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Stand 1 Armory is a boutique ammunition manufacturer based in north Texas, nestled in the rolling plains just over an hour’s drive west toward the panhandle from the western side of the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. The company’s story is a tale of resurrection, with the brand’s original ownership having shut down operations in late 2017. After approximately three years of dormancy, 2020 saw the re-emergence of the Stand 1 name under new ownership. They’ve been going strong ever since, thanks in no small part to their signature 9mm “Chubbies”. Among the Stand 1 product catalogue spanning a wide variety of options for both rifle and pistol calibers, the Chubby is offered as a flagship item, purpose-built primarily for competition shooting.
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Stand 1 Armory’s packaging for the box of 250 tester rounds they sent us.
These are most of the demo guns we used to test the Chubbies.
These 147-grain 9mm rounds are meant to optimize fast split times while mitigating felt recoil, and providing sufficient kinetic energy to reliably knock down steel plates and flip targets. Stand 1 Armory calls their reduced-power Chubbies “…the ultimate competition round you can rely on.” Stand 1 got in touch with The Firearm Blog to offer us a case of tester rounds, so I have had the opportunity to run 250 rounds through a sampling of 9mm firearms. Many thanks to the Stand 1 team for their donation of these demo rounds for our evaluation.
A smattering of 9mm mags loaded with Stand 1’s 147gr -P ammo.
Pricing on a 250-count box of Chubbies at the time of this writing is $80, with shipping and any applicable taxes putting most buyers in the vicinity of $100-ish, give or take a few bucks. That puts this 9mm ammo generally around forty cents per round. Chubbies can also be purchased in quantities of 1000, 500, 100, or 50 rounds. The official Chubbies product description reads as follows.
The Sig Sauer P320 FCU/slide installed in the Flux Defense Raider chassis had no problem chewing through plenty of Chubbies without any malfunctions.
Stand 1 Armory 9mm 147gr Chubby — New Brass
This is our flagship competition ammo, and is used by some of the top shooters in the country. This premium, new brass ammo is perfect for 3 Gun, USPSA, IDPA, or for any shooters who want to enjoy reduced recoil and fast follow-up target acquisition. These rounds have less felt recoil than standard 147gr subsonic rounds, yet still have enough power to knock down steel plates and reliably cycle virtually every firearm. 147gr Chubbies consistently make minor power factor for USPSA and IDPA shooters. Try some! You won’t want to go back to your old ammo. (We have had great success using this Ammo in competition. It is the responsibility of the competitor to confirm that he or she will make power factor using their gun prior to shooting each event.)
PLEASE NOTE: The Chubby is a reduced power (-P) load and, on rare occasions, some brand new (not broken-in) firearms, very tight guns or pistols with suppressors may not operate well with any reduced power load. We have tested this round extensively with perfect results in over 50 different various pistols and our customers love it. We only add this note to say that this round is best suited for guns that are out of their brand new break-in period and pistols not using suppressors. For guns that have not yet been broken in or when using a suppressor on your pistol, we suggest our regular, full-power subsonic 124gr or 147gr loads.
This premium 9mm competition ammunition is manufactured using new brass. It is available in 50-round Retail boxes and in Bulk boxes. Ammo in Bulk boxes is loosely packaged in a sealed bag.
Using the classic HK slap to prep a mag full of Chubbies in our suppressed tester gun.
The firearms we chose to run our Stand 1 Armory evaluation rounds included a gen 5 Glock 48 MOS, a Smith and Wesson M&P Shield, a Lone Wolf G19 clone built from a Freedom Wolf 80% kit, a Heckler & Koch VP9 Tactical, a Flux Defense Raider utilizing a Sig Sauer P320 FCU and XCarry Legion slide, and a Pakistan Ordnance Factory MP5 clone with a YHM R9 suppressor. We found consistency and accuracy to be no issue, at least as good as most round-nosed bulk practice/training ammo I’ve used before, if not maybe a bit better.
Clearing a malfunction in the MP5 clone. True to Stand 1’s warning, the Chubbies are not intended to be used with a can-equipped firearm, and this was the only gun we tried that had issues cycling them.
The ability to achieve solid hits on paper and satisfyingly bang steel came quickly and easily, and I noticed no degradation in capability versus the sense of shootability I’ve felt on prior range trips with Federal, PMC, Winchester, or other ammo options – and bear in mind that those sessions have most often employed lighter grain weights that are more typical for round-nose 9mm, such as 115 grain to the Chubbies’ 147. It felt great to shoot, with easy recoil and quick follow-ups just as intended.
I set up a 7-round M&P Shield mag for a shooter who doesn’t have much experience firing rapidly and told him to run it as fast as safely and reasonably possible. He was pleasantly surprised with the results that the soft-shooting Chubbies allowed him to achieve.
The other key I wanted to evaluate was reliability. Happily, the ammo ran flawlessly in all of the testing firearms except one. I opted to include the suppressed POF MP5 clone specifically to test Stand 1’s warning that the -P load may not suit a can, and this gun/its mags have been slightly finicky about certain ammo choices before. True to the product note, the silenced gun did experience a handful of hiccups and failed to cycle properly generally 1-3 times per 30-round mag. The fact that the ammo cycled in all of the other non-suppressed guns unchallenged simply reaffirmed to me that the Chubby load just needs to be used as intended, and I saw no reason why it shouldn’t work terrifically in its purpose-built role.
This Lone Wolf G19 clone made from an 80% receiver ran the Chubbies flawlessly and felt great doing it.
While 250 rounds is by no means an exhaustive test, I came away from this evaluation with enough of a sampling to have no problem recommending Stand 1 Armory’s Chubbies based on my experience with them. If you’re a competition shooter or have a similar use case for this -P offering, and you keep it out of suppressed or particularly picky guns, I think the Chubby is well worth a try. If you did test them for yourself, please feel free to comment below whether they worked for you like they did for me. Have you run into any problems with Chubbies, or do you love smacking down steel targets with ease using them in 3-gun or other competitions? Have you employed these rounds in a non-gamer setting, and if so, how? Let us know your thoughts and experiences! See you at the range!
