Looking for information on where to find 223/556 ammo deals. I don’t mind signing up for emails and waiting for sales. Need target and defensive loads. Also, what is you go to AR defensive load and why?
I usally just use ammo seek or wikiguns and look at what's cheapest and factor in shipping.
For defensive loads for .223/5.56 it just depends on barrel length, and if I care about shit being barrier blind or not.
I've got like 11-12 Mags loaded for "social" purposes including a d60 drum full of 75 grain gold dot. Mostly 75 and 55 grain Gold Dot, and 77 and 75 grain BTHPs.
Tucked away I also have more MK262, the last of my blackhills 77 grain TMK, 75 grain hornady t2 bullet loadings, and various weights of Barnes TSX/TTSX loads lol.
Basically I break it down like this. Like any other bullet, does it go deep enough. Then, if it's a bullet that I'm depending on fragmentation as a secondary wounding mechanism, is it in its operational envelope for that to happen.
Too fast and you might see it neck immediately and rapidly fragment and not see very good penitration of the frag. Too slow and you also may not see good frag, although some loads are less susceptible to that like say 77 grain TMK which frags pretty well down to 2000ish or possibly even below FPS.
Now, do I care about possible over penitration concerns, and does my chosen load at what ever velocity its actually going, tend to stay with in the penitration maximums the FBI/IWBA wants to see to reduce the likleyhood of a shoot through.
Now, do I give a fuck about it being barrier blind, and being able to do all these afromentioned things well enough, when shot through an intermediate barrier like interior walls, auto glass and car doors etc etc.
Lastly, what does external and terminal ballistics look like at further distances if I care about that. Good TSX loadings tend to be pretty god damned accurate, but monolithic projos are fairly velocity dependent and don't necessarily expand and perform super well once you bleed a bunch of velocity off.
JSPs still tend to expand well at further distances, and you can juice that up a bit with more initial velocity with say a longer barrel and or a lighter projo. But they aren't all equally accurate.
Federals "FBI load" is a great bullet, and does quite well out of SBR lengths, but many lots of it tend to be kinda dog water accuracy wise I've noticed.
Where as say Gold Dot in the various weights, tend to be pretty accurate out of most guns.
Basically it all comes down to what do I want the bullet to be able to do, what velocities does it accomplish that job and how far away can it do that well out of my particular guns, and if I care about it, how accurate is it mechanical out of my gat.
Then you run into me stealing a quote from ughhhhh Chuck Pressburg? Very poorly paraphrasing lol but...
"If I don't care about over penitration, how much does anything of this conversation actually matter at social distances. If I'm shooting you 3-4 times a second you're in my home and presenting a lethal threat, does it really matter if it's gold dot, m193 or green tip?"