A Better 9mm? Federal Introduces the 30 Super Carry Self Defense Handgun Cartridge

While we were still in San Diego, we picked up 500 rds of the Wolf 9mm in lacquered steel cases. My wife had her Sig 225 (a police turn-in) that she wanted to use for a self defense class where 300 rds would be expended. The Wolf ammo was jamming the 225. I discovered shavings of shellac building in the slide. That box of Wolf was relegated to use in her Ruger PC9. It works perfectly there. For her 225, I found some 124 gr FMJ and enough brass to load up for her class. Before doing the full run, I built multiple loads and identified just the right combo to drop the brass at her feet with the 124 gr. She completed the class with no jams and a relatively clean pistol. I was using Win 236 for that run.

The only Wolf ammo I buy right now is the 100 gr 6.5 Grendel. I had one bad round with a split steel case in my CZ 527. It was very hard to get the case out of the chamber. I would use only brass for the 6.5 Grendel if I could find it.

Although your mileage may vary....

A friend went through famous defense training classes, 1 week of intense training, hundreds of rounds or more spent. I specifically asked him which hand guns and which ammo had problems. He said most all of the down and out guns had been running steel cased ammo. He also said he would never run steel ammo in anything but firearms made for it that have used it for decades(i.e. AK and variants).

My wife and I did a 9 hour, 300 rd course. Winchester 115 gr in the 350 rd bucket. I used a P365 in a leather holster. My wife use the S&W 9mm EZ with a thumb safety, leather holster. At the end of the course, I had no malfunctions, but the leather holster was too slow for the time draw/fire test. Kydex would have fixed it. My wife's principal issue was hitting the thumb safety unintentionally leading to a delay in being ready to fire. Remedied that by trading in the thumb safety model for an NTS. Issue resolved. No ammo issues for the two firearms. 300 rds each.

Roll forward a few months with the 365XL. My wife has an early one and it fails to go to battery often...even half-way down the mag. Full mags seem to drag the slide hard against the first round. Same ammo that was used in the defense class.

Steel cased 7.62x39 cycles fine in my old Romanian SKS. I keep it sparkling clean after watching another owner dump a full mag with a single trigger pull. Filthy firing pin protruding from the bolt face fired on bolt closure. I helped him clean it and restored correct operation.

...It will be sitting on the gun store shelf next to.45 GAP...

Gun owners are a cantankerous and opinionated lot. Some of us spend all of our time complaining that some special solution to a unique problem hasn't already been provided, by the gun & ammo manufacturers ("Can't those idiots see that we NEED a factory .277" round based on the .308?!?"). Others have a handful of cartridges that they like personally & use for everything (like the guy who has just a hammer, a screw driver, and some vise grips in his tool box), believing anything more specialized is a waste of money.

Whether a particular cartridge is successful or not often just comes down to marketing. Call your new product the "6.5/.250 Savage Improved", and you probably won't gain a lot of market share. But call it the "6.5 Creedmoor" and - hot d@mn! - it's the best thing since sliced bread!

And (finally ;>) whether a cartridge that doesn't gain market share (like the .45 GAP) ultimately survives, often depends on one simple factor: whether you can form cases from more widely available brass. That doesn't bode well for the .30 SC (based on the case dimensions I've seen), so it may all depend on the marketing campaign...

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