Reloading Defensive Ammunition?

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Josh Smith

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Hello,

I would like your take on this.

I know the gun rags would have you believe that reloading ammo for defense is a bad idea.

However, I've yet to find a steady supply of defensive ammo - but I do have a ready supply of components in .45acp: Brass (new if I want), 230gn old style Remington HP bullets, which I love, and Winchester primers.

I seat to a depth of 1.265" COL, charged with 5.2gn of Bullseye, which is the maximum I find listed for this style bullet. No pressure signs and I'm seated a bit further out.

This combo has no muzzle flash and at least keeps up with the modern, expensive factory offerings.

It feeds very reliably, and I have complete and total confidence in the load and my ability to reload. The primers never touch my hands, for example - no contamination at all the way I do it (I work in medicine and use many of the same cross-contamination prevention procedures in reloading as we do with patients). (I recently had to run a very well known and popular name brand through a resizing die to make it work - it looked very hurried and would not feed correctly - definitely not what it used to be).

Honestly, it's the best load I've found. And the cheapest. And did I mention it keeps up with modern wonder bullets?

I've not seen one single case in which reloads came into play if a shoot was righteous.

Can'o'worms open; what are your opinions?

Thanks,

Josh
 
I never knew was a bad idea till I found the internet:D I say load them till some one can show real proof you might get in trouble . Real court cases not this writer says this in one small paragraph.
 
Hi Josh,

I answered over on H&A. To sum it up, I carry some handloads, myself, but I'm a criminal defense lawyer and I feel pretty good about addressing issues in a courtroom. Mas, who's certainly an expert and who's kind enough to give advice to people (I only advise clients), points out that the use of handloads introduces variables that might become a hassle (and points to a case he worked on that became problematic where GSR was an issue where handloads were used), and suggests folks should minimize hassles. Notwithstanding what I do myself, when my little brother (not a criminal defense lawyer) began carrying, I gave him advice similar to what Mas gives the public.
 
Hi Folks,

Erich, I saw the answer over there, and I do thank both of you.

I have this question up on several boards. It's interesting how some boards will gravitate toward one opinion or the other.

FWIW, I'm going to switch from factory ammo exclusively after about three months of this PDX1, if defensive fodder doesn't become more readily (and cheaply) available with good quality - I had to run a well-known and respected company's ammo through a Lee FCD before half of them would feed, and this gun eats everything - including the previous products from the same manufacturer and even empty cases. Additionally, the bullets looked quickly made and the nickle plated cases were stained.

I'm just losing faith in factory ammo - they need to build new plants to keep up with demand, methinks.

Until then, my custom loads are not much hotter than military ball. In fact, they likely duplicate military ball only they're propelling a HP.

Thanks again,

Josh
 
I've done a lot of handloading...but the good companies have roughly 7,823,431 times more experience at it than I do.

I'll carry good commercial just for that reason alone.
 
Liability, quality and reliablity are 3 good reasons to carry factory ammo. You don't need a thousands rounds of carry ammo. Buy enough to fully load your carry and home defense guns with a full reload for each.

Reload your practice ammo and hunting ammo. I wouldn't bet my life or my families on some ammo I put together in the garage. You don't have to practice with your carry ammo exclusively. Shoot a box or two
of it every few months and shoot cheap fmj for the majority of your practice.
 
I rolled my own .44 mag loads for woods carry. Coyotes can't take me to court :D.

I'll spend a few hundred on plinking ammo (or reloading components) during the year, buying one box of top shelf carry ammo is a small investment really.
 
I carry factory ammo, but I have always wondered...

If you used the correct brass and a bullet that is commonly used in SD ammo (for example, Speer Glod Dot), how would that rabid DA know that it wasn't factory ammo?

Are they going to disassembe some of your unfired rounds, analyze the powder and determine taht you handloaded them?

Are they going to pull the bullet and look for your fingerprint on the base of the bullet?

Are they going to pull the primer and determine who manufactured it? (e.g., if I use Wolf primers, are they going to find out and say, "Yep, looks like a Wool-uff primer to me, and Speer doesn't use those!")

Are the cops going to search your house, see your Dillon and say "Cha-Ching!!"?

I could see if you used LSWC bullets or something obvious, but what am I missing here? FWIW, I don't watch CSI, and I didn't watch Perry Mason when I was a kid either :)
 
Erich's analysis on Stephen Camp's site is the best I have ever seen on the gain/loss from using reloaded ammunition in defense situations. He carries his reloads, and they lean toward the Elmer Keith end of the spectrum. But he is an attorney who has been involved in the appeals of hundreds of shooting convictions. He is at home, quite literally, in court. Are you?

Cordially, Jack
 
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Buy your normal defense ammo factory.Lawyers will use the reloaded ammo as part of a case against you if you have to use the gun.Beside.How many times do you plan on discharging the weapon on bad guys?on box of 20 will be enough for a lifetime unless you live in a warzone.Just use the reloads for target shooting and Civil unrest stockpiling.Atleast till they make it legal to kill all lawyers.......:p:D If you ever have to use the Stockpile ammo,Lawyers will be teh least of your worries.
 
Orion - No...no csi analysis usually. I'd bet however, that you do not do *all* of your business as cash and carry. They routinely will pull records though, including credit cards, bank statements and so on. if they see tons of reloading supplies, they can use that as justification to get the ammo in the firearm analyzed.
 
