38 Special - 158 gr LRN - Blazer- 1000 Rounds

Video Transcript:

Blazer ammo comes from the ATK parent company who's also responsible for Speer, Federal, and CCI ammo as well as the Lake City military ammo plant. ATK ammo brands are all well known for producing high quality ammo with excellent reliability and consistency. Blazer is ATK's low-cost range ammo and is available with either a brass case or aluminum case. Blazer aluminum has been around since the early 1980s and is one of the only aluminum case ammo brands on the market. The aircraft-grade aluminum used to make their shell casings is durable, lightweight, and corrosion-resistant, making it an excellent choice for use in several different calibers.

We took some time to test out the Blazer aluminum and 38 Special with a 158 grain lead, round-nosed bullet. The first thing you notice with this ammo is how light it is. This doesn't really have any effect on how it shoots. But maybe this means you cram a few extra boxes in your range bag without weighing yourself down. The recoil with this ammo was moderate for a 38 Special. It was a little stiffer than something like cowboy loads but still softer than a Plus-P round. The lead round-nosed bullets are actually more of a point. This might help with loading a revolver from speed loaders. But I wouldn't recommend using this stuff in a lever action with a tubular magazine.

Another thing we notice with the aluminum casings is that they seem to slide out of the chambers a little easier than brass and were less prone to sticking. The only exception was our snub-nosed LCR revolver, where I had to remove the casings manually. Other than that, we had no issues with the reliability or extraction in any of our test guns.

Accuracy was tested from the bench at 15 yards using a Ruger GP100. This is our last 10-shot group and it looks pretty good. But the first couple of tries were not quite as consistent, which can probably be at least partially attributed to the bullet type. Blazer aluminum is another great low-cost option from ATK and the 158 grain lead round-nose makes a great revolver plinking load.