Modern-day premium 147gr 9mm loadings are, as has been pointed out, greatly improved. Because of this, they quickly gained a poor reputation based on numerous failures to expand. 355" bullets at subsonic velocities while still maintaining feeding reliability in a semi-automatic handgun. While they certainly did penetrate better, it wasn't possible to get reliable expansion from 1980's and early 90's era. Originally, they were designed to give better penetration than the 115gr 9mm loadings then-available (124-127gr loadings didn't come along until several years later). The 147gr 9mm loadings were originally developed in the aftermath of the 1986 Miami Shootout and the resulting change in FBI (and by extension most LEO) thoughts on handgun bullet performance. Someone will be along shortly to disagree. If you want to shoot it fine, I see no problems with it, though it is more expensive and I have never found 147 gr 9mm at my local Wally Worlds. Good old hickok45 on youtube actually prefers 147 gr 9mm.Īll in all, it's probably a wash. If you shoot any larger calibers it probably won't be an issue. I also seem to find that my accuracy improves, but that could be me being delusional or my gun. I find it has a bit more recoil than the 115 gr, but barely noticeable. I see no reason not to use it, and there are some nice options for defense rounds in that weight. Overall, from what I have read it penetrates a bit more than 124 gr and expands fractionally less. Since it did have issues at the beginning, the myth perpetuates today that it still has problems.
![subsonic 9mm jhp subsonic 9mm jhp](https://chasse-extreme.fr/24455-home_default/50-munitions-magtech-cal-9mm-luger-147gr-jhp-subsonic.jpg)
Here is a nice link to some ballistics testing:ġ47 gr 9mm had its issues when it came out, but has improved a lot since then. Probably should change the name of this thread to "147 gr 9mm" to be more specific, as you can find subsonic loadings in other calibers.