Hornady Critical Defense

                  As I shared in my last post I have a firearm for home protection, and since self-defense is kind of the theme this week I thought I’d share some results I had recently with some defense ammunition I was given the opportunity to test out manufactured by Hornady. Hornady’s reputation in self-defense ammunition is second to no one. They have state-of-the-art equipment and high-tech underground testing facilities where the ammo is continuously checked for quality and reliability. They have one of the widest varieties of ammunition consisting of over three hundred different types of bullets and they put a lot of research into what works and what doesn’t so their bullets perform the way they are supposed to every time.  The first box I got to try out were the Hornady Critical Defense FTX hollow points pictured below.

   

          These rounds come in boxes of twenty and have a red rubber insert in the cavity of the hollow point to aid with the expansion of the round. This forces the bullet to open quicker and more evenly than many other brands of hollow point ammunition, limiting penetration and maximizing energy deposit.  The silver casing ensures high visibility in low light situations and also adds to the already asthetically pleasing round.
          One of the biggest problems facing many brands of hollow point bullet is penetration. Either the round opens too quickly and has trouble penetrating thick materials like leather or denim, or they penetrate too much and dont open at all. I found these Hornady FTX bullets to perform very well in this category. I tested the ammunition out on trap targets that had a double layer of denim over the front to simulate this type of obstacle and found that the insert Hornady places in these rounds does a very good job of preventing the cavity of the hollow point from getting clogged with material, thus preventing it from doing its job. Pictured below are three bullets. The first two on the left are a leading brand of hollow point ammunition and the one on the right is a Hornady Critical Defense FTX round. Its easy to see which one did its job better.

The first two rounds got clogged with the denim and were not able to fully open the way they are designed to do. The rubber insert of the Hornady FTX round (which i removed to better demonstrate how well it expanded) prevented this from happening. I also found this ammunition to be incredibly accurate for a factory load bullet, hitting the same spot on the target time after time. I would absolutely recommend the Hornady Critical Defense FTX round to anyone who wants a reliable, accurate self defense ammunition.