What are your thoughts on Federal Independence .45ACP 230 gr FMJ 500 packs?
Is it good range ammo or not?
LP or SP?
Brass or aluminum cases?
Reliable for range work or iffy?
Does it coat your hands with soot at the range?
Does it compare with, say, PMC or Magtech, UMC or WWB?
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Do you mean CCI Independence?
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I donāt trust anything federal
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Independent Ammo is a brand, made under Vista Outdoors umbrella, who owns Federal and CCI.
Thatās why you see both names, however itās the same ammo.
Iāve shot 9mm version of it and never got issues.
Donāt expect āwhite gloveā, unless you clean each bullet with acetone. 
Itās a brass case and works great as cheap range ammo. Nothing bad and nothing special about it.
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RANGE AMMO CHECKLIST:
1- Goes BANG consistently - ā
2- Doesnāt blow up my gun - ā
3- Is relatively clean - ā
4- Cheap - ā
If it meets the 4 qualifications above Iām good to go. I have probably shot a bunch of Independent Ammo but hard to remember since I buy bulk ammo and immediately dump it into Military Metal Ammo cans with only caliber labels.
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Why not? It seems like very consistent ammo to me. I use their range ammo all the time, and the Hydrashok Deep for SD ammo in a .380. Never a single failure to fire or failure to feed in any of the guns I shoot with Federal.
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Honestly, their small pistol primers piss me off. Thatās it. They should be fine since itās the same parent company as CCI, but CCI primers donāt give me issues and federal do.
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Curious, what kind of problems? CCI used to be infamous for super hard cups that were difficult to hit hard enough to ignite, especially with guns that had been āupgradedā with lighter springs. Iāve personally never had an issue with Federal but Iām very interested in your experience.
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The soft cups have been a nightmare for my reloading.
Granted, Iām still new as heck and only learned yesterday what a swage is, but Iāve seated over 800 CCI primers with no issues.
Out of about 45 federal, 7 of the primers squished and now Iām going to have to fire them off to deprime.
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Thanks for the input. BTW You donāt have to fire them off, and depending how they are "crushed they might not pop anyway. Put a drop of penetrating oil inside the upright case and allow it to soak into the primer. In a day or two it will be inert and you can then carefully (slowly!) run the case through your die and the ruined primer will pop out.
Also how are you priming your cases? A hand primer is easy and fast, faster that using your press for sure, and gives you a lot of control over the seating operation. I never use my press for priming. My son in law loads in motorized commercial presses and even he doesnāt use his presses for priming preferring to hand prime all his cases.
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Thanks guys! Iām in CA so buying bulk is kind of a PITA, but Independence is available locally from Sportsmanās Warehouse at a very reasonable price, which is why I asked.
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Thatās good advice. Thanks. Iāll do that instead. My city has a gunshot detection system and I was feeling annoyed about having to potentially go to a range just to fire them off.
I do use my press to prime, but Iām currently using the Lee hand press, so I am basically doing by hand. With the CCIs I was able to feel them seat easily and it was obvious when to back off. With the federals I either felt them seat properly or I felt nothing and they were squished when I checked them.
Iāve been debating getting a different hand primer anyway though because the little primer loading tray looks super convenient compared to what Iām currently doing.
The consensus on the reloading discord Iām on seems to be that I had a handful of crimped primer pockets and didnāt realize it. I was advised to order a ram swage and just make it a part of my process, so Iām doing that also.
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RCBS makes a great one and they have a lifetime warrantee on them. Great company to do business with.
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I used CCI and Federal primers in my reloading day, the Federal seemed hard and the CCI great 
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Further question for you.
Should I be looking at getting a case trimmer if all Iām loading is 9mm currently?
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No. Case trimmers are really only needed for rifle cases or in my case when making āexoticā rounds like 45-60 WCF for my 1876 Centennial Rifle. Pistol cases hardly ever need trimming and if they do they are probably past their safe usable life.
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CCI had a hard cup reputation going back to the 70s-80s when we were having too much fun ācustomizingā old classics for bowling pin shoots and bullseye. It became the norm to swap out all the factory springs in your gun to put in ultra light ones to get the lightest trigger pulls possible and shoot the mouse fart loads of the time.
CCI got a reputation for unreliable ignition back then, which was a direct relationship to folks putting unreasonably light springs in their guns. They were the first primer to give you trouble (unreliable ignition) in ātargetā loads and my benchmark for going too light in some of the guns I worked on.
They also still make a huge percentage of military primers which are by default harder cups to prevent slam fires on some of the semi-auto and especially full auto guns like the heavy bolt squad guns (M60 and such). If you see machine gun ammo marked crates of ammo they are almost guaranteed to have CCI primers in them. I occasionally use those military primers in my reloads for my run-n-gun AR ammo. No real reason nowadays except for my history with them. Those primers tend to be oil/water āproofā too and built like brick outhouses.
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