**Opinion Alert**
+P ammo is the biggest marketing gimic ever!! I can't believe for one second that if you put a few well placed, or even many not so well placed shots on a bad guy that it'll matter that much if your ammo is 200fps hotter than standard HP's. Please understand this is my opinion before reading on....
Pushing up the fps of a round is really only going to help if you are working against a hardened target, aka body armour. Bullet cross section has more to do with effectiveness than an extra 200fps will. What I'm getting at is bullet design. If you use a well developed hollowpoint (all HP's are better than ball ammo) it will expand and transfer energy to the target. Sure there would be more energy to transfer if it were going faster, but as I said before, in a defensive situation, you should probably not fire once, and wait to see if it's effective. Keep firing until the bad guy is no longer a threat.
Often times, I hear people talking about +P ammo, that they never practice with, because it's expensive, and they say they use it for it's better effectiveness. Well, try this next time you are at the range... load one mag up with regular and another with +P. Check your accuracy between the two when firing quickly (as in defense). There is a marked difference in the amount of recoil, and that leads to a marked difference in your accuracy. Now take into account that most people don't practice with +P ammo, so they are used to their standard fair ammo. What makes more sense? Hit accurately with standard HP's, or scare the frap outta yourself when you happen to fire some +P? I'll take more rounds on target over one super-duper round out of 5 on target. Granted, there are shooters that can hit well with either round. I happen to be one of them. I generally shoot a .357 Sig, which comes with a bit of recoil inherently, I wouldn't dream of trying to shoot +P's outta that bugger though, it's plenty of gun as it is. Main point here is, +P is just too damn expensive. Buy a quality HP round that you can afford to practice with, and learn to shoot it well. In the scary event that you have to defend yourself, the least of your worries should be how many rounds it'll take to stop them, just shoot until they stop. You'll have more problems to worry about than if each round was effective, because the battle has just begun!
Here's to never having to be put in that situation! *raises glass*
Zhur
