in another unit, but may not always be possible." Good advice, but no matter how good you are, the fight may not go the way you expect and you may miss. Indeed, contrary to Excalibur, I think you need to plan on what happens if you miss since no one I have ever met is good enough to guarantee every shot in a fight.

So, does use of birdshot or a magsafe or similar round raise the risk to you? Probably. Does use of birdshot or magsafe reduce the risk to your neighbors in the apartment? Sure. So you need to decide what you are comfortable with in terms of the risk to your life versus the risks to the lives of bystanders in nearby apartments.

stroo wrote:There are instructors like Rob Pincus and Gunsite that suggest in videos that birdshot is the best thing to use in an apartment. They argue that at apartment distances - 10-20 ft - birdshot remains bunched so that it punches like buckshot or slug into a person. However in wall board it goes through the first board and then spreads rapidly so that while each pellet goes through the second wall board there isn't much energy left. I have seen Rob Pincus make the same argument with regard to ammo like magsafe for handguns. I would point out a recent thread where a homeowner killed an attacker with 3 rounds of birdshot.

"Using a low firing position when possible to put the projectiles on an upward angle can help reduce the possibility that a miss may hit someone in another unit, but may not always be possible." Good advice, but no matter how good you are, the fight may not go the way you expect and you may miss. Indeed, contrary to Excalibur, I think you need to plan on what happens if you miss since no one I have ever met is good enough to guarantee every shot in a fight.

So, does use of birdshot or a magsafe or similar round raise the risk to you? Probably. Does use of birdshot or magsafe reduce the risk to your neighbors in the apartment? Sure. So you need to decide what you are comfortable with in terms of the risk to your life versus the risks to the lives of bystanders in nearby apartments.

Thanks for this post, Stroo, you comments address my concerns more directly. I don't know how many people went to the MagSafe web site and read the ballistics information of this stuff, or read the FAQ link on the performance of MagSafe, but "sound" pretty impressive. .357 mag loads coming out of a 2" barrel snubby develop 1640fps and 402 ft lbs. of force. They also use larger pellets than typical birdshot. Penetration is reported to be 13" in ballistic gelatin. Keeping in mind that the average man's chest is from 10-12" thick, penetration beyond that is going to be hitting wall behind then bad guy. I'm not trying to kill the wall. Of course you always have to weigh the hype on any company's web site. I'm not totally buying their claims at this point. What I am going to do is research the subject more and get all the information I can about how effective this type of ammo really is . I would never rely on this type of ammo for my carry gun - only in the gun I keep by my bed in the bedroom. Oh well, I love to do research and this subject will keep me busy for awhile.

stroo wrote:There are instructors like Rob Pincus and Gunsite that suggest in videos that birdshot is the best thing to use in an apartment. They argue that at apartment distances - 10-20 ft - birdshot remains bunched so that it punches like buckshot or slug into a person. However in wall board it goes through the first board and then spreads rapidly so that while each pellet goes through the second wall board there isn't much energy left. I have seen Rob Pincus make the same argument with regard to ammo like magsafe for handguns. I would point out a recent thread where a homeowner killed an attacker with 3 rounds of birdshot.

"Using a low firing position when possible to put the projectiles on an upward angle can help reduce the possibility that a miss may hit someone in another unit, but may not always be possible." Good advice, but no matter how good you are, the fight may not go the way you expect and you may miss. Indeed, contrary to Excalibur, I think you need to plan on what happens if you miss since no one I have ever met is good enough to guarantee every shot in a fight.

So, does use of birdshot or a magsafe or similar round raise the risk to you? Probably. Does use of birdshot or magsafe reduce the risk to your neighbors in the apartment? Sure. So you need to decide what you are comfortable with in terms of the risk to your life versus the risks to the lives of bystanders in nearby apartments.

Over an ounce of birdshot from a 12 gauge performs significantly differently than a few pellets from a handgun cartridge, and a close range hit with a full load that has not covered enough distance to spread out much is most certainly deadly. A hit at longer range with multiple pellets from the same load is much less so.

The physics of energy loss when multiple small individual pellets strike a target are not encouraging enough for me to stake my life on them. In my experience, little light things lose energy (and thus the ability to penetrate) quickly when they encounter resistance. Also in my experience, shallow surface wounds have a way of making aggressive folks angry rather than compliant, and that's not the result I'm looking for.

Others may feel otherwise. If you use such ammo in an encounter, please be kind enough to share the results with the rest of us.

In the final analysis, you do your research, use your best judgment for your circumstances, and live with the consequences of your decisions if and when your plan is put to a real world test.

Once again, I'm going to choose something that has proven results.

For those who might think that I have lost my mind even looking at MagSafe ammo, let me put your suspicions to rest. I passed on that ammo not because of the opinions of others, but based on what I was able to learn with a little internet searching. Mouseguns.com has a very negative article giving the test results of MagSafe vs the venerable .45acp cartridge. You can check it out at here: ttp://www.firearmstactical.com./tacticalbrief ... cle432.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
I appreciate all your comments on the subject and I did come to the same conclusion as you did, I just wanted my decision to be based on hard data - not just opinion.

Opps, that link may not work. If you are interested just go to Mouseguns.com and click on the ammunition and ballistics link. Scroll down to MagSafe tests.

YabuUS wrote:For those who might think that I have lost my mind even looking at MagSafe ammo, let me put your suspicions to rest. I passed on that ammo not because of the opinions of others, but based on what I was able to learn with a little internet searching. Mouseguns.com has a very negative article giving the test results of MagSafe vs the venerable .45acp cartridge. You can check it out at here: ttp://www.firearmstactical.com./tacticalbrief ... cle432.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
I appreciate all your comments on the subject and I did come to the same conclusion as you did, I just wanted my decision to be based on hard data - not just opinion.

YabuUS wrote:Opps, that link may not work. If you are interested just go to Mouseguns.com and click on the ammunition and ballistics link. Scroll down to MagSafe tests.

If that 2002 gun scribe's test of 3 rounds of MagSafe ammo and 1 round of hollowpoint on a single rack of ribs and some ballistic gelatin helped you make a good decision, I'm glad you found it before you bet your life on cartridges that I consider useful only for dispatching rats. That article sure wouldn't win any awards for scientific methodology, but its conclusions are consistent with my observations in real world shootings and apparently they have served you well.

For future reference, a point worth considering is that police go to great lengths to make sure they issue and carry the best. When one is thinking of adopting new ammunition, I suggest that it should be considered cautionary when no police agency considers the rounds you're looking at good enough to issue to its officers, who must operate in the real world every day. They have no illusions about the consequences if they choose wrong, and following the lead of those who base their selections on real world experience can save you a lot of time and effort.

The Mouseguns.com site has an excellent article by Mas Ayoob on the history of how police have selected their ammunition, the mistakes they made and learned from, and how they fared under the different methodologies. It can be found here..

Another illuminating article on the Mouseguns.com site is the one by the former Atlanta police officer who now works in a morgue and sees about 8 autopsies a day. It can be found here.