UnaStamus wrote:mmcnx2 wrote:
Sketchy, misleading, false - such as?
They have a tendency to misrepresent test data to sell their product. While this is not necessarily surprising for any company trying to sell their own product, it is dick move.
With relation to their rifle ammo, they will give two different versions of sales pitch. The TAP Urban ammunition is literally varmint ammo (just like Federal TRU is varmint ammo). Hornady will talk up how "safe" TAP Urban is because it doesn't over-penetrate, and it has devastating effects with the fragmentation. This is despite the fact that all of their TAP Urban fails FBI protocols and Hornady likes to tout their adherence to FBI BRF protocol.
The other and more pressing issue relates to their .223 62gr TAP Barrier load. They convinced a metro agency to switch to TAP Barrier from Federal Tactical Bonded LE223T1 55gr BJSP (TBBC) stating that the 62gr TAP Barrier performed the same at half the price. They shot Ballistic gelatin that was overheated and not calibrated, which would give a skewed result. They did not provide a test for the competing Federal ammunition that the agency currently used.
The first iteration of the TAP Barrier bullet was designed at the request of DoE Nuclear Security who were looking for a round to punch through steel car doors and to a lesser degree, auto glass. The problem is that the bullet fragmented and had substandard performance compared to the Federal Bonded option. The Federal 55gr and 62gr TBBC are the best bullets on the market for bonded performance, which is why FBI HRT, LAPD SWAT and several other agencies use it.
Hornady has had several problems with their ammunition with relation to LE use. The TAP Barrier has a substantial amount of exposed lead on the tip of the bullet. The competing JSP options from Federal, Speer and Winchester do not. This is because exposed lead on the nose of the bullet deposits on the feed ramps of an AR15. The lead builds up and will cause a failure to feed malfunction at some point depending on various conditions like how warm it is or how the feed ramps were cleaned.
Then there is the primer issue, where they have been having dead primers. This is somewhat contentious, but in short, if you chamber a Hornady round, you will get a small dimple in the primer from the floating firing pin of the AR15. This is nothing new for the AR15, we all know this. The problem is that 99.9% of the time, LE officers wind up removing the round from the chamber after the incident because they never used it. Officers were then putting the rounds back into the mags and then reusing them. There was a shooting incident a couple years ago where an officer had multiple dead primers/failures to fire from Hornady ammo. The cartridges had been previously chambered at least once. Now, this is a known issue with all ammo, and it's good practice that once you dent a primer from chambering, that round should be separated and thrown into a "practice ammo" pile and not reused for duty. The failure was replicated in testing by a SWAT team by using rounds that had dented primers from as little as one chambering. It's been determined that it requires a denting of the primer, and some time afterwards for the primer material to become inert.
Conversely, Federal, Speer, Winchester and Black Hills have not had the same issue to this degree because they use military grade primers that are far tougher and more robust. Failures have been replicated, but nowhere near to the degree that they have with Hornady ammo. The prevailing explanation is that Hornady uses lighter and more sensitive match primers as opposed to military grade primers that the other companies use.
There was more to this story, but that's the general gist of it without divulging too many details about who was involved and why.
Now, Hornady has managed to rework their 62gr Barrier JSP and it performs much better now that it did initially during the first iteration. There was enough complaining that I suspect they had no choice but to change the bullet. Where it is now is better than where it was.
The demonstration by the Hornady rep was all flash and they basically shot some stuff and basically said "look how great it is". It was a buyer beware thing for the admin, as they didn't know their left from right with relation to ballistics, but the firearms division was circumvented for this and would have provided some dissenting views had they been included.
To a lot of people, it might seem arbitrary, but when you're revamping and updating a firearms program and an ammunition company comes in unsolicited because they found out from a LE distributor that you ordered more ammo from Federal, and then they stick their wang in the punch bowl, you tend to get a sour taste in your mouth.
Hmac wrote:Interesting indeed. Is Critical Defense an adequate load as a personal defense tool in a 3" CCW gun if we remove barrier penetration as an important criterion?
For the most part, yes. The .38spl and .357mag options from Critical Defense are actually better performers than their semi-auto counterparts from the looks of the gelatin tests. The concern is not so much with head or torso shots, but with oblique shots or shooting through really heavy clothing like Carhart jackets and whatnot.
Doc Roberts has made mention that it's pretty hard to get .38spl ammo to perform well regardless and he recommends .357 over the .38 for that reason. This is why my agency mandates that backup revolvers have to be .357mag. Of course, we all know that regardless, something carried is always better than nothing carried.
