25 Rounds of .357 Mag Ammo by Hornady – 135gr FTX

If you’re an ammo geek like us, you’ll appreciate that this 357 Mag ammunition is amazingly beautiful to look at. If you were to buy ammunition based on the look of it, this would be a top contender for your .357 Magnum dollars. But the real story behind this heavily engineered ammunition is that Hornady went out of its way, and way out of the box to build a .357 Magnum that is essentially “Barrier Blind”. The question isn’t why would law enforcement (this is a Critical Duty Line offering after all) want this cartridge in .357 Magnum, given that no one in LE carries that anymore. Instead, the question is how can normal consumers benefit from the application of this technology innovation by using this ammunition?

What’s all this hype about “barrier blind” ammunition anyway? The Barrier blind concept is that a bullet can pass through a car windshield or door (or another barrier) and still retain its un-mushroomed shape until it penetrates the target’s soft fleshy body, at which point it will create a larger wound channel by deforming uniformly. Well that’s it in a nutshell without all the nuance.

Here’s the bottom line: This load is barrier blind. There are use cases where this makes sense for consumers. It penetrates up to 18 inches; it expands to .45 diameter and it achieves 1275 fps velocity and 485 ft. lbs. of energy at the muzzle. This is the epitome of performance for the consumer market on the back of R&D for the LE market.