If you’re just learning to shoot, I’d recommend something like .22lr or .38 because the ammo is so much cheaper, and the lower recoil makes it easier to focus on the fundamentals.
But your 9mm pistol can’t fire those without conversions.
A lot of people buy duplicate guns with cheaper ammo, like having a G19 and a G44. There’s also a lot of skills that are better learned without actually firing live ammo, hence why most people will do dry fire training.
But eventually, you will have to get out on the range and shoot some live ammo. And unfortunately, you have to pay the money for it. If you keep an eye out sometimes you’ll be able to get some good deals.
9mm is about 20c/rd, i know because I just bought another case of it. You an also practice with a .22 which is about 6c/rd, or cheaper if you bought bulk like a lot of regular shooters do. Dry fire practice is also a great way to become familair with your gun and work on fundamentals without spending money. There are also kits available that make dry firing more responsive and you can “shoot” targets and the like. But really, I learned to shoot by spending a lot of money lol it is not a cheap hobby.
You absolutely can find 9mm, in the US, for way less than that. There are some brands of target ammunition that you can easily find for 4-5 shots per dollar (20-24 cents per cartridge)
The people that are shooting a lot? Are either buying in bulk to get a discount down to the sub 20 cent per cartridge price, or they are reloading.
The price of reloading equipment is up there, for nice stuff. I had a dillon XL650 press, purchased in like 2013 ish timeframe for about 2500$ ready to load both 9mm and .40S&W. I shot plenty more than enough before selling it to well more than break even, I reloaded probably at least 50 thousand rounds out of it (I was shooting a lot of competitive handgun at the time, USPSA and IDPA)
At the time, the cheapest box of 200, winchester white box, .40S&W cartridges I could find was about 50 cents per cartridge. Not including the up front purchase cost of the reloading press, I could reload .40S&W for an average of 16 cents a cartridge, give or take a couple cents depending on how many times I could reload a single case before it failed and how many empty cases I lost at the range.
I could have lowered that even further if I had been purchasing my reloading supplies in bulk, but seeing as I was living in an apartment at the time, not in a house with a detached garage or somewhere similar to store the supplies. I didn’t feel like having 50lbs of propellant and 10,000 loose, live primers in my apartment at a time.
Where are you finding $1 per round? FMJ 9mm should be more 20-40 cents per round. $1 per round would be defense ammo that I wouldn’t use for general target practice.
$1 per round of 9mm!? That’s an outrageous price if someone’s charging you that. Usually a box of 50 for 9mm is like $6 so it should be 12 cents per round.
Comments
If you’re just learning to shoot, I’d recommend something like .22lr or .38 because the ammo is so much cheaper, and the lower recoil makes it easier to focus on the fundamentals.
But your 9mm pistol can’t fire those without conversions.
A lot of people buy duplicate guns with cheaper ammo, like having a G19 and a G44. There’s also a lot of skills that are better learned without actually firing live ammo, hence why most people will do dry fire training.
But eventually, you will have to get out on the range and shoot some live ammo. And unfortunately, you have to pay the money for it. If you keep an eye out sometimes you’ll be able to get some good deals.
[deleted]
9mm is about 20c/rd, i know because I just bought another case of it. You an also practice with a .22 which is about 6c/rd, or cheaper if you bought bulk like a lot of regular shooters do. Dry fire practice is also a great way to become familair with your gun and work on fundamentals without spending money. There are also kits available that make dry firing more responsive and you can “shoot” targets and the like. But really, I learned to shoot by spending a lot of money lol it is not a cheap hobby.
Laser tag
You absolutely can find 9mm, in the US, for way less than that. There are some brands of target ammunition that you can easily find for 4-5 shots per dollar (20-24 cents per cartridge)
The people that are shooting a lot? Are either buying in bulk to get a discount down to the sub 20 cent per cartridge price, or they are reloading.
The price of reloading equipment is up there, for nice stuff. I had a dillon XL650 press, purchased in like 2013 ish timeframe for about 2500$ ready to load both 9mm and .40S&W. I shot plenty more than enough before selling it to well more than break even, I reloaded probably at least 50 thousand rounds out of it (I was shooting a lot of competitive handgun at the time, USPSA and IDPA)
At the time, the cheapest box of 200, winchester white box, .40S&W cartridges I could find was about 50 cents per cartridge. Not including the up front purchase cost of the reloading press, I could reload .40S&W for an average of 16 cents a cartridge, give or take a couple cents depending on how many times I could reload a single case before it failed and how many empty cases I lost at the range.
I could have lowered that even further if I had been purchasing my reloading supplies in bulk, but seeing as I was living in an apartment at the time, not in a house with a detached garage or somewhere similar to store the supplies. I didn’t feel like having 50lbs of propellant and 10,000 loose, live primers in my apartment at a time.
Where are you finding $1 per round? FMJ 9mm should be more 20-40 cents per round. $1 per round would be defense ammo that I wouldn’t use for general target practice.
.22 and .32acp are generally cheaper.
.22 ammo is 17 cents a bullet.
$1 per round of 9mm!? That’s an outrageous price if someone’s charging you that. Usually a box of 50 for 9mm is like $6 so it should be 12 cents per round.