History of Proven Performance
Hornady was founded in 1949, and has grown to become an award-winning world leader in ballistic technology. A second generation family-owned business, Hornady is committed to providing nothing but the best possible hunting and shooting products on the market today. Great care is given to ensure that industry leading standards of excellence are met repeatedly with every single product that is shipped from our factory.
Ammunition MANUFACTURER, not simply an "ASSEMBLER"
Hornady® ammunition isn't simply assembled; we manufacture our own components (bullets, cartridge cases) on-site. To load the best ammunition, you must start with the best components, and we do – we hold all of our products to the tightest tolerances in the industry.
SAAMI Members
As a founding member of SAAMI (Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manifacturers' Institute), all products are rigorously tested in accordance with industry standardized test procedures and equipment to ensure that all bullets and ammunition meet and / or exceed established levels of performance and safety.
Propellants
Hornady is not limited to one vendor for components, therefore only the best propellant for each individual application is used. In keeping with Hornady standards of performance, propellants are selected based on performance alone, NOT profit potential.
All TAP® pistol and carbine ammunition is loaded with low flash propellants (to minimize denigration of night vision).
All TAP® ammunition is loaded with propellants that are chosen with great care to deliver uniformity, reliability and performance regardless of atmospheric conditions. Selected propellants have been tested in temperature extremes of - 15° and + 145° to ensure that consistent levels of performance are maintained across a wide range of temperatures. This testing is of grave importance for law enforcement officers, particularly snipers and departments with patrol carbine programs. Temperature stability ensures that point of impact shifts are greatly reduced in different temperature extremes (negligible shifts will always be experienced in drastic temperature changes in comparison to the temperature when the firearm was zeroed). These temperature extremes are invariably the case when ammunition is stored in vehicle trunks which are often extremely hot in the summer and bitterly cold in the winter.
Hornady is not a "partner" with one particular powder supplier, which enables freedom to select the absolute best powder(s) for each specific load.
Bullets
All Hornady® bullets are manufactured on-site and start with industry leading bullet jacket concentricity of .0003" (three ten thousandths of an inch – or one tenth the thickness of a piece of paper). This superior concentricity ensures that Hornady® bullets fly straight and provide world-record-setting accuracy! Hornady® bullets currently hold the 600 yard NBRSA World Record for smallest group size of .5823" (inches, not MOA – that's slightly larger than half an inch at 600 yards) as shot by Mr. Robert Hoppe in 2007. Read the story here.
Hornady® TAP® bullets are all designed to give you the most effective bullet possible for many specific situations. Some of our bullets are designed to fragment completely and retain no weight making them good for situations where collateral damage must be mitigated; other bullets are designed to effectively penetrate thick barriers while still initiating soft tissue expansion on the other side. Still others are designed to be effective across a wide range of situations. This provides you, the tactical professional, with a range of bullets that will work in the situations you are likely to face and leave you with the opportunity to choose the absolute best bullet for the tactical situation at hand.
Primers
Hornady® primers are selected for each individual application. They are chosen based on their performance. Only by carefully matching all of the individual components together can we develop ammunition worthy of the Hornady name.
Quality Assurance
Hornady® TAP® ammunition undergoes a rigorous quality control process. All individual loads are checked for cartridge case length, volume of propellant charge, and bullet seating depth. Throughout the run of a lot of ammunition, samples are tested for accuracy (carbine and rifle loads), firearm functioning (using several varieties of firearms), terminal performance (all handgun cartridges are fired into ballistic expansion/penetration test media to ensure proper terminal performance levels are maintained) case mouth crimp, overall length of the finished cartridge, bullet runout (the concentricity of the bullet to the centerline of the cartridge case), bullet push and bullet pull (measure the crimp of the case mouth to bullet) and one final inspection by highly qualified ammunition inspectors who look each and every finished cartridge over for correct bullet seating and primer placement as well any cosmetic defects. The final product is then packaged and shipped out as the finest Law Enforcement ammunition available on the market today.
In closing, Hornady has a wealth of experience designing loads that are highly effective for their intended purpose. We have the ability to custom make products designed for very specific purposes, as well as products that work across a broad range of expected circumstances. We are not a publicly traded company, thus we are very nimble, and capable of responding to our customers and our market rapidly. One look at our track record shows that we lead our industry in ammunition development and design, and produce nothing but quality products. When lives are on the line, Hornady TAP® ammunition is the choice of tactical professionals throughout the World!