9mm +P+ Recoil

Whenever you’re out practicing, I think it’s important, at the end of the practice session, to take your last few rounds and do something fun. This ends the practice session on an up note, subconsciously reinforces you that practice is a pleasant experience, and makes you eager for the next session.

So, last night on the range, Cameron and I get to the end of our practice session, we count our leftover ammo, he’s got six rounds, I’ve got 26. I figure, obviously, that means I should give him ten rounds so we both have 16, right. We do some close range draws, I pull my thusfar fastest ever at .83 second. Okay, so that was fun. Then I want to see how fast I can do a short range Mozambique drill. For those of you not familiar with the term, the Mozambique, sometimes called “the failure drill” consists of two to the chest/heart, followed by one to the head. My attitude is that you have to put both chest shots into the down-zero circle on the IDPA target, and then hit the head shot or it doesn’t count. Just making loud noises as fast as possible while missing isn’t the purpose of the drill.

From the holster at three yards, with two good hits into the down-zero circle on the IDPA target and one into the head box, first rep, I pull a 1.37 second. Okay, fine.

So we get to the end of the session, all our practice ammo is gone, I say to Cameron, “I want to do one more thing. Since I just wrote that blog post on how 9mm +P+ recoil versus standard pressure 9mm recoil doesn’t really make a difference, I want to run the Mozambique with Winchester 127-grain SXT +P+ and see how it compares to what I just did with standard pressure stuff.” So I go uprange to the shooting bench where I’ve left my carry mags at the start of the practice session, pop three rounds of Winchester 127-gr. SXT +P+ out of one of the mags, I can replace it when I get home.

How fast could I run a Mozambique at three yards, from the holster, one rep, two good hits into the chest/heart circle, one good hit into the head box, with 9mm +P+ ammo? Answer: 1.38 second. Essentially identical performance to what I did with my practice ammo/handloads which generate 9mm standard pressure equivalent recoil.

Really, folks, with a reasonably decent level of shooting skill, standard pressure 9mm versus +P+ 9mm recoil is not a big deal.