Fired through heavy clothing, this Gold Dot still managed 13 inches of gelatin penetration.

Speer goes to the trouble of adjusting the design of each caliber and weight Gold Dot bullet for the particular use it will be loaded to, including the Short Barrel loads. So you do not see the same bullet getting stuffed in all 9mm and .38 Special loads, nor the same bullet in .40 and 10mm loads. Speer makes tuned bullets for consistent performance in different applications.

And so we had no surprises here. The bullets expanded in a fashion both exemplary and boring. Time and again, I'd see 13 to 14 inches of ballistic gel perforated by a fully expanded bullet. The expansion was always in the .600- to .650-inch range, with petals folded back.

I have never seen a Gold Dot bullet shed a petal unless it has had to rudely force its way through sheet metal in order to fulfill its ballistic gel destiny. And I've seen that only a couple of times. Speer has managed to get a lot of velocity into a bullet that is on the heavy side of the case capacity that drives it. And despite the velocity loss that is unavoidable in a short-barreled handgun, the company has a bullet in the Gold Dot that expands reliably, consistently and still penetrates while doing so.

Let us not forget that expansion and penetration are not in and of themselves the best measures of a defensive bullet. You have to have correct bullet placement or the penetration and expansion are for naught. The accuracy of the Gold Dot bullets is plenty good enough for that. If you get your sights where they will do you the most good, you can count on the bullet doing the rest.

For something to stuff your daily carry gun with, you'd be hard-pressed to find something better than this. For those of you packing compact .40s, you really should do yourself a favor and look into the Speer Short Barrel loads.

While Speer lists only the 180-grain as a Short Barrel load, it offers three bullet weights in its standard .40 Gold Dot hollowpoint load: 155, 165 and 180 grains. However, those are not tuned for short barrels, and you may find them having a bit more muzzle blast.

Get enough to test in your pistol, to make sure the load hits to the sights, groups well and feeds properly. Then stock up and carry safely, knowing you've got primo defensive ammo at your beck and call.