I am Jake Terry, the editor responsible for ammunition, range testing, and the “From the Bench” product notes that appear on Tatted Tacticals listings. If you have read a load comparison on this site, watched a velocity figure get cited in a buying guide, or seen an editor note about how a specific 9mm or .45 ACP fed in a particular pistol, that work crossed my bench before it crossed your screen. Tatted Tacticals owner Jake Terry is the editor of record for the catalog; my job is to put hands on the ammunition that goes through it.
Credentials
- FFL07 / SOT3 — work performed under the federally licensed firearms manufacturer and Special Occupational Tax Class 3 authorization Tatted Tacticals operates under.
- NRA-certified firearms instructor — the same credential standard the editorial team holds across the site.
- Lifelong shooter and bench tester — grew up around a family-run sporting-goods counter in the Northeast; came up on shotguns and rimfire before specializing in handgun ammunition.
- Active range officer — spend the work week on a live-fire range patterning shotgun loads, chronographing handgun ammunition, and recording observations that feed product pages.
- Daily CCW practitioner — carry concealed; defensive ammunition is not theoretical work for me.
What I Review on This Site
My editor scope is narrower than Jake’s — deliberately. I own the hands-on ammunition work so the editor of record can stand behind specific terminal-performance and feed-reliability claims with first-hand data instead of catalog copy. Coverage by archetype:
- Handgun ammunition — 9mm, .45 ACP, .40 S&W, .380 ACP, .38 Special, .357 Magnum, 10mm, and the smaller defensive cartridges. I chronograph representative loads from each cartridge family in a duty-size pistol and a sub-compact when both are realistic, and I record feeding behavior in the platforms most buyers carry — Glock 19/17/26, M&P, 1911, J-frame.
- Rifle ammunition — 5.56 NATO, .223 Remington, .308 Winchester, 6.5 Creedmoor, and the deer-camp cartridges. Hunting loads are tested for point-of-impact shift versus practice ammo at the same zero distance, not just velocity.
- Shotgun ammunition — 12 gauge and 20 gauge defensive buckshot patterned at 7, 10, and 15 yards in a fixed cylinder bore and a defensive-spec choke; slugs grouped at 50 yards from a smoothbore. Slug point-of-impact is recorded against bead and rifle sights.
- Reloading components — primers, powders, and brass are referenced against current published load data only. I do not publish reloading recipes on product pages; I document the components manufacturers and the data sources that govern them.
How “From the Bench” Notes Get Written
The editor-notes block that appears on some ammunition product pages is the single piece of content on this site that has to be first-hand. The rules I write to:
- Minimum round count. 100 rounds through one representative platform before a defensive-ammunition note publishes; 50 rounds for a target or practice note.
- Documented platform. Each note records the specific pistol, rifle, or shotgun used — make, model, barrel length, sight setup — so a reader can judge whether the observation applies to their gun.
- Failure types are named, not summarized. A failure to feed gets recorded as a failure to feed. A failure to extract gets recorded as a failure to extract. “Ran fine” without a round count and a platform is not an editor note; it is filler, and it does not run.
- No notes get fabricated. If I have not personally run a SKU, the note block is omitted from that product page. The product is still worth what the spec sheet says; the absence of a note means I have not yet put hands on that exact load, not that it is a worse product.
Where My Sign-Off Stops
Several content domains on this site are outside my editor scope and belong to Jake Terry as editor of record:
- Firearm transfers and FFL paperwork. Every complete firearm sale and serialized lower transfer goes through the FFL workflow Jake owns. I do not sign off on transfer claims.
- Trigger compliance. The Super Safety, binary, and Rare Breed categories require legal-status language that follows current ATF guidance and state law. Jake reviews and signs off on every trigger product page; I do the install-bench note only when one is published.
- Site-wide safety and shipping policy. The four rules of firearms safety, state restrictions, ammunition shipping, returns, and shipping pages are reviewed and signed off by Jake at minimum every 180 days.
Why Real Names Are on Product Pages
Ammunition is Your-Money-Or-Your-Life content under Google’s Quality Rater guidelines. A page about a defensive 9mm load can shape what someone carries to protect their family. A page about a turkey load can shape what a hunter takes to the woods. Google holds these pages to the highest expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness standard, and a real person with a credential needs to stand behind what is written on them. My name is on the work I do for the same reason Jake’s is on his — if a claim on this site turns out to be wrong, you should know who owns the correction.
Contact and Corrections
If something I have signed off on is wrong — a velocity figure that contradicts a published spec sheet, a feeding-reliability claim that does not match your experience with the same load and platform, an ammunition-shipping restriction that has changed — contact us. Corrections are tracked with a “last reviewed” date at the top of every page they apply to, and the editor who signed off is named.
Back to editorial team · Jake Terry, founder · Back to homepage