Let's talk about ammunition, shall we. Our local Academy store was having a sale on Winchester ammunition today. I am becoming very fond of the 9mm NATO round. I have two pistols in that caliber, both of them semi-automatics. It turns out that the 9mm round is probably the most produced pistol ammunition in the world. The US Military uses it in service pistols and it is very popular in the rest of the world. Therefore, lots of people manufacture it and it can be made cheaply. If you are interested in target loads of the type police and military use for training, they are very common. I figure any time I can get them for 19 cents per round, it is a good deal. So I stocked up to the tune of 4800 rounds. That will keep me occupied for a while.

Now here is a practical aspect to ammunition that I haven't considered. It weighs a lot. A soldier has to carry it. That is one of the driving forces behind going from .45ACP to 9mm for military pistols. It is also a driving force in the evolution of rifle ammunition. The WW1 Springfield and the WW2 M1 Garand were chambered in .30-06. The next evolution was to the 7.62 NATO cartridge for the M-14. It was a smaller cartridge than the 30-06. Then came the M-16 and the 5.56 NATO round. It is smaller still, but still drives a bullet out the muzzle at nearly mach 3.

So back to weight. All the 9mm ammunition I bought today weighed in a 132 pounds. That is a bunch. For comparison I looked at some .22 ammunition I bought recently. I have 4000 rounds of it which weighs 30.7 pounds. That, too, is a bunch. Just to complete the calculations, a 9mm round weighs 12.5 grams and a .22 weighs 3.5 grams. I like the .22 a lot because it is cheap thrills.

So today's photo is of the aforementioned ammunition.