Home› Main Category› Personal Defense
NN
Posts: 25,235 Senior Member
JSP vs HP

I think we as a group have been taken by the idea HP ammo is better for SD applications.
Considering cost, HP SD ammo is much more expensive than JSP ammo; and is HP better at transferring
energy to a tgt and thus better terminal performance? I think no, and that JSP is actually better and it is cheaper,
and comes is 50 rnd boxes for less that 20 HP rnds.
Considering cost, HP SD ammo is much more expensive than JSP ammo; and is HP better at transferring
energy to a tgt and thus better terminal performance? I think no, and that JSP is actually better and it is cheaper,
and comes is 50 rnd boxes for less that 20 HP rnds.
Replies
If a JSP fails, a hunter writes the ammo company griping about his missed game animal, the ammo company says "aww shucks, sorry 'bout that, here's a free box of ammo". If a "defensive HP" fails, a dead LEO's family member hires a lawyer and the ammo company says "aww shucks, sorry 'bout that, here's ten million dollars."
I trust my life to factory ammo, that the factory EXPECTS people to trust their lives to.
Just my $0.02 :beer:
But really, I am TOTALLY fine with stuff that guys like Elmer Keith and Phil Sharpe were cooking up 80+ years ago - that is to say, cast solids with large, flat, frontal areas - and tend to think that while they may not give the final 0.2" inches of final expanded diameter that the modern JHP will, they still manage to disrupt a lot of tissue and penetrate better to boot.
There isn't anything magic going on here guys; it's a lump of lead - sometimes with copper - of a size and velocity dictated by the confines of the firearm it is launched from. Aside from excluding things like round noses that are extremely poor deliverers of energy, I don't see that the modern JHP has any huge performance advantage over a well-designed SWC. In some areas, it's even wanting in comparison.
The good news is that since the 1986 Miami shootout which launched modern wound ballistics theory, there's been a lot of good science applied to what makes a defensive bullet work well, and the typical JHP duty round pretty much does. Thing is, a lot of that modern wound ballistics theory validates what the old guys understood a century ago - penetration first, diameter second, and a wide flat nose (either by static design or expansion) tears up more tissue than a pointy or round one. The new stuff simply comes with a marketing department who's job it is convince you that THEIR ammo is a mini neutron bomb that will go around corners, dodge baby carriages, liquefy the DNA of the felon it strikes through benefit of GPS guidance, AND be stopped by a sheet of wet toilet paper placed behind him.
Don't get me wrong - there are plenty of valid reasons to use the stuff, but after years of looking at this stuff, I'm not convinced that performance is one of them.
"Nothing is safe from stupid." - Zee
Good stuffing everyone. :uhm:
I'm not so hidebound as to believe that there have been NO improvements since the Mauser 98, 1911, S&W N-frame, and Keith semi-wadcutter, but OTOH, I do not feel that every one of those more recent milestones have necessarily been as as far-reaching as their proponents claim. Even the legitimate advances often get some snake oil added to the sales pitch: if somebody has a for-real cure for cancer, you can bet it will get marketed as being good for acne, hair loss, and impotence too. Bullet design is probably one of the areas most affected by this for the simple reason that one manufacturer needs to make their product seem more appealing than that of the next - when in reality they are limited by the same constraints of diameter, weight, velocity, pressure, materials, and anatomy of intended target as everyone else.
There is precious little that's new under the sun in the firearms field. If anyone tells me they have something that is, my default setting is to wager they're holding an enema bag that's filled with sunshine and tobacco smoke.
(Better, NN?
"Nothing is safe from stupid." - Zee
You don't like feeling like a chimney?
Dad 5-31-13
same as JSP.
I wasn't thinking about such large bullets when I started this thread.
It's not the smoke so much as having to smear SPF-30 on my backside - it starts to chafe after a while.
"Nothing is safe from stupid." - Zee
I'm kinda in this camp. I have never shot a person and hopefully never will but I've read enough to know that humans are soft and have wimpy nervous systems compared to most game animals. I have on the other hand shot quite a few game animals with large cast bullets at moderate velocities. I figure that if a cast bullet with a large meplat can punch through any amount of bone and still create a sizable wound channel and humanly take a game animal, a similar bullet should be able to bore through any amount of clothing and provide similar results.
Meanwhile slower rounds that do not over penetrate benefit from JSP's. I have some Spanish .380's that penetrate well and expand well in SP.
D
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.... now who's bringing the hot wings? :jester:
Animals on the other hand probably go, "Pain! Run!!!" Not that animals think but, well, you know....
That could be why a heart-shot deer can run quite a ways while a guy who's been shot in the arm or leg will give up. Or keep on fighting, it depends on mindset, but hopefully you get the picture...
Kinda my line of thinking. If it's in a caliber of .40+, it really doesn't matter IMO.
Luis
Undetermined administrative leave.....:tissue: On the bright side the guy was a real douche bag..... on the down side, he was after all the honchos future son in law.....
Cheap stuff......
I want good performance stuff, and I am willing to pay $25 for 25, if I have to, but what if I don't have to ?
What if the cheap crap works well too ? facts ?????
I have seen enough guys on the slab at the morgue deceased from cheap crappy non expanding lead ball ammo as well as the pricey JHP stuff, what gives ???????
Edited to add: 1986 might as well be 1896 when it comes to ammo performance, so My question is this, if in 2013, 115 grain FMJ 9mm Winchester white box el cheapo ammo droped a guy DRT, and did in cases say circa 1997, Douchebags also DRT, can anyone tell Me if the pricey $25 for 25 rounds is that much better ? or is it hype ?
Personally, I like heavier bullets and better expansion, hence why I like longer barrel lengths and +P 9mm out of a Glock 17 for instance 17 rounds etc......
Or is lighter and faster better ? is pricey better ? cheap ? ARRRGGGHHHHHH My head hurts !!!!!