Norma has started off the year with a BANG! with their Norma MHP (Monolithic Hollow Point) by garnering adulation and strong attention from the shooting industry as a result of their all-copper construction projectile. The National Rifle Association (NRA) has awarded Norma a Golden Bullseye Award for being selected as Shooting Illustrated’s 2020 Ammunition Product of the Year.

From the very beginning of the year, we have been covering the news of Vista Outdoor and particularly Federal Premium Ammunition. This year the company has released probably the largest amount of new products in the ammunition industry. And I am talking about not only additions to existing ammunition lines but also introductions of entirely new product families such as the Punch, Solid Core, Force X2 and Terminal Ascent. At SHOT Show 2020, Federal added two other new ammunition products to the mentioned ones, one of which is the HammerDown lever-action ammunition line.

Loading mags are a pain, there’s no doubt about that. There’s a bunch of various pistol and rifle magazine loading contraptions out on the market, but most of them require you to load or align the ammo a certain way before you can push them into the magazine. Not with the MagPump, you simply load your magazine into it, drop ammo into the top, then pump away.

At SHOT today, ELEY, the well-regarded makers of 22LR precision rifle ammunition unveiled their first foray into centerfire cartridges with both a 9 Major offering and a 38 Super Comp offering. ELEY has a long history of making high-performance precision cartridges for competition, and they’re bringing that expertise to centerfire cartridges. Competition shooting was at the forefront of both rounds design, with an emphasis on USPSA and IPSC matches.

First up in the “new” department from Winchester ammunition this year is two new loads for their .350 Legend straight walled cartridge.  The first is a 160gr PowerMax Bonded bullet moving at 2,225 fps out of the muzzle.  For quiet applications, Winchester now offers a Super Suppressed subsonic load, 255gr @ 1,060 fps.  I tried both out and both had extremely mild recoil.

MAC, LLC, the Mississippi-based lightweight polymer tech specialists, have won a $10 million indefinite delivery-indefinite quantity contract to provide the US Marine Corps with uptp 2.4 million rounds of hybrid polymer/brass-cased .50 calibre ammunition. The contract will allow the USMC to evaluate the new ammunition in user trials

For spring 2020 availability, Lapua is releasing a large rifle primer 6.5 Creedmoor case.

Often times, I get questions from people about what would be the best caliber for ARs in the home. Typically, a handgun with some sort of flashlight or light/laser combo will be a better option since it’s easier to move with a handgun than with a large rifle. Handguns also give you a free hand if you have to grab your child and move them to safety.

SIG Sauer have released their 2020 catalog and there’s lots of new products to get excited about but one thing that jumped out at me was the introduction of a new cartridge – 277 SIG Fury. Developed by SIG Sauer the new round is the result of their work on the US Army’s 6.8mm Next Generation Squad Weapons (NGSW) program.

Welcome back to The Rimfire Report where we discuss the various guns, ammunition, and sports surrounding rimfire firearms. I recently came across a post on Reddit by user Bovaloe. In the post, he decided he was going to take 12 different types of rimfire ammo to see if there were any trends associated with each ammunition.

It might be premature to say that FN Herstal’s 5.7x28mm cartridge (“5.7”) is experiencing a renaissance, but the cartridge has done something that most proprietary-ish, specialized calibers don’t do: Bask in increased popularity decades after its introduction.

As you know, this year Vista Outdoor ammunition brands came up with a large number of new products. Some of the most interesting ones we covered in separate dedicated articles and today we’ll take a brief look at the rest of the new products released by Federal Premium Ammunition, CCI, Blazer and Speer.

Among the dozens of ammunition related new products released by Vista Outdoor brands for 2020, there is a new Federal Premium hunting rifle bullet and ammunition line called Terminal Ascent. Being hunting bullets, these projectiles are designed to expand dumping all their energy into the game animal yet keep their integrity providing good penetration and weight retention. Federal really takes pride in this bullet design calling it “the best hunting bullet ever built within the 98-year history of company“.

One of the mad scientists at  Federal Premium has probably thought once “what if to load split-shot sinkers into a shotgun shell?” and that’s probably how the Force X2 shotgun ammo was born. Joking aside, this is a really interesting buckshot design. These copper-plated double ought buckshot pellets are slotted and split in half upon impact! So what we have here is basically fragmenting buckshot.

Lead used in bullets is different depending on the type of the projectile and the job you are expecting it to do. If you want it to deform and mushroom, you need softer alloy or pure lead and if you want the lead bullet to stay intact and penetrate as much as possible, you need what is called hard cast bullets that are made of hard lead alloy (normally with a high percentage of antimony). Why do you need the bullet to penetrate as much as possible? Well, one of the reasons is to defend yourself against large predators like bears that are really tough animals with a strong bone structure and that’s why you need some heavy and hard bullets to punch through that skull or ribcage and reach the vitals. And that is one of the applications the new Federal Solid Core handgun ammunition is designed for.

Vista Outdoor has announced a huge amount of new products for 2020. The most significant ones we’ll cover separately and tomorrow we’ll also publish an article telling about the rest of the new products by Federal Premium Ammunition, CCI, Speer and Alliant Powder. In this article, we’ll take a look at the new Federal defensive handgun ammunition line called Punch.