This is one of the messiest topics that I ever see here on TFL. I always swear that I won't get involved in it. Every now and again, I guess I'm a glutton for punishment! :eek:

The folks that choose to load their own for defense typically come back with the MAIN reason that they don't trust that factory ammo will work. They cite examples of cases with no flash hole or dead primers or no powder.

Here's my idea, and I've never seen anyone either take it seriously or counter it:

If you must be sure that the factory ammo has those necessary components before you'll trust it, why not buy a box of 20 and disassemble it?

You can then see the flash hole, right where it should be.
You'll see the primer is in there... I suppose you could even replace it with one of your own primers.
You'll see the powder charge, and can even weigh it if you like and log the consistency over the full 20 rounds in that box, or more if you buy/disassemble more boxes.

REALLY. Those of us that handload know how to safely disassemble a loaded round. Obviously, we can re-load it. It'll still be "factory ammo" when we are finished.

But nobody that refuses to trust high dollar defense ammo will ever counter this suggestion of mine.

Why?
 
I maybe called a curb side lawyer, here's my take on reloads for self defence. Show me a incident where a person defending them selves with a weapon loaded with reloaded ammo against a aggressive, threatening person has ever been charged and went to trial and lost. I seriously doubt anyone has been in legal problems defending them selves with reloaded ammo. Last of all why would anyone on the side of defending the rights of honest people question this, and how would they prove it. Ambulance chaser's make a very good living testing your rights.
Jim
 
Lawyer issues aside, you can load your own defense ammo, but a totally different mindset is required than loading standard ammo.

You approach it as loading an individual one-off round.
By that, I mean that instead of running off 50 or 100 or 1000 rounds, you're concentrating on that ONE round.
Then you load another round.

ANY doubt on any component and it gets rejected.
You inspect the case using magnification if necessary.
You clean each individual case and clean the primer pocket.
You use only primers you've kept in air and moisture tight storage and you individually seat the primer, using a hand primer tool like the Lee if necessary.
You use only powder that's been properly stored and you weigh and hand dispense each charge.
You seat the bullet to the proper depth and use the correct type and amount of crimp.
After all this you again inspect closely, and use a chamber gage to check each individual round to insure it'll chamber.

Then you test fire enough rounds to insure the reload, the magazine, and the gun are all compatible and working properly.

A writer wrote an article about a visit he'd paid to Wild Bill Hickok in Dodge City while he was Marshall.
He wrote that each morning Hickok would fire his pistol out the back door, then scrupulously clean the gun and with painstaking care reload it, carefully inspecting each primer and the powder.
After it was cleaned and loaded, he'd fire the other gun out the door and clean and load it.

When asked why he did that, when most people carried their guns loaded for days, Hickok said that he had to be certain. If his gun misfired, he'd die, and as the Marshall of the wild Dodge City, he was assured of getting into a gun fight.

The mindset is, you approach each and every individual reloaded round as if that one round was going to either save you or kill you.
 
I only use factory ammo for carry now. In my youth, I carried a CA Bulldog. I handloaded my own ammo as factory ammo was hard to find (no internet before Al Gore invented it:)) and all that was available was WW or RP 246 RNL. I preferred a 240 SWC at about a hundred FPS or so faster than factory.
 
As far as a court case I have not seen one yet or any to to point one out. But I with Samtu_Ray on this one. I buy good carry ammo and shot my reloads are the range. I might carry some of mine in the woods but that would be it. I only need one box of SD ammo for each of my carry guns so 2 boxs of SD ammo is cheap.
 
The risk of handloads for self-defense = hypothetical fear-mongering.

A few years ago I used handloads for everything. I'd developed a 9mm 147gr JHP "standard load" for plinking, target shooting, training, home defense and carry. Handloads made it economically possible to extensively train (thousands of rounds) as I fight, especially when I attended training courses. Factory ammo, using the same bullet, didn't (at the time) provide the same level of consistency in velocity as my handloads. I chronographed factory ammo velocity extremes of 125 fps between shots.

I kept good records of my handloads - even measuring and recording variations in propellant charge during my QC checks. Anybody could take my data and exactly duplicate my product. The only difference between "training" handloads and dedicated "defense" handloads was that I used new brass for the latter. I maintained good shop practices and quality control and I never experienced any failures.

When Speer perfected its 9mm 124gr +P Gold Dot load I began using it, primarily for the benefits of bullet and primer sealant. For training I developed a 124gr +P FMJ load to duplicate velocity of the factory load. Economically, I can handload the same amount of 124gr +P ammo for less cost than 147gr.

I still have a couple of ammo cans full of my 147gr "standard" load that I wouldn't hesitate to load my pistol with for defense.
 
Anybody could take my data and exactly duplicate my product.
Click to expand...

I recall that the problem that the defense team ran up against in the Bias case (on which Mas worked) was that the trial court refused to admit such evidence to allow GSR testing of the handloads. Since such admission was reviewed for an abuse of discretion after the conviction (without the defense being allowed to produce GSR tests of the handloads) and the trial court was found not to have abused his discretion, it didn't go well for the person who used handloads.

I agree it's very unlikely to come up as an issue, and I hope that everyone does whatever s/he's thought through and feels comfortable doing and in justifying if need be. I think that Mas' point is, why should a person not minimize any prospective issues to the degree possible? As I said much earlier in this thread, I often carry handloads myself (Hey! Here are some on me right now! ;) ) - and feel I could handle the issue in the (highly) unlikely event it might come up. However, I can report that when my little brother started carrying, I had a conversation with him that was similar in tone to Mas' advice.

What I'm amazed by is how often this seems to come up on forums. :)
 
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