I am all for free ammo, who isn’t in this day and age? So last month when Sam Jacobs from Ammo.net asked me if I wanted to review some ammunition in the caliber of my choice, I played easy to get and said Oh Hell yes!.

Days later I got a box of Speer Lawman in 9mm (115 grains) and it went inside my range bag for the next available range time.

Unfortunately it was not till last Saturday when I had the chance to shoot it. It was supposed to be used at last month’s Zombie Killing Match, but I had to leave before I could get to the Pistol Stage. However last Saturday I had one of my regular IDPA matches and it was as good time as any to test the Speer ammo.

Now, competition shooters, serious and not so serious as myself go through lots of ammo so we are always on the fight of volume versus pricing versus quality. Many of us go the way of handloading as a way to control all three within reason and end up developing our own combinations that work just fine for a particular pistol. After trial and error, I find myself reloading with 124 grain bullets and my secret formula of powder and primers for a hot round. I was never too fond of 115 grain ammunition and lots of serious IDPA  shooters prefer the 147 grain bullet for their shooting. Needless to say that Speer Lawmen started with a negative in the test.

I shot two stages with nothing but the Speers in my mags and they performed without a hitch in my FNP-9, a nice gun that has swallowed any ammo I fed it. Not a hiccup or a flyer which came in handy when I had to do some double head shots, strong hand only from inside a simulated tunnel. The gun cycled smoothly and the perceived recoil was very manageable. The Speer ammo performed reliably to the point of boredom so I rummaged the bottom of my range bag and loaded a cocktail of assorted reloads, and leftover factory ammo (including defensive) into a couple of mags and shot two more stages with it. The idea was to see if the Speer would feed reliably even though the gun itself was shooting different loads and it did.

So basically I am happy with the performance of the Lawman 9mm 115 gr. Speer has a great reputation for quality in the defensive ammo line and that quality apparently extends to the “cheap” practice ammo. I wish I could add an After Action report on the quality of the brass for reloading, but the darn vultures in my club that also reload would pick it up before I had a chance to do it myself.