I’d like to hear from you if you’ve had remarkable or extraordinary reliability and accuracy from the FMJ ammo you’ve tried and shot in .380 or .40. I’m planning to get back into pistol-shooting as a full-time hobby, and in the past I always had good results with Winchester and Speer “hardball”. The pistols I’m shopping will have barrels in the 4" - 5" range, to wring the most performance from the ammo I’ll shoot. THX - Kurt
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My backup piece is a Sig P238 in .380, over the years it’s been quite reliable with both FMJ (PMC brand ) and absolutely no issues with Hornady FTX 90 grain Self defense ammo! Getting my hands on extraordinarily remarkable ammo is sometimes out of the budget. Like Black Hills ammo. I ran a thousand rounds through my .45 and it was like a drug, highly accurate and reliable! I just couldn’t afford the price and availability was tight.
All my firearms are very satisfied eating PMC and Hornady brand ammo!
Accuracy is strictly up to the shooter! IMHO All ammo is effected by breathing and heartbeat!
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You would have to pay me money alongside the free ammo to get me to use winchester. And that…I still might not. I’ve had significantly more failures and out of spec issues with winchester than every other manufacturer combined, and it’s not even close. What’s worse is I can buy a box of 50 where like 15 mic out of specifications (exceeds COAL) and send them the info with pics and mic measurements and lot numbers and the whole thing and I don’t hear back. I’ve let them know about multiple quality issues with documentation and pics multiple times and never heard back. And their ammo fails. A lot. Gets recalled a lot too.
I lean on the ATK family of ammo. Federal, Speer, CCI.
Always good things with Lawman, American Eagle, even the cheap weak Federal Champion and Federal Aluminum is reliable for me.
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I run Remington, PMC and Federal FMJ in my S&W M&P 380 and it all runs 100% fine. The Remington feels like maybe its a little tiny fraction snappier in my hand than, say, the PMC, but I also feel like its a little dirtier. They’re all the same to me though, so I get what’s cheap. In my 38 specials, I’ve really liked Ammo Inc for how clean and low flash it is, plus accurate, so if I found that in .380 I’d buy it up.
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I’m still evaluating.380 at this time. My Bersa seems a little finicky with a couple of brands, but has no issues with S & B, and PMC. I haven’t put enough through my micro 380 to have an honest opinion yet
One of my first pistols was a CZ P07 in .40 S& W. I believe it was a LEO trade-in. It has reliably shot everything I have put through it.
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For .380 ball ammo, my favorite is Speer Lawman. It is pretty clean and is a strong shooter. I buy a lot of it in 9mm as well. It is a little snappy though.
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My wife has a Sig P232 (.380). We used the cheap stuff with never an issue-Winchester white box, Remington, etc. I have also put some Federal HST through it with no issues.
The ammo is more accurate than we are with it.
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Reliability vs accuracy. As far as accuracy goes, at handgun distances if it goes bang it’s probably good enough. For reliability I have two rules: 1. Never anything that comes in a white box. 2. Before going into my EDC or home defense handgun I give it a 100 round stress test. Passing score is 100% reliability. No exceptions.
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I’ve had surprisingly good results from both PMC and Magtech fmj ammo.
WWB fmj I find hit or miss in the dirt department, and I’m talking so dirty than after 100 rounds the crud gets really bad and it’s hard to clean off—even with the usual solvents—but I’ve also had reasonably clean boxes of WWB. Both reliable and accurate of course but sometimes invincibly dirty.
I won’t even bother with UMC ammo anymore
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That is a good point. My disdain for winchester, especially wwb, is well known and extensive…I sometimes put the green/white box of Rem/UMC in the same bucket. It’s not so good.
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What gripes me is that both Winchester and Remington can certainly turn out very fine loads, just not “economy” loads.
With Winchester the problem appears to be with the propellants. Surely a cleaner burning powder couldn’t be that much more expensive than the dirt they’re using?
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Yeah, especially the price Winchester usually charges!!!
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