Up until recently, this author was thinking that no matter how cool the 5.7x28mm FN cartridge is, its fate is quite concerning. But things have changed. As you know, yesterday Ruger announced a 5.7x28mm pistol, the Ruger-57, and what we’ll talk about today is Speer’s newly released Gold Dot 5.7x28mm defensive ammunition. Well, looks like Ruger and Speer breathe a new life into this little cartridge.

Welcome back to another edition of the  TFB Round Table sponsored by  Ammunition To Go! For those who are first joining us, this is a multi-part series where  TFB will discuss the characteristics of great  ammunition  for specific applications. This could vary from big game hunting, plinking, precision rifle matches, small game hunting, or even pistol competitions. Chances are there is someone here at TFB who can offer you advice on buying the right round for your task at hand.

Atlanta Arms has released their new 124-grain Jacketed Hollow Point Elite 9mm ammunition. Under development for two years to give the shooter the greatest accuracy possible, the Atlanta Arms Elite 9mm 124 gr JHP is capable of shooting a 1.5-inch group from 50 yards. This ammunition is geared specifically towards competitive shooters.

The RL1100 is finally here. With all the hype, you’re probably wondering what sets the Dillon RL1100 apart from other offerings. First, the Dillon RL1100 can accommodate common cartridges, pistol, and rifle, from 32 ACP all the way up through 308 Winchester. With up to 2.75″ overall length of capacity, this rig can handle almost any common cartridge you can throw at it.

The much anticipated brass-cased Boxer-primed 5.45x39mm ammunition that the AK community has been waiting for for a long time is now available. Hornady now offers such cartridges in their BLACK ammunition line as well as sells the  brass cases separately for reloaders.

Over the last few years, there have been a number of straight-walled cartridges to hit the market. The 450 Bushmaster was one of the first mainstream straight-walled cartridges to become popular for bolt actions and AR-style rifles. It opened up possibilities for hunters where shotguns and straight-walled cartridges are allowed for hunting. At SHOT Show last year we saw the 350 Legend hit the market with lots of buzz about its potential as another straight-walled round.  The 350 Legend has been out for almost a year and the round is fairly accessible to buy so what round is best? Let’s dive into these straight-walled cartridges and see what they’re all about.

A couple of months ago, while reading the news from Arms & Hunting 2019 exhibition, I learned that the Barnaul Cartridge Plant has introduced steel-cased 300 Blackout ammunition. It was immediately clear to me that this ammunition can’t be aimed to the domestic market because .300 Blackout is not a thing in Russia. You literally can’t find in Russia guns chambered in .300 Blackout.

Norma is known to the world over for their high-quality, factory-loaded ammunition as well as their components they have offered to the public, such as their rifle powders, so people could attempt to replicate that same quality with their own handloads. Now Norma is offering to the public not just their reloading powders, but also their brass casings and bullets to truly make an impact! A sampling of what you can now obtain from Norma can be read below as well as links to those products:

Welcome back to another edition of the  TFB Round Table sponsored by  Ammunition To Go! For those who are first joining us, this is a multi-part series where  TFB will discuss the characteristics of great  ammunition  for specific applications. This could vary from big game hunting, plinking, precision rifle matches, small game hunting, or even pistol competitions. Chances are there is someone here at TFB who can offer you advice on buying the right round for your task at hand. This week I will offer up some suggestions on getting the most out of the forgotten cartridge of the firearms industry in the .40 S&W aka “40 Short & Weak.” This once romanticized round has recently been discarded and rejected by the shooting world in favor of 9mm. Bluntly, with the advancements in ammunition penetration and bullet technology, .40 S&W has been caught up to and surpassed by many different cartridges. Some of you crazy shooters still carry it though so let’s dive into the 5 BEST .40 S&W Rounds for Defense!

Although I don’t have enough time with it yet, I think the 6.5 Creedmoor is a great round. Low recoil combined with great performance, two very important boxes for me.

With Christmas coming up, its time to look at various gifts for your fellow gun-loving shooting enthusiasts. A new gun is always a great idea but isn’t exactly possible for everyone’s budget. So, I figured it would be helpful to give ideas on another issue many shooters have. Typically when you start acquiring more firearms, it gets harder to keep things organized and easy to find. Last year, I decided to try and organize my gun safes up with organizers and it made a huge difference in keeping everything together. Over the years, I’ve tried a number of products and decided on three different organizing tools that don’t break the bank but make all the difference.

Lehigh Defense shared a couple of images on their social media pages showing XD (Xtreme Defense) bullets that they are developing for the .22 Long Rifle cartridge. The everyone’s favorite plinking round is primarily available with bare lead and copper or polymer coated projectiles. Probably the only exception of .22LR ammo currently available with non-lead projectiles is CCI Copper-22 which bullets are made of compressed polymer and copper mixture. So if the Lehigh Defense .22 LR XD ammo appears on the shelves, it will most likely be the only .22LR ammo with all-copper solid bullets.

Liberty Ammunition, a company that makes one of the lightest weight 9mm bullets, has teamed up with  Shell Shock Technologies, the manufacturer of one of the most lightweight 9mm cartridge cases, to create a 9x19mm ammo that has a total cartridge weight of 93 grains. That makes the Liberty Ammunition Ultra-Light cartridges about twice lighter than your  standard 9mm ammo with 124-grain bullets.

When it comes to conceal and carry ammunition, some people think that FMJ is “good enough” or “just as good as hollow points,” but let this picture be a stark reminder that FMJ rounds do very little outside of penciling through whatever they hit. This picture was acquired from my personal outdoor gun range.