Hollow point ammo, like Federal HST, is expressly designed to produce maximum damage to soft targets.
Designed to expand violently on contact with a soft target, and to trade penetration capabilities for energy transfer, hollow point ammo dumps all its energy as quickly as possible, creating wide wound channels and cavitation that can easily incapacitate and neutralize a threat.
But, with this being said, there are numerous disadvantages to hollow point ammo - like Federal HST - that should require you to train with them if you ever carry them.
Here are some of them.
Hollow Points Are Prone to Jams
The main reason you need to train with the hollow point defensive ammo you actually carry is because you need to know how it’s going to perform in your gun.
Hollow points, with the sharp edge of their bullet’s noses, are prone to hanging up in three places; on the mag, on the feed ramp, and on the chamber edge.
Not all types of magazines, and not all types of magazine feed lips, play nice with hollow points. In some instances, some magazines may catch hollow points and stick, preventing them from feeding properly.
Feed ramps are another, and perhaps the biggest, issue. Stepped feed ramps are perhaps the worst, as these, like some mag feed lips, are prone to grabbing the edge of a hollow point’s nose and preventing it from feeding.
The chamber edge is another issue; if the bullet is not perfectly aligned with the chamber, when the action strips it off the top of the mag and tries to force it into the chamber, it may get stuck. Whereas in round-nosed FMJ, minor misalignments are usually not a problem, with hollow points, they can cause disastrous jams.
The time to discover that your gun is prone to jams with a specific type of defensive ammo is not when you draw your gun with intent to use that defensive ammo. It is at the range, where you can identify, and then troubleshoot and rectify the problem.
These feeding issues to which hollow point bullets are prone are also not something that can be predicted accurately. They must be tested to be identified, and the only way to do that is through live fire at the range.
Hollow Points Are Generally Heavier and Kick Harder Than FMJ Ammo
Another thing you need to keep in mind about hollow point ammo is not just that it can jam, but that it produces totally different ballistics from FMJ bullets that are usually lighter, and which usually have lower propellant charges.
For you, this means that most hollow point ammo is going to kick considerably harder and produce a lot more recoil - especially +P rounds that are designed to transfer a lot of energy.
Remember, for every action there is an opposite reaction, and a lot of energy downrange means a commensurate amount of force pushing back on you through the gun.
Why this matters so much should be self-evident. You need to be able to control your gun confidently, not just for the first shot, but for potential follow up shots.
You don’t want to get used to 115 grain FMJ 9mm rounds at the range just to find out too late it’s nearly impossible for you to control 147 grain +P rounds. That’s a bit of a stretch, but to make it more reasonable, there could be quite a difference between relatively light .45 ACP range ammo and much heavier hollow point rounds.
You won’t know how they handle till you shoot them - which means you need to train with them.
The Bottom Line: Train with the Ammo You Carry
It’s true that hollow point ammo is expensive and not generally as accurate as FMJ ammo - so there’s no need to train with it all the time. For drilling and competition, it’s more than acceptable to shoot FMJ and wadcutter rounds.
But you still need to know how the defensive ammo you actually carry will perform and shoot in your gun, and for that reason there is no substitute for live fire training with it - at least a few times.
You need to know realistically if the ammo is going to jam, how it patterns, and how much recoil it produces, before you ever have to call on it in earnest.
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