#HORNADY SUBSONIC 45 ACP REVIEW FULL#

Instead, it was designed for defensive situations where no intermediate barrier (other than clothing) was involved, and it was assumed that it would be fired from compact carry guns with short barrels.

#HORNADY SUBSONIC 45 ACP REVIEW FULL#

The important thing to know about Hornady’s Critical Defense ammunition is that it was not designed to pass the full FBI protocol, because it was never envisioned as law enforcement-duty ammunition for service-size pistols. From an engineering standpoint, it’s a tough task to design a bullet that will perform all these jobs acceptably well, and some trade-offs are involved - you may wind up sacrificing performance on one test to ensure you’ll pass another.įor example, if you want a bullet that can pass the difficult auto glass test, you might end up with a design that penetrates more deeply than desired in bare gelatin. Properties such as penetration depth, recovered diameter, and retained weight are measured to compare bullets against each other, and against FBI-desired standards.įBI standards require ammunition designed for law enforcement is able to penetrate gel between 12 and 18 inches in each of the six tests, and the industry has responded with products that do.

In the first of those tests, the bullets are fired into a bare gelatin block, but in the remaining five tests, the bullets must pass through specified barriers before entering the blocks, including heavy clothing, steel, wallboard, plywood, and automobile glass. The protocol is a series of six standardized tests, where bullets are fired into 10 percent ballistic gelatin, according to detailed procedures.

Police ammunition: Considerations for storage and use

Hornady subsonic 45 acp review