Handguns

For a number of years Hornady Manufacturing has quietly marketed a line of special-purpose rifle, shotgun and handgun ammunition for law enforcement. The line includes several choices in popular police calibers .308, .223, 9mm, .40 S&W, .45 ACP and, of course, 12-gauge shotgun. Actual use of the ammo in numerous police shooting situations has shown that it's extremely effective.

Some of the loads are true "special purpose" ones, made for shooting through one kind of barrier or another. In Hornady's law enforcement ammunition catalog, these loads are identified by special packaging and the catchy name of TAP, which stands for Tactical Application Police. In Hornady's recent general-products catalog, you can find a new line of ammunition dubbed TAP FPD, meaning "For Personal Defense."

These loads are available for purchase by the general public. Hornady has chosen those loads in the TAP line that are particularly applicable to the civilian sector, made some improvements to them, packaged them distinctively and now offers them to responsible citizens who need defensive ammunition.

Other than new packaging (black boxes with red lettering), exactly what is Hornady's TAP FPD ammunition? In the rifle and pistol ammunition, there's a highly noticeable feature that improves functional reliability to a marked degree. Hornady developed a special black nickel plating for use on all of the metallic cartridges in the TAP FPD line. It's different in appearance--sort of a shiny black color--but the real reason for using it is a greater smoothness. You can actually feel the difference when you compare it to conventional ammunition.

More smoothness simply means greater reliability. As much time as instructors spend teaching their students to clear malfunctions under stress, they would really prefer to have no malfunctions in the first place. This plating helps. It also means instant identification of your fighting ammo.

TAP FPD ammo is also better in the selection of other components. Powders, for example, are chosen for their low flash characteristics. High-performance ammunition often produces muzzle flash that is so extreme that the shooter has difficulty delivering accurate subsequent shots. Losing a big part of your night vision is not a good thing in a crisis shooting situation.

The proper selection of bullets is equally critical to good fighting ammunition. Hornady produces an array of bullets for a wide variety of uses. That includes competition, hunting, personal defense and low-cost practice. The company knows how to make a bullet expand, and it also knows how to make a bullet fragment, when either of those characteristics is desired.

A Complete Line
There's no better place to begin than with the shotgun load. Shotguns are a frequent choice of homeowners who are looking for fight-stopping clout. It takes the right ammo to make this happen. In the Hornady TAP line for police use, there were two 12-gauge 00 buckshot loads. Each used the same payload of eight .33-caliber pellets, and the difference was the velocity to which they were loaded. The slower of the two was designed for use in pump shotguns and produced a fairly low recoil impulse. The faster load was calculated to work in any gas- or recoil-operated scattergun. This is the load chosen for the FPD ammunition series.