Reloading The Underrated
.380 ACP
Penetration Testing
The .380 Auto is one of the most underrated cartridges on the planet.
Most shooters buy .380 handguns because they are small, easy to shoot,
and often inexpensive. The trick to making a .380 perform is to use copper
(or copper alloy) bullets. If you carry a .380 for personal defense, lead-free is the way to go.
The .380 Auto is one of the most underrated cartridges on the planet. Most shooters buy .380 handguns because they are small, easy to shoot and often inexpensive. The trick to making a .380 perform is to use copper (or copper alloy) bullets. If you carry a .380 for personal defense, lead-free is the way to go.
I started experimenting with copper bullets when I found most .380 cartridges do not meet the minimum penetration for defense — 12″ to 18″ in bare 10% gelatin and heavy clothing tests. Many .380 cartridges stop at 10″ to 11″.
The Barnes 95-grain TAC-XP bullets opened up perfectly and retained 100% of their weight in every test.
A Time to Test
The 95-grain TAC-XP is a copper hollow-point bullet designed for 9mm. In a 4″ 9mm, it’s easy to get 1,400 fps, and the ballistics are impressive.
However, I wanted to load it in a .380. For the TAC-XP, the lowest velocity that will cause expansion is around 850 fps. Anything slower and it will behave like a solid point and possibly over-penetrate.
Second, this bullet retains 100% of its weight, even through barriers. Yes, I shot this bullet through tempered glass. For the record, only about half the bullets I have tested over 25 years retain 100% of their weight after the barrier.
Vihtavuori published load charts for similar bullets and N330 that run from 3.7-4.2 grains. I was aiming for 950 fps, and 3.7 grains got it to 978 fps easily. In bare gelatin, the bullets expanded consistently at 7.5″ to 8″ when I shot them through my Bersa Firestorm.
Loaded Barnes bullets are on the right. Lehigh Defense
bullets are on the left. All of the loads functioned flawlessly.
Barrel Length Matters
Barrel length is more critical in the .380 than any other caliber I test. In a .380, a change in barrel length is the difference between good performance and complete failure. What works in my Bersa may not work in my NAA Guardian.
Most cartridge manufacturers use test barrels rather than actual firearms. When they tell you your defensive cartridge will do 1,000 fps, it is unlikely they are using a blowback action (which is the basic design of most .380s), whose cartridge energy is also used to eject the spent case. The test barrels for testing the performance of cartridges generally have fully locked breeches. Result? The specs can be overstated.
More Testing
I tried 4.5-4.7 grains of Ramshot True Blue, using new Starline brass and finally settled on 4.6. I did not have any chambering or reliability issues, but it seemed to work best at 0.974″ OAL, so I stuck with that. It averaged 990 fps. I was getting 10″ of penetration, with wound channels that were generally greater than .380 ballistics.
I tried this bullet with 3.5 to 4.5 grains of Auto Pistol and got similar results. It burned cleanly and functioned well. Unfortunately, I never got the 95-grain TAC-XP to reach an ideal penetration of 12″ to 18″. It did well in .380, but that was not their intention with this 9mm bullet.
I loaded the 90-grain Xtreme Penetrator bullets straight from the Lehigh Defense load tables online. The loads for True Blue ran from 4.3 to 4.7 grains.
True Blue is easy to meter, but the load range was narrow from 870 to 935 fps. I tend to measure the load on the scale, then let it sit for a minute to allow settling. I always use more than one scale. Once I have “measured twice to cut once,” I use my Redding powder measure. I’m telling you all of this because once I got this load dialed in, it had a low SD.
Using 4.3 grains of True Blue, five shots with the Xtreme Penetrator bullets averaged 885.2 fps. I shot them into bare gelatin, and they averaged 17″. They performed similarly through heavy clothing. I worked my way up to 4.7 grains. The shots averaged 931 fps. In gelatin, they averaged 18.5″. Since the goal is penetration, this is the epitome of .380 performance. I shot it at 10 yards, and I could put all the bullets within an inch. I tested them in my NAA guardian, and these cartridges still went over 900 fps.
The funny thing about the Lehigh Defense bullets was the fact they looked like they could be loaded right back into the cartridge when I captured them in gelatin. They had rifling engraved on the bullets, but a sizing die would bring them back to their original state.
