Ammo Tests

I’m a big fan of all things 10MM, and Speer got my attention recently when the ammunition maker announced the new Speer Gold Dot 10MM Auto Personal Defense round, firing a 200-grain Gold Dot bullet.

If you have ever shot a .45 ACP all day long, you know the training value of soft recoil. The new Syntech is the softest shooting factory round I have ever picked up.

All the tactical reasons aside, it is also just fun. Streak comes in green and red, perfect for the Christmas season. Or Star Wars style battles. Maybe we could drop cases of green off to Antifa, and all us can just use the red.

This review is intended to give you an overview of what the AutoTrickler V2 & AutoThrow Powder Measure/Dispenser is, what it does, my experience with it, and why it’s quickly becoming the most popular powder measuring/throwing device in the precision shooting world.

The .40S&W arose as the indirect result of the FBI’s 1986 Miami shootout. If you aren’t familiar with the details surf on over when you’re done here. Any student of small arms is well served to read up on it. Google is your buddy. During the Miami shootout, two FBI special agents were killed and five wounded by a pair of bank robbers wielding a variety of weapons.

It is not often we see a caliber that actually changes the way we think about shooting. Wildcats abound, often with marginal improvement over a factory round at best. There are exceptions, though most calibers fail to catch hold. Even those backed by major players. Several new calibers have been tried in AR-15’s over the past few years, none strong enough to give the rifle new legs. Today, hopefully, that changes.

Syntech Ammunition was launched a few years back, specially designed as a high-quality training round. It keeps a lead core, but the jacket is polymer. The bullet is encased to keep any lead on steel contact from inside the gun, eliminating aerosolized lead and overall making a cleaner to shoot round. The construction also reduces splash back from steel targets.

I was a young cowboy with a fondness for horses, firearms, and pretty girls, in that order. One afore-mentioned pretty girl awaited my arrival across a high mountain pass that guards my Rocky Mountain home, but as my diesel pickup growled its way upward toward the pass I knew I was going to be early for our date. So I geared down and pulled off the highway into a small patch of ponderosa timber. The motor grumbled to a halt and I lifted my most recent crush off the truck seat, it’s long frame svelte and gleaming in the late afternoon light. The action was as smooth as whipped cream sweetened with maple sugar, and I forgot all about my upcoming date. Carrying the curvaceous form a little way from the truck I swung it to eye level and squeezed. A distant twig disappeared with a thunderous crack, and smoke rose in slow spirals from the six-inch barrel of my vintage Colt Python. I was in love.

“Trying to stop a bad-guy with a nine mm is like trying to stop a charging buffalo with a twenty-two. Might as well use a fly-swatter”.

Such statements were common when I was a kid, and at the time there was some truth to them. Many experienced shooters, veterans, and L.E. officers still preferred the hard-hitting .45 ACP, (Automatic Colt Pistol) to the 9mm with its smaller, lighter and more streamlined projectile.