Originally Posted By: billtOriginally Posted By: GCMight be hard on the gun?
Originally Posted By: Rock KnockerI would pick up some heavier duty recoil springs for the guns I planned on shooting much of that through.
As a longtime shooter and reloader, I've been getting more suspicious over SAAMI's pressure "standards" for a long time now. Along with all of this "+P" and "+P+" ratings you see everywhere. The fact is ammunition is getting weaker across the board, and has been for years. I have long suspected that SAAMI pressure "standards" have been lowered..... A LOT. So I decided to prove it to myself, and did some research.
The "warning" on this box of current production Gold Dots states, they are.... "22% Higher Than SAAMI Standards"..... OK, Which standards? Established when? This is an ever changing saga.
I dragged out some of my old Speer manuals, and found out SAAMI and the industry introduced "+P" ammo ratings as of 1975. At that time .38 Special standard pressure was 18,900 CUP. "+P" was 22,400 CUP. As of 1998 it was reduced to 17,000 PSI and 20,000 PSI. As of today, (some 19 years later), it is 17,000 PSI & 18,500 PSI. This is continually evolving in a lower direction.
So if you do the math, "+P" for .38 Special was 22,400 in 1975 when SAAMI first introduced the standard. Today "+P" is now 18,500. That is a whopping 3,900 PSI, or over 17% LOWER. Yeah, I get it that CUP doesn't correlate exactly into PSI. But you see where all of this is going. Down... WAY DOWN. I'm betting if you do a similar cross comparison with 9 MM, you'll most likely come up with similar percentage differences.
This isn't unique to just .38 Special. So..... "22% over SAAMI Spec.", today really isn't. Especially if you subtract the 17% they've lowered their "standard" since they created it back in 1975. And the real kicker is, the current SAAMI "+P" rating for .38 Special, is actually 400 PSI LOWER, than the .38 Special standard rating was in 1975. That's insane. What's changed to cause this besides an off the rails legal system?
What the [beeep] good is an industry "standard", if they're going to keep changing it? This is ridiculous. It's gotten to the point that "+P" along with all of this "+P+" nonsense is becoming somewhat of a joke. These "standards" hardly remain "standard" for very long. And when they change, they go lower... NEVER higher. Last I checked, my guns haven't weakened with age. Only SAAMI's "standards". And it seems as the legal community strengthens, SAAMI further weakens. This all has nothing to do with chamber pressure. Instead it's all being regulated by legal pressure. And again, the last time I checked, lawyers didn't know jack [beeep] about maximum chamber pressures in firearms. Just how to sue the manufacturers who make them.
So the bottom line is when you see these big red "warning" labels plastered all over most of this high performance ammunition that's for sale out there, take all of it with a grain of salt. Because most all of it is weaker than the non "+P" stuff they were selling just 30 years ago.
AMEN